Old Ladies - Hazel

The first thing I should mention about Hazel is, I don’t remember her last name. But Hazel was larger than life, like a few other people who go by just one name. She was a big woman, bony and bold, with a gravelly, deep voice like nothing I’d ever heard.

Hazel lived in Decatur and had her own business, a big store where she taught decoupage classes and sold decoupage supplies, including paints of every color and the most amazing papers. There was a big craft table in the middle of the store where friends would gather and spend hours working on projects, talking, laughing, sharing snacks and tips. I spent many happy hours there one summer learning the finicky and patient art of decoupage, which involves carefully cutting out pictures using an exacto knife on a glass plate, gluing them onto an object you wish to decorate, and then applying many, many coats of finish with sanding in between to create a perfectly smooth finish. Hazel was never too busy to suggest an idea for color or pattern, to help with a tricky bit of cutting or gluing, or to join her customers at the craft table. 

Hazel might have been old to my 12-year-old eyes, but she still lived with her mother. Hazel’s mother gave her an enormous diamond ring, a family heirloom, and told her, “You might was well have this while you’re young enough to enjoy it.” Which I found funny at the time, considering Hazel was in her 70’s. Now it doesn’t seem quite so funny. Hazel was like a young bride showing off her engagement ring, flashing that diamond at every opportunity. She never took it off, even while immersed in some messy decoupaging.

I don’t remember ever seeing Hazel outside of her shop, and I don’t know how she and my grandmother became friends. Most of my grandmother’s friends were in the library business at some point or another, but I’m not sure Hazel was in that category. Hazel was one of the first women I met who ran her own business. In the world I knew, of librarians and teachers and secretaries, she made independent entrepreneur look easy.

Old Ladies - Wyllma

Wyllma Phillips was a southern gentlewoman, a tiny little sprout of a woman with pure white hair, oversized dentures, and a voice as sweet as tupelo honey. She lived in one of those small apartment complexes that proliferate in small towns and older neighborhoods, just a few units tucked in between single family houses. Her apartment was always spotlessly clean, and if I remember correctly there were doilies. Also cookbooks. Cookbooks were like porn to Wyllma; she had colorful hardbound ones on the coffee table and a shelf of them next to the couch. She loved to cook, loved to have friends over, loved to feed people. Her tiny apartment kitchen had almost no counter space; I don’t know how she made more than a boiled egg in there. She drove a beige VW Bug, and I can remember driving with her to the grocery store to get some ingredients for another one of her feasts.

When my parents were first divorced and we abandoned our house in Celina to move to Denton, we stayed in Wyllma’s apartment for a few nights. She was out of town visiting one of her two daughters. She had a Victorian bedstead that was so high off the ground you needed a step stool to climb up into it. She had one, of course, with a floral needlepoint pattern on it. 

There were two bedrooms in Wyllma’s house, and the back bedroom was sort of her den. There was a small square TV, what we used to call a portable TV, a daybed, magazines, some games. This was where she sprawled out, relaxed, got casual. For some reason the triangle peg game became an obsession for us. I would come over to her place and we would spend hours working out the pattern until we could solve it every time. (Unfortunately, I have since forgotten the pattern and cannot amaze my kids with my genius.)

I didn’t know until years later that Wyllma had once been married to a man who was brutally abusive. How she extricated herself, raised her children and supported herself at a time when southern gentlewomen were supposed to be nothing more than decorative, I’ll never know. I’m sure there were some fascinating stories behind her gentle façade, but I didn’t know I was supposed to ask the questions until long after she was gone.

Old Ladies - Dorothy

My grandmother was the sort of old lady who had a cadre of friends, old ladies who became part of my extended family, a loose, warm network of love at a time when my own immediate family was crumbling. Each of them has long since departed, but I can still see their faces and hear their voices as though I had just walked out the door after a visit to grab up my Schwinn and pedal home.

My favorite old lady was Dorothy Thomas. Dorothy was my grandmother’s best friend. They travelled together, which says something about Dorothy already, because my grandmother could be pretty much impossible under the stress of travelling. Dorothy was the kind of person who took a lot of pictures on her trips, and then invited all her friends over for a slide show when she got home. She had this projector with a slide carousel. I loved Dorothy, but I hated the slides, mostly because they were bad pictures of cool places I’d never been, our family vacations consisting exclusively of visits to the family farm in Oklahoma.

Dorothy lived in an enormous (to me) old house. Two stories, big trees, endless rooms, even servant’s quarters off the kitchen. She’d inherited it from some relative; retired librarians don’t generally own mansions. I loved her house. It was so different from all the tidy little one-story brick houses we’d always lived in. She had Sub-Zero appliances in the kitchen, and the freezer was always full of ice cream. Upstairs was a no-man’s land; rooms that no one ever went into, probably stuffed full of junk.

Dorothy always named her car, and it was always some big square ugly American car of a particularly vile color which she probably bought cheap and used. When her car was feeling cranky about starting, she would call it by name and give it a little pep talk. She also tended to rescue cats. But she always found them homes, so she wasn’t one of those people with dozens of cats underfoot. I really admire that, because I can NEVER talk anyone into taking a stray animal. In my experience, once you rescue a cat, it’s yours forever. Obviously I’m not a good salesperson.

Kids from all over the neighborhood gravitated towards Dorothy’s house. She never married or had kids of her own, but she had a way of relating to kids because she still was one at heart. There was always a jigsaw puzzle going on a card table in the living room, interesting paperback books to read, treats to eat, an enormous magnolia with branches sticking out straight like the spokes of a wheel in the backyard, perfect for climbing, and a kitten somewhere. The kids just found her. 

When I was about 10, my sister, my grandmother, Dorothy and I set out in Dorothy’s big green car for Colorado, ultimate destination – my cousin’s cabin in Alma. One of the best moments of the trip was when Dorothy spied a bluebird on a fence rail somewhere in western Colorado. She slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder. Other cars were streaming past so she had to wait for them to clear. She pulled out a map and studied it seriously.

“We are now going to look at the map like very indecisive Texans,” she intoned piously. After the cars cleared, she put it in reverse and went back to look at the bluebird.

“We are now going to go backwards like very decisive Texans,” she added cheerfully.

Somewhere in a hotel room in Colorado, my grandmother kind of lost it. She was one of those people who was calm, cool, and collected until suddenly she wasn’t. One little aggravation too many got to her and she went on a crying jag, lying on one of the hotel beds and sobbing. Dorothy was unfazed, just sat next to her, rubbing her shoulder gently and cooing softly to her until she calmed down. To me that was just grandmother being the way she was, but my sister, who had more rigid views about normal, was pretty freaked out by the whole thing.

Dorothy didn’t outlive my grandmother. When I was 18, I left home to join the Army, and I never saw her again. I sometimes wonder what happened to her magnificent old house in Denton, if the magnolia is still there, if there’s still Blue Bell in that freezer. I hope so.

Turns out there’s a scholarship at the University of Texas Department of Library and Information Sciences named after Dorothy. It’s nice to know that somebody besides me remembers her.