Visitors, part two

On the very afternoon that her 24-year-old son Dale shared with her that he met a young lady, after never having mentioned any other love interest previously, Leta immediately invited him and the young lady to dinner. Since she worked at a diner six nights a week, and both Dale and the young lady worked during the day, they would have to eat at the diner she managed. She wanted them to come the very next evening, Friday, but as Kathryn was Roman Catholic and Leta wasn’t serving fish the next day, they agreed that Saturday would be the best time.

They weren’t late, but Leta was anxious to meet this special young woman and concerned about the stormy weather. She hovered near the front window. The diner had four other customers—truckers—but Susan the waitress was serving them. Two were finishing the main course and the other two were eating the apple pie Leta had made earlier. She had made the pie specifically because of her own guests, but couldn’t very well hide it from the other customers. So she made three pies. She even had ice cream, but this she could hide.

The wind made a huge gust that shook the small building, and everyone paused a moment, focusing their senses on the sounds of the storm. Susan broke the silence by pouring more coffee. She wasn’t the most competent waitress and a terrible assistant in the kitchen, but she could serve coffee with a smile and had a way of responding to the truck drivers’ inappropriate remarks with a combination of bashfulness and ignorance that kept her protected from further inappropriate attention. She simply baffled their mostly masculine clientele.

“They’re here!” Leta suddenly exclaimed and raced back to the counter. She had nearly forgotten about the chicken she left frying on the stove. With her attention half-cocked toward the door, she turned the meat.

A moment later the door opened, and Dale and a giggling young woman blew in. They stood there for a moment and looked at the place. While Dale had been there previously, this was Kathryn’s first glimpse of such an establishment.

“Close the door!” one of the truckers yelled, for the chill was rushing into the diner like an unwelcome old auntie, kissing each person with her unpleasant breath. Dale quickly shut the door, just as Leta reached them.

Dale was quiet. After all, he had never introduced a young lady to his mother and didn’t really know how.

“Welcome, welcome,” Leta finally said, offering her hand to the young woman. “I’m Mrs. Fields, Dale’s mother. Glad to meet you.”

The young woman took her hand limply and smiled back. “How do you do?” she said confidently.

Suddenly back to his senses, Dale interrupted the greeting by initiating his own introduction. “Ma, this is my mother. I mean, Kate, this is my mother. Ma, this is Kate.”

The women continued sizing each other up, nonplussed by Dale’s confused introduction. Kate had the expression of someone who had previously appraised her new acquaintance and already made the determination of how she would feel. Leta knew that expression; it contained a kind of self-aggrandizing judgment. The young woman obviously came from a family or had friends with negative opinions about Leta’s life. This distressed Leta, but she was determined to overcome the petite young woman’s disapproving preconceptions. Beneath a long coat, Kathryn wore a flowered dress and light nylons. While her face seemed clean of make-up, she did wear a bright red lipstick that made her teeth look whiter than they most likely were.

“Please,” Leta said invitingly. “I have a table ready for you.” She gestured across the small diner to a quite two-top on the opposite wall.

Then she turned her head slightly and shouted, “Susan! Coffee here.”

Leta’s deep, rich voice giving such loud instructions from across the diner tickled Kate, and she laughed. As they spent more time with each other and grew to know more about each other over the subsequent years, Leta would lean the various interpretations for Kate’s variety of laughs, giggles and guffaws.

Susan arrived at the table, just as Dale was pushing in Kate’s seat. Leta was momentarily proud of her son’s manners.

“Would you like anything else to drink?” Susan asked. “A cocktail perhaps?”

This startled Kate. “You have a bar?”

Visitors, part one

Leta looked out the front window anxiously, not because of the rather stormy weather, but because of the guests she was expecting to her diner.

