Mary Crabtree - Chapter 6

Even though our house was in the country, it was a transitional community. The old farms had been broken up and not all of the lots had been sold. A lot of older homes already occupied lots scattered here and there. Lots were larger than city lots, maybe ¼ to ½ of an acre. The roads were tarred, there were no sidewalks, and the leafy elms leaned out over the roads, lending shade and beauty. Ten years after we moved here, all the elms had to be cut down because of Dutch elm disease.
On one side of us lived an older couple who were Mennonites. We thought they were nice, but very strange. They had an old house covered in brown shakes, hidden behind many shrubs and pine trees. It looked like it belonged in Appalachia. They, “Aunt Annie” and “Uncle Kenny” could not cut their hair or have a TV, or listen to the radio. Their children were already grown and lived away. They had a huge garden in their back yard and canned their own vegetables. Uncle Kenny worked for the railroad. Sometimes Aunt Annie would invite us girls in to complete sewing projects and listen to religious lessons. For Halloween they gave out pumpkin cookies which we tried to trade off for candy until we found out how delicious they were. They raised a hedge against our back yard which allowed them pretty much total relief from the Taylor backyard mayhem.
On the other side of us was a tiny house that one could really only call a shack. It had been built at the back of a narrow, wet lot, so it was right next to our back yard. In this house lived a woman from our nightmares, Mrs. Crabtree.
Mrs. Crabtree definitely smoked and she drank, a lot. She never cut the grass in her front yard, and she would not let anyone else cut it either. Of course, she only had a front yard, so it gave the appearance that we lived next door to a vacant lot.
We really were scared of her, but we cut across her yard so many times to visit friends on her other side that we wore a path through the tall grasses. Usually the grasses were higher than our heads if we scrunched down a little.
Mrs. Crabtree was not sociable. She hardly ever left her house, that I remember, but always took deliveries, which must have cost a pretty penny, because we did not have many stores nearby. I guess once in a while she went somewhere in a cab.
We did see Mary Crabtree sometimes though, because living next door to her was sort of like living next door to a geyser. Periodically she would “go off”. She would stand in her doorway with her flyaway head of dull ginger and gray hair, a cigarette in her hand or hanging from her bottom lip. She wore a full-length white slip for these occasions and she would start lecturing the neighborhood. She would sometimes spend half an hour or forty-five minutes reaming out everyone for all the injuries done to her since the last time she “went off”. Although by daylight we made fun of her, when the sun went down we weren’t so brave and we were most often the subjects of her tirades. I’m sure she rued the day we arrived next door. She didn’t know our names but she yelled at each of us individually, identifying us by our misdeeds. Many a dusk caught us all sticking pretty close to Mom and Dad and keeping a real, low profile while Mary did her thing. It never turned into one of those sweet stories where a child softens the grief and pain of an older person’s life.
Once a trio of us was cutting across Mrs. Crabtree’s front yard through the tall weeds when she jumped out of her door and yelled at us up close and personal. We turned tail and ran. After that we avoided her yard. Even as teenagers, when we played Hide and Seek in every other yard in the neighborhood, we avoided Mrs. Crabtree’s yard so as not to touch her off.
Dad told us, when he thought we were old enough to understand, that Mary Crabtree was a WAC in WW II. He told us that she had a metal plate in her head. She drank to ease her pain and she yelled because she was so angry that when she got drunk, she finally let it all out. Dad sometimes did errands for her and tried to remind her that we did not break her windows on purpose, or yell just to ruin her naps (which was true because we were too scared of her). When she eventually got seriously ill, long after I was gone from the house, Dad drove her to the VA hospital where she lived out her days.
Mary Crabtree probably had nothing to do with my smoking addiction. She, actually, should have been a great smoking deterrent.