A most peculiar family lived directly across the street from us.  Their house was three-storied, with a little separate bungalow of two small rooms in the back of their lot.  They had seven children, which was unique for the times.  The mother wore dentures that not only clicked when she talked, but shifted back and forth as well, as though they were platens of corn cob typing aimlessly away.

       She was often in a state of disarray with her hosiery rolled down around purple, swollen ankles, a filthy housedress covered by a food-slopped apron, and her long, unkempt dirty hair spilling over both.  Her shoulders were massive, her forearms muscular, and her fingers resembled fat little sausages.  Izzy was the neighborhood troublemaker and was known to be dangerously mean to those who crossed her.

       Her husband, Eddie Morrison, was fairly good looking with a receding shock of wispy blonde hair.  He had a strong and hard body thanks to his job as a laborer at Rubber Molds Consolidated, where he hoisted tires onto wooden pallets after they were cured and taken off the molds.  He was considered a failure by Izzy, who ruled their family, and she took great pleasure in letting him know what a failure he was.  He often looked at my mother with a wistful glance.

       I sometimes pondered just how they acquired all those children, but I was too young at the time to comprehend that two of them resembled the Neanderthal tattooed bartender down at Tim’s, or that the youngest daughter of darker pigmentation might have been sired by the Rag Man himself.

       Izzy had never taken to the domestic scene, and consequently most of their kids bordered on delinquency:  shoplifting, smoking, filching money from the rusted Maxwell House can; but Billy, their sixteen year old, earned his spending money as the paper boy on our block.  Now, I had never heard of ‘hormones’, but Billy was inquisitive.  One day, he waylaid me and said “I’ll give you a nickel to pull down your under drawers.”  I shook my head “no”.  He countered:  “Okay then, a nickel and two pennies.”  I turned my back to him and began to run away, but then he called after me “How about a WHOLE DIME?”  Well, I whipped my cotton undies down so fast, even he was startled!  And let me tell you–penny candy never tasted so sweet as the dime’s worth I purchased later that day at Biddle’s Drugstore down the road a piece.

       The grandfather, Izzy’s father, was known to all the kids in the neighborhood as ‘Gran’daddy Edwards’.  A widower, he lived behind them in that scary old two-room bungalow.  The first time I saw him, I asked him how old he was.  He grinned at me and said,  “Why, honey, I’m one hundred and ten.”  He had moved into the bungalow after his wife had gone straight upstairs to be with the Lord.  He was missing more than a few teeth, his fingernails were stained a darkened yellow and curved over the ends of his fingers, his baggy trousers were held up by suspenders that had long since lost their elasticity, and he had a foul smell reminiscent of undergarments soiled by dried urine.  My parents had always cautioned me “Sunny, you must always be respectful of older folks.”  Because of my parent’s admonishment, I had stood quiet and still more than once while being subjected to his undulating embraces when no one else was around.

       Although the entire neighborhood might be thought of as ‘needy’, some were more needing than others, and because of my daddy’s steady employment at Pitts’ Auto Agency, mama took it upon herself to befriend those less fortunate.  “Mildred, I know how little time you have what with that new baby and all, so here’s a pie–your favorite–cherry.”  “Glen, when that wife of yours comes home from the hospital. you just cheer her up with this.”  “Izzy–here’s a warm cherry pie I baked for you and your family.”  Izzy, more often than not, fed the pie to her dogs.

       After my mama’s funeral, most of the neighbors dropped by to offer their condolences.  Eddie Morrison came with his children and Gran’daddy Edwards.  Eddie shook my father’s hand and told him “Now, if there’s anything I can do for you, all you have to do is holler.”  The children reluctantly filed by with a “sorry”, a “too bad”,  a mumble, and in Billy’s case, he put his arm around my shoulder and slipped a dime in my pocket.  Gran’daddy Edwards, who lusted over not only my mama’s pies, but her as well, gave me a quick hug and a sly wink.

       Izzy stayed home–she was busy baking my father a cherry pie–cherries she probably stole from my mama’s own cherry tree.

                             *     *     *

       The next two years became a blur–neither significantly good or bad, but just as the years became a blur, so the memory of my mother began to fade, and eventually, I had to study a photograph to remember her pretty face.