Actually, inclement weather was usually beneficial for the small, rural truck stop. The establishment consisted of several gas pumps, a bar and a small restaurant. Leta managed the restaurant, which was visited primarily by truckers en route from Pennsylvania to Indiana. Most of the truckers would stop to fill their tanks, take a driving break and grab a bite. More often than not, they would linger in the bar longer than what was wise, especially for a driver. The owner, who also managed the bar, would then send them over to the restaurant for some sobering coffee and a meal. At what they had unofficially dubbed “Leta’s Place,” they would fill themselves with coffee and solid food before heading on their way. Leta, the establishment’s owner said in a complimentary way, had a way with drinking men.

During heavy weather, the truckers liked to pause for the weather to pass.

But on this Saturday evening, she didn’t want a large crowd. The weather had been more pleasant the night before, but her son informed her that they could not come on a Friday night. The woman he was bringing was a devout Roman Catholic. She ate only fish on Fridays. While Leta would occasionally serve lake perch, walleye or catfish, this was only when a local would bring over a fresh catch, and never during the winter. Mostly, she served hearty breakfast foods, steak, hamburgers and her special fried chicken. The truckers also raved about her hamburgers, and it wasn’t just because she used good beef right from the farm, but also a special ingredient.

On this particular Saturday night, her son Dale was bringing the young woman he was courting to meet her, and she was slightly anxious. Kathryn was the first woman Dale was introducing her to, and up until then as far as she could fathom, he wasn’t very interested in girls. Since he was 25, Leta figured this young woman must be important. Also, she did not want to make the same first impression with her son’s girl, as she did when she met her future son-in-law Ed two years earlier. Then, she was slightly tipsy and nearly mistook him for someone interested in her. It was an inauspicious beginning to a long relationship that would always be tainted by that first impression.

However, there were differences. Meeting Ed was a surprise; meeting Kathryn was planned. She knew very little about her daughter’s dating habits; whereas, her son Dale kept her regularly informed that he wasn’t interested in anyone, even when she would point out a pretty young woman when they were at a restaurant or shop together.

His habits were so contrary to meeting a young woman that Leta surprised that recent afternoon over coffee when Dale announced that he had met a girl and was courting a young woman he met at a church function he went to with a friend.

“I really like her mom,” Dale stressed. “I want you to meet her.”

To be continued.

The Still, Part Three

Somehow without her even suspecting, Leta’s husband Albert had built a still in their basement. Although she was surprised when he first showed it to her, she knew that both of them were frustrated with Prohibition and the few, but often awful, choices of alcohol available to them. When she examined it, she was impressed with the quality of workmanship he put into constructing it, yet she wondered where he acquired all of the pieces. After all, the contraption was still illegal.

“It wasn’t that hard, sweetheart,” he answered. “Woolworth’s carries most of that stuff. The clerk even told me not to purchase everything all at one time, so it didn’t look suspicious.

“Woolworth’s? But they knew us there!” she protested.

“Not the one we go to. I went to another. Jesus, Leta, I have some sense.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

“And I got a couple of pieces from Paulie,” Albert continued. “You remember how his wife wouldn’t let him keep one.”

“Just like Florence did with Aaron,” she added. By this time, she had begun to examine the still with her hands, checking the security of the system.

“Yep, but I did get a few of the jars from Aaron.”

She looked at her husband over her shoulder. “So my brother knows?”

“Yes,” Albert answered, “and he offered a couple of tips.”

“Lord, I hope you didn’t listen to him,” she said. “His own attempts were barely drinkable, even before Florence shut him down. What about ventilation—the smoke from the fire?”

“Look real close at that grill,” he suggested, and she did.

“Well, I’ll be—“ she started. “It’s electric.”

“Yep,” Albert answered.

Leta stepped away from the contraption and looked at him with her arms akimbo.

“We’re going to have to test it out first,” she declared. “I don’t want the reputation of passing around lousy liquor.”

Albert’s face lit up. “Does this mean what I think it means?” he queried.

“And what do you think it means?” she teased.

“That you approve?”

“Yes, I approve,” she laughed.

He ran to her, threw his arms around her and lifted her into the air.

