Back in the ’50s, when I was a little boy growing up in Middle Tennessee, I had many teachers. Kind and somewhat elderly women. White ladies and black ladies. They had raised families and been through one lifetime already. I paid attention to them. I could tell by their expressions that they meant and believed everything they told me. Older ladies are like that. Plus, they’re really smart.
I lived with my mother and two younger brothers in a very small farming town a little over an hour south of Nashville. Everybody knew one another’s life story. Most were born there and never left. The population never got too far past a hundred. Somebody old would pass on, and a baby or two would be born.
What there was of a downtown was on both sides of a skinny two-lane road that slipped through it. Only seven buildings. Six of them open for business.
All the maple and oak trees that lined both sides of the cracked sidewalks changed colors in unison. In the really cold winter months, the trees seemed to be crying. They had lost their leaves and succumbed to glistening, tear-drop icicles hanging from the lower limbs. I’d jump up and grab one and eat it. They were pretty good.
Without a doubt, the widow Mrs. Stephenson was the richest person in town. She was on up there in age. White hair rolled up in a bun, tiny hands, her skin porcelain pale. She spoke softly. Her laugh was little more than a “tee-hee.”