“Kathleen, I hate to bother you, but Oly is comin’in on the bus Friday. Would you mind takin’ me to pick her up?” I listened in as Miss Laura buttered my biscuit.
“Sure, I’ll be glad to. Is that the one whose husband just died?” Mother asked.
“Yes, he’d been sick in bed a long time,” replied Miss Laura. “I was poorly when he died and couldn’t make it for the funeral, so Oly told me to just wait an’she’d come stay awhile after she got him buried. We never got to visit much. She was just a baby when she married an’ and I only got to see her once in a great while.”
I was fascinated with the idea of a baby marrying and couldn’t wait to see her. Maybe we could play together. As I stood on the step with my biscuit, I was lost in thought. imagining a pig-tailed girl my age steeping off a school bus, the only bus I knew a thing about.
Mother pulled in at Mitchell’s Cafe out on the highway on Friday. We sweltered in the July heat as Billy and I tusseled in the back seat. Mother and Miss Laura Mae fanned themselves as heat monkeys danced on the pavement. Dust fogged in the open car windows as a long gray vehickle with a picture of a skinny dog pulled up.
“Here she comes!” Miss Laura Mae clutched her big black purse and heaved herself out of the car as the bus door opened.
I sat up and watched for a little girl in a wedding dress to emerge, but no one got off but an old lady in a flowered dress. Miss Laura Mae hurried over, catching her in a huge hug smashing their identical pushes between them. Her curly white hair was caught up in a hair net and she wore the same black lace-up old lady oxfords as Miss Laura Mae. The bus driver pulled her bag from a bin on the side of the bus. Mother helped her load it in the trunk.
“Kathleen, this is my sister, Oly.” Sadly, I abandoned my hope of a playmate.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Oly. How are you doing?”
“Oh, I couldn’t be better,” said Miss Oly. “I ain’t baked a biscuit since June 6th, the day my Ol’ man died!”
Miss Laura Mae and Miss Oly laughed out loud as Mother replied, “Oh, that’s nice,” as she cranked the car.
Nutsrok 
What a dissappointment!
And what’s a heat monkey???
LikeLiked by 1 person
Heat monkeys are water vapor that rises from the pavement in hot weat. Looks kind of steamy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The image of a baby in a wedding dress cracked me up at first then I thought of the christening dress my girls wore when christened and how that would look like a miniature wedding dress. Too bad your playmate turned into an old lady
LikeLike
What a waste. I had plans
LikeLike
Haha, your mother has about a kabillion more biscuits to go before she gets to quit!
LikeLike
She made 27 every morning and evening.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Damn.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My dad bragged about her biscuits like he’d mad them. She bought 25 lbs of flour and 3 lbs of shortening every week. She also bought 25 lbs. of potatoes, 10 lbs. of dry beans, 10 lbs of meal and 10 of sugar every week.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Holy moley. Just peeling that many potatoes would be a major project…
LikeLiked by 1 person
She didn’t pell any once I got old enough. Mother made sure I was helping all the time. She cooked a 3 quart pot of potatoes. She filled us up on potatoes, gravy, beans, and biscuit. Meat was parceled out carefully.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Actually, that’s not an unhealthy diet, depending on ones body type and level of physical exertion. Did you have a garden?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely. Plenty of greens, tomotoes, squash. Peas. Beans, okra. We had chickens so eggs, berries, fruit trees. Berries in season. We worked a farm so plenty of exercise.
LikeLiked by 1 person
OH, yes! I only did farmwork for one summer. Admittedly, I was already disabled and just didn’t know it ~ thought I was just a wimp. But that work kicked my buttootie!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is backbreaking.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Seriously.
LikeLiked by 1 person