Nettie had a little half-bath in her garage. It was an act of forethought by my deceased grandfather, the one I never knew. He died about six weeks after I was born. He was not quite 60.
My grandmother had been a fairly young widow, and though he left her quite a few assets, she sometimes struggled with regular income. He had been smart financially, but she had no clue how to make any additional money through business. She did hang on to the bulk of the assets, by doing without things, not buying much.
She had a very comfortable house, probably decorated and furnished by someone else, as I don't think she had any sense of decor or color. When the house was built, they must have hired a professional for the interior; then she never changed it one iota. There were varied wallpapers, juxtaposed against nice lined drapes of a different pattern, yet coordinating fabric and color. I just didn't think Nettie had that artistic bent to visualize the outcome, but she appreciated fine things and took good care of all she had.
By the time I started first grade, she had come up with a plan to generate more income. She rented out one of her bedrooms to a gentleman. It had a separate entrance, but the person had to share the bathroom, as there was only one. I always thought she should have made them use the bathroom in the garage to simplify things, but she didn't see it that way.
"It's too far out here," she said when I asked. "And it's not very nice. It's just the basics. And no tub."
Anyway, our family always got to know the men very well. They became like part of our extended family for the time they were there. The first was an erudite school counselor, who after earning his doctorate moved up north and became a psychologist. He was a few years older than Nettie. Over six feet tall, he looked and talked like I thought Santa Claus would. His snow white hair was neatly combed. He didn't have a beard, and he wasn't rotund, but he laughed in a deep baritone, and he shook all over when he laughed. It was an honest sound, like it came straight from a good heart.
Mr. Roberts, and that is what she called him the entire time, lived there for about six years, working at school during the day and attending meetings at night and graduate school every other free minute.
On weekends, he often visited his extended family. Occasionally, he watched television with my grandmother and whatever members of our family were visiting in the evenings. She had grandkids and nephews and nieces dropping by all the time as well as her brothers and their families, and occasionally her sister from Arlington.
After he moved up north, a younger man rented the room. His name was Harvey, and he sold cigarettes, so he was often gone during the week making his route. He had thick black wavy hair, gold glasses, and was somewhat hyperactive and flamboyant. He brought a lot of life and laughter back into my grandmother's house, always moving quickly through the house like he was headed to some emergency, when he was only going to the living room.
He enjoyed laughing,making silly jokes, and teasing her. He dated my sister Neila for a while. My brothers even liked him, a small miracle, I thought.
The last man who rented a room there was a Mr. McCoy. He was in his late forties while my grandmother was probably getting close to 70.
She was an upright woman, and renting rooms was not uncommon then. My dad approved, so that meant it was all right.
Occasionally, the men who rented would take her to dinner as a thank you. So one night, Mr.McCoy had taken her to out to eat, and the car crunched its return into the gravel driveway about 8 p.m.
Some discussion had begun, as my grandmother told it, and they sat there for a minute or so, finishing their conversation. Just as Mr. McCoy started to get out of the car on the driver's side next to a hedge that ran the length of the long driveway, he was stunned to hear a loud noise, and a short, shrill shreik. Even more stunned to see Mrs. Smitty, the next door neighbor, stumble through the hedge next to the car, landing prone across the hood, hitting it with a loud thud. She turned her head, looked toward my grandmother, who sat openmouthed in the passenger seat, and waved limply, her pruning shears laying beside her on the car.
Mr. McCoy, ever the gentleman, assisted Mrs. Smitty home, telling my grandmother to wait in the car. On return, he opened the passenger door, silently offered his arm, and when they had turned the corner at the back of the house, he burst out laughing.
"Does she always prune the hedge at night?" he guffawed.
"Only when she wants to see what I'm doing," my grandmother giggled. "She probaby figures it's more fun sharing the house with a man than with that old maid daughter of hers," she said. "And those two yapping dogs."
"Well, I never," Mr. McCoy said.
"I never either," Nettie laughed.
Those poor neighbors lived there a long time, and we had a number of encounters with them, none really bad. It would probably have hurt their feelings if they'd known how we laughed about their odd ways. Their house was the cleanest house I'd ever been in, sterile really, except for the dogs.
The green and white tile in the kitchen was shiny and had not one speck of dirt on it. I went over there once to take part of a cake my grandmother wanted to share with them. She was nice that way, even if nobody returned the favor. She used food to show goodwill. "They're good neighbors," she said, "just a little nosy."
