Growing up in Louisa – Lizzie
Weekly feature . . . by Mike Coburn
Lizzie Shannon lived with her sister in the little one-story house across from my Great-grandmother’s which I called home. I suspect Lizzie’s address wasn’t on Clay Street like mine because their house faced Franklin. The front door was never used as far as I knew in all those years I lived across the street. I did see the door from the inside once, but never approached it from the outside. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. What I do know is a side door that faced Clay Street was the entrance into the kitchen, which I guess was the back of the house, and was the one always used. The kitchen was a kind of ‘pass-through’ room with another back door opposite that led out to a small back yard. Another inside door that took you into a dining room. This room opened to the front room that she called the parlor. If I remember right, bedrooms were off to the right, but I never saw those.
The two sisters were private people that seldom talked much that I heard. In fact, Lizzie is the only one that I ever remember saying anything. Usually that was to give me instruction or to ask about something she figured I might know about, or sometimes just to gripe. Mostly gripe, I think, but don’t get me wrong, it was the new generations she didn’t care for. She was certainly nice enough to me. In fact, she was kind to me. I know she liked me better than the others in the neighborhood by just the way she looked at them. She sometimes smiled at me, but often just glared at others. My cousin George stayed clear of her and it was wise he did. She could be a card sometimes.
In the summer she’d have me come over and mow, but she would always let the grass get so high that mowing was a hard job. I’d have to use a sickle first just to make a path. That old reel push-mower I had would get hung up in the weeds until the blades just plain froze and locked up. Then I’d have to stop, push the reel in reverse, and pull the grass out to free the blades to allow it to spin again. What should have taken an hour or so sometimes took most of the day. She paid me fifty cents, which I guess was fair, but I always felt a little cheated. If it had been a regular yard without so much weeding, fifty cents would be good, but I thought I earned a little more than that considering the trouble.
Working to clear, or weed the fence was a real problem. It had cast-iron posts with woven, or twisted wire running between the posts. It had a pretty old-fashioned design, I remember, but it was perfect for vines to climb and cover with leaves. Some places you couldn’t see the fence. You’d just assume it was there. Some was likely to be poison ivy, but that stuff doesn’t bother me. Others would have suffered. Well, anyway, she’d have me go along with hand-clippers and cut the bottom of the vines and then try to pull them out. Most of the time the vines were wrapped so tight you couldn’t pull them out. It would have been better just to set fire and then go knock the ashes down. She wouldn’t have that. I reckon she was right. We’d have to call the fire truck if it got out of hand. I used my pocket knife to cut the vines in several placed until they could be pulled out.
I had to carry the piles of weeds out back to where she burned trash. I never burned any of it because she would wait until it dried out and had other things to burn with it. Suited me just fine. When she got to the place she was ready to pay me, she’d take out this little black coin purse and unsnap it, reach in and get two quarters. In spite of what I said before, those were sweet quarters. Why I could go to the movies twice, that is, if I didn’t buy popcorn.
I remember one time she asked me to come in the kitchen, so I did. She seemed so happy that day and proud. She’d just made a batch of cookies so she sat me down and gave me a plate with two hot, delightful creations. Her sister was there, too, but I still can’t remember her name. She seemed nice enough, but I don’t remember her talking.
When I finished the cookies she took me into the dining room and let me look through the doorway into her parlor. She told me she never let children in there because this was her good furniture and she wanted it to stay just so. She pointed out that the chairs were stuffed with real horse hair. Why it didn’t look like horse hair, but I guess she knew what she was talking about because she went on to tell me that chairs that were like that were often real hard. She said that kids trying to sit on one would slip right off and fall in the floor. That sounded like fun to me. I envisioned it being something like a slickly-slide.
I remember that it was dark in there, but not only because the room faced north. You see, she had all the draped windows covered so tight that sunlight wouldn’t come in and fade the colors of her rugs and upholstery. She had what looked like the old kerosene lamps like I saw regularly in cowboy movies. We had some, too, as a backup for when the power was out, but these lamps were much fancier. They had little prisms hanging down and fringe, too. Maybe that’s why I like to have some Victorian stuff around even now. My living room is much the same style, but lighter and with lots of oil paintings.
Lizzie and her sister had a brother, too. I saw him fairly regularly about town, but can’t say I knew him in any way. In fact, I didn’t even know his name until recently. I knew his house, though. That was just across the tracks from the Louisa Inn where I lived for a time. The house had a fancy garden and a sunroom that I remember either Joan Carol or Betty Hager telling me they would visit for tea. I wasn’t ever invited for tea, but then a shirtless, shoeless, little dirty boy wouldn’t have known how to hold his pinky out. I don’t mean to sound snooty, but merely wanted to point out I was pretty far removed from ‘polite’ society. I think I could pull off a visit today, but it’s taken a lot of ‘house-breaking,’ so to speak.
I was thumbing through the ‘Old Louisa’ history book that J. Lynn See put together, when I saw a picture that had a caption “Lizzie Shannon near the intersection of Lady Washington and Franklin.” I looked at it closely and recognized the house in the background as the one that ‘Creep’ Chandler’s parents lived in when I was growing up. The picture showed a horse-drawn buggy making a U-turn on Lady Washington. She had a kid riding with her but I couldn’t make out who that was. I wasn’t me. She was older when I knew her and she didn’t have a horse or buggy, either. There’s no doubt I would have ridden with her if I’d gotten the chance. I was always open to riding somewhere. The picture does go to prove we weren’t that far from the earlier generations that only understood transportation by horse. Frankly, I can’t imagine me trying to hitch one up.
Well, I liked Lizzie Shannon. I don’t think she had loads of friends because I really don’t remember people visiting her. The grocery boys would bring food now and again, and I’d pop over, but otherwise I reckon she just sat there with her sister. Both would have passed away after I left town, so I don’t know the end of it, except to say it was real nice knowing her. Maybe someone will say that about me some day.
