Mrs. Armstrong

The first time I met her, I was 5 years old. We'd just moved up on the hill in a pretty white house next door to my Grandma and Grandpa Hall.

One day, in the winter, Libby went to visit Mrs. Armstrong. I don't remember why. She lived about a mile from our house, on up the hill, on up past the house we would later be living in. That is the house I called home through most of my years, the backdrop for every story. But that day, I don't remember noticing the house.

I remember the cold, and the deep snow and the big round dumpling of a woman who let us into her house and gave us candy. I remember a little cup of hard round cinnamon candies. They were frosty-looking, like the day and had tiny stripes of red around them.

I remember being back in our own kitchen with the little cupfull of candies. I was talking a mile a minute and Dad said, "you talk like a loose goose." I had no idea what that meant -- except I was talking too much. Another thing, he said at some time was that I talked like a squeaky hinge, loose at both ends. I'm glad he had ways of putting things. I can't quite recall one "kids should be quiet" phrase. It had something do with a "flibbergidget in the middle".

But whatever he said, I probably paid no mind to it. He just said things in passing and had no staying power. Mom could give him a look and he'd find other things to keep him busy.

He was a little fellow, thin and wiry. Mrs. Armstrong's husband was also a tiny fellow. Dad liked kids, though. Mr. Armstrong did not. I remember this bad vibe coming from the corner where he sat in the dark, wishing we'd go home. Mrs. Armstrong liked having us there. She showed me her nicknacks, as she would, in later times, show me her flower garden. She showed me things she made, a block made of cloth and a printed material with certain parts of the picture padded to stand out.

In later years, she'd tell me things, like how kids see things through "rose colored glasses." And she told me I should be very kind to my father because when he left this world, the next one was not going to be a good place for him. She obviously thought he was going to hell for his drinking.

We walked everywhere we went and so did Mrs. Armstrong. (I never saw Mr. Armstrong out of the house and yard). One day, we had visitors, one of my older brothers. He had a car and was driving us home from town. We saw Mrs. Armstrong up ahead, so my brother slowed down and asked her if she wanted a ride home. She said, "No thank you just the same, I'm in a hurry."

She wore long dresses, about midway down from her knee to her ankle, and always wore a full apron over that. She'd wear brogans. She wore glasses and would look over top of them when she looked at you. I remember wondering why. Mom would tilt her head back and look through the bottom part of her glasses at you if she really had to see you, to see if you'd gotten your hair combed and that sort of thing.

The main thing I remember about Mrs. Armstrong was her buttermilk candy. You couldn't hardly eat the stuff, but that never stopped us kids from hoping she'd give us a bit of it when we went to call. We'd pick flowers and take them to her. Well, that's what kids did. They wanted something to give to someone and knew, (by instinct?) that when you went calling, you were to bring something. And she'd give us candy she'd made out of buttermilk.

Snapshot: A big round woman in brogans and a straw hat, with flowers in one hand and buttermilk candy in the other. In the background is a thin, angry man with an artificial leg, unsmiling to offset her beaming good humor. Her yard is completely surrounded in flowers, and bit of grass in the middle is deep green and the softest grass on the hill. "What you do is, you lay down up here at the top and then just roll." And she laughed.