Visting Miz Pearl

(I grew up in Avery, Texas, population 332. Avery was a stable population town, and as a 1950s comedian could of said: "Every time a baby is born, some man leaves town. Avery was a poke-and-plumb town: Poke your head out the window and you're plumb out of town." As an industrial ADHDer, I always had a couple or five jobs. Newspaper carrier was one of them.)


Miz Pearl Williams was one the 92 paper customers who took both afternoon daily editions. She was one of the three stops I made on the route. On most days Miz Pearl offered me a couple of homemade cookies (sugar cookies or oatmeal raisin); when it was hot, there was lemonade or sugary ice tea; when it was cold, hot chocolate.

She always looked the same, dressed the same, near as I can remember: kind face with single-track, deep age-ravines down both cheeks; white hair pulled back tight, stoppered with a bun that was ordained not to come undone; dark dress with a white, crocheted collar.
Like most of the elderly women in Avery, she was lonely and seemed extraordinarily pleased that I would take a few minutes to stop and talk. (I liked her okay, but the cookies were the real drawing card.)

She was forgetful and when she couldn’t call my name, she’s look at me with her bird eyes -- pupils the size of lentils -- and nod and say, “Ed and Brownie’s boy.” It became a game we played.

The look and nod: “Ed and Brownie’s boy.”

Yes, ma’m,” I’d counter, “today and every day.”

And she’d throw back her head and laugh the silent laugh of the dentured elderly.

One wintery day, with a cold north wind ripping tears from my eyes as I pedaled as hard as I could to get through with the route, I fishtailed the Schwinn on her front lawn to parallel park it next to the warped, unpainted front porch.

Hot chocolate, here I come.

She pushed open the door before I could knock. “Hurry up, George. Don’t let all the warm out.”
Skittering through the opening sideways, I put the papers on the end table by her reading chair.
I eyed the plate of cookies sitting on the coffee table by the spavined couch.

“Get you a ginger cookie and I’ll get you something hot to drink. No problems on the route today, I reckon.” Without waiting for a response, she fluttered into the kitchen.

Ginger cookie? Ginger cookie? Where’s the oatmeal raisin?

A tentative nibble. Tart with a hint of sugar and an aftertaste of something tart-y. Not aversive, but not oatmeal raisin or sugar cookie either.

Miz Williams brought in a little tray and placed it on the coffee table. She handed me a cup with a finger hole only slightly larger than the eye of a needle. Afraid of not being able to hold the cup by the handled, I picked it up with both hands. Inside was a clearish, yellow-brown liquid with a small green leaf floating on the surface.

“Hot tea,” she said, I suppose in response to my facial expression. "Hot tea will warm you up better than hot chocolate on a day like this and it tastes better with ginger cookies.”

After blowing on it until I almost hyperventilated, I took a sip. Expecting something like iced tea only hot, the tea was . . . fruity with a hint of wood and a whop of something else.
“Mint,” Miz Williams said. “The leaf is a mint leaf.”

(Ginger cookies and hot tea. What’s she gonna come up with next . . . hot lemon juice and kerosene, served with turnip turnovers?)

As always, she asked about my day at school and told me what had occupied her time. (Always the same: Breakfast, clean the house, read yesterday’s papers again, clean, lunch, clean and wait on the delivery of the afternoon papers.)

After two cookies and draining the thimble of tea, I told her I had to get back to work, knowing she would go into her goodbye spiel. Hot or cold, the goodbye speech seldom varied.

As I was putting on my jacket and thin gloves, Miz Williams directed my attention to a yellowed show bill poster near the front door. “You know, this is my son Billy, the band leader.”

Billy Williams was the leader of an orchestra that was a headliner in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Daddy knew of him and had even seen him once in St. Louis when his band was known as the Billy Williams Orchestra. He was the band that backed tenor Stubby Kaye. The band’s show bill motto was: “Swing and Sway with Stubby Kaye.”

“My Billy is coming to visit in the summer.”

In a town the size of Avery, a person as famous as Billy Williams visiting would be big news. I never heard of him visiting. I hope he did and I hope it made his mama happy.