Neighbors

So, we moved into the house on High Street. High Street housed a true cross-section of small-town Americana. I've told you that my parents were both working people who, in their first year of marriage in 1939, managed to save enough money on a combined weekly paycheck of $16 to buy a car. I suppose by the time they moved to High Street, they were bringing home somewhat more than $16, but certainly not as much as Mr. Dugan, the semi-retired bank president who lived next door, or Dr. Dabbs, the physician who lived down the street. Mr. McDuffie, who owned one of the two drug stores in town, lived catty-cornered across the street, and Mrs. Kingsley, a widow, lived next door in one side of her duplex and rented out the other side.

Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie lived just across the street. Willallah, or Arber, as her children and grandchildren called her - (no, I don't know why), was a wonderful cook who could tell you in January exactly what she planned to have for Easter dinner and how each dish would be prepared. I say Easter dinner, because in the South, what we have learned to call lunch in Oklahoma is really dinner. And the night meal is supper. Willallah was also the organist at the Presbyterian Church and for funerals at Lann Memorial Funeral Home. Very rarely did I see her without an apron, and quite often she would be bringing an apron full of crabapples from her tree for my mother to make crabapple jelly. I'm not sure that my children knew you could buy jelly from the grocery store until they were teenagers, because we always had a plentiful supply of crabapple jelly from Willallah's tree, and they didn't know there were other flavors. Mr. Frank was retired from the state tax commission, and Willallah took great joy in preparing his meals, although frugal she was. She could make a few strawberries last at least a week by slicing one or two (only) on his piece of pound cake for dessert. She told my mother that she paid herself $.50 a week for cooking for him; the money (from the grocery fund) went into her little ceramic "kitty" in the kitchen. I don't know what she did with the stash of cash as it grew.

One of the things I missed about Columbus Street was my fig tree. I was soon to find out that Mr. Dugan had several fig trees in his back yard and would often bring me a little wooden pint box of fresh figs. I had struck gold! The Dugans' children were grown and had moved away, and Mrs. Dugan struggled with health issues. They had a cook who came everyday, I believe, and they also had their groceries delivered - delivered, mind you!! From Welch's grocery store downtown. Mr. Dugan smoked big cigars, and several cats called his big sprawling front porch (and the top of his car) home. He would sit on his front porch in a rocking chair smoking cigars and yelling, "Shut up!" to the jay birds in the trees who taunted the cats.