So today, while Nettie washed her clothes in the electric wringer washer, I tried to see how many times I could use that garage bathroom, just for the novelty of it. She wouldn't let me get near the wringer, but every now and then if I persisted, she'd put a blouse through, dripping wet, then let me help her pull it slowly out the other side, the two rollers squeezing the life out of it.
Washing was hard work for her, but she didn't have to wash very often since she only washed for one. Mother washed three or four loads a day, put Daddy's khakis on metal stretchers, and ironed almost everything we wore.
Nettie finally noticed how many times I had run in and out of the oversized door to the bathroom and told me to stop.
"Can I go play on Mr. Watts' swings?"
"Ok," she said, probably glad to get rid of me.
Mr. Watts lived behind and east of her in a big gray house with a garden-like setting around it. In the part of his huge yard that was directly behind her house, though, he had a huge swingset that all of us were allowed to play on. The best thing he had were two large thick metal rings attached to long chains, You could hang on those rings, right side up or upside down, while swinging back and forth. It was hard work, but I felt like a circus star. The circus held a certain amount of intrigue for me for several years.
The set was nearly as tall as the ones at school and much more interesting. There was a swing, a teeter totter, and the large hoops. I played on everything out there until I saw Nettie carrying a large basket of wet clothes to the clothesline where she started attaching them to the taut wire with wooden clothespins, hanging them to dry.
I ran to help her carry the basket. I didn't like to hang out clothes, but I thought I'd help her since she'd worked so hard washing them, and she had let me go play in Mr. Watts' yard.
"Mother hangs out everything, but I hate for my underwear to hang out there so everyone in town can see it," I said.
Nettie picked up a red and black patterned cotton dress, the kind of housedress she wore most days, large black buttons adorning the front, and attached it by the shoulders to the thick wire line. She only had one line stretched between the metal T-shaped posts. We had three lines, and they were full about five days a week at least.
Clothes flapping in the wind, waving to the neighbors, advertising our private brands to anyone in town. Course they all hung their clothes out to dry, too. Everyone in his backyard, but none of the yards were fenced, so you could see all the clothes, plain as the blue sky.
"Granddad never let Mother and her brothers and sister hang their clothes out to dry. He went to the laundromat. He says they get germs on them when you leave them out like that." I chattered on, picking up a washcloth and securing it to the line.
"Well, I like your Granddad, but that is the craziest thing I ever heard. I wonder why your mother never told me that?" Nettie wondered aloud.
"Oh, she told me not to tell, but I thought you probably already knew."
"No, can't say as I did. Well, everybody's different. He had to be mother and father to those kids most of their lives anyway. He wouldn't of had time to hang 'em out." She liked my granddad a lot, I could tell, and she wouldn't criticize him even if she disagreed with him.
"Yeah, I guess that's right. Did you know that my other Granny won't call me by my name? Every once in a while if she's put out with me, she'll call me by my middle name. Why do you suppose that is?" I asked, picking up a thick yellow bath towel and pinning it securely with three wooden pins.
"She mostly looks through me, not at me. The other night Susan, Jan and I were there and she was watching "Lassie", and we were jumping over the big armchairs in the living room and hiding behind the couch where it angles across the corner of the living room, and I bet she couldn't even hear Lassie bark. She didn't say a word to us, just stared at Timmy and Lassie until finally, Mother heard the noise and came in and put a stop to our jumping. We didn't really mean to be disrespectful like that, with her in the room and all, but........." I trailed off.
"Some people take life hard," Nettie said thoughtfully. "Your Granny had a nervous breakdown when your mother was about 12. She never recovered. They didn't know much to do for it then. It's a little better now. My neighbor over there" she pointed to the opposite side of her house from Mrs.Smitty,"has had shock treatments at least twice at the state hospital, and she's still real nervous. Some people just have a hard time," she said kindly.
"I wondered if there was anything to do for Granny," I commented as I ducked under the wet clothes. "But Mother said Granddad just vowed to protect her, and he did. He spends all his time with her--and reading. He takes her for a drive on Sunday. The rest of the time she just sits in that rocker and ..."
"I know." Nettie interrupted. "Let's talk about something else. You don't need to concern yourself with that. Your grandparents have been married a long time, and Mr. Newlin is a fine man--a fine man,"
she repeated.
"Oh, okay. Well, can you tell me more about her?" I asked, pointing in the general direction of her neighbor, Mrs. Carson, the one who had shock treatments.
"Let's go in and fix something for supper," Nettie said, ignoring my question. "Lots of things happen to people in life. You just have to accept that."
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