“Yessiree, we’re going to make our own bathtub gin!” he exclaimed with excitement.

And that they did. Their first few attempts were rather dismal, but over the period of only a few weeks, Leta put her wits to good use and before long, they were making a gin that went down smoothly on its own, and was quite refreshing with tonic and a bit of lime. After trials with a select sextet of friends and relatives, they began to share with others in their personal circles. In a few months, it had turned into a little moneymaking enterprise for their family.

The Still, Part Two

Having been led blindfolded through the house and into the basement, Leta followed her husband Albert’s instructions and opened her eyes, quickly adjusting to the dim light given by the bare hanging bulb beside her.

“Oh my!” she gasped and grabbed Albert’s hand.

Three feet in front of her was a still.

Almost instinctively, Leta looked over her shoulder to be sure they hadn’t been followed. After all, a still to make alcohol of any kind was illegal, and one in their basement came with a number of dangers.

Once she felt safe, she released Albert’s hand and stepped gingerly toward the metal contraption.

He seemed to be holding his breath, giving her a few moments to take it all in.

“Well, darlin’, what do you think?” he finally asked.

“How in the world…?” she stammered.

“We talked about it,” Albert answered. “You said—“

“—I know,” she interrupted, “but I never thought….”

She knew he had been involved in something in their basement all week, but she didn’t think much of that. Since they had no shed, it was the only place he had to be alone, and men, she knew, needed some personal domain to keep tools and tinker with projects and whatnot. For women, it was the kitchen. Because they liked to be together, Albert occasionally would work on a project at the kitchen table, but usually Vivian was busy with homework there, where could be near her mother. So Albert needed some workspace of his own.

However, she had no idea that he was constructing a still for making their own alcohol, even though they were both tired of what had been available and was usually offered to them. This alcohol was little more than homemade moonshine that tore at their innards. For her friends, she would make wine from the wine blocks, but neither Albert nor she much cared for it. Occasionally, they would get rum or go to a speakeasy, but both of those options were costly, but with two children to feed and a household to maintain, they couldn’t afford those options more than once a month. Besides, there were frequent arrests.

She circled the still the way she did her nine-year-old son when he had obviously been in some mischief but was reluctant to tell her. At the center of the multi-pieced contraption was a large tin canister with a funnel soldered to the top. It sat on a small barbeque grill. From the top of the funnel a copper tube extended into a barrel sitting on a small platform, and from the barrel one tube snaked into a metal bucket and another into an old pickle jar. Beside it on a new shelf he had installed were a collection of clay containers and Mason jars.

“Where did you get all this?” she inquired.

To be continued…

The Still, Part One

"Where are you taking me?" Leta questioned, as Albert seemed to be guiding her from their small living room through the house.

“Just keep your eyes closed,” he answered, which she did.

“If I trip and fall….” she added.

“You won’t,” he replied in a slight singsong sort of voice. “I’ve got you.”

“Well, okay,” she said, “as long as this doesn’t take too long. I have to get supper on the table. “You know how Dale gets when he doesn’t eat on a regular schedule.”

“He’s out playing with his friends,” her husband stated. “He won’t notice the time. Besides, he can have a pickle to tide him over.”

Their nine-year-old son had recently begun to crave pickles. He could eat up to ten at one sitting and not, he claimed whenever he did so, ruin his supper. If he did return home hungry as a hobo, she could tide him over for a short while with a couple of pickles.

“We’re at steps,” Albert said, moving more slowly. “Be careful.”

“You’re taking me into the basement?” Leta questioned, as she reached up her hands to feel the doorway.

“Yes. Now keep your eyes closed.”

“I am. I am.”

“That’s my good girl.”

He was using his smooth voice, like a fresh, warm glass of milk right from the cow, as her mother would say.

The steps were pretty rickety. Little more than wood planks on a frame. And narrow.

“Albert,” Leta cautioned, “be careful.”

He had moved in front of her and was stepping down the stairs backwards. This unnerved her. What if he missed a step?

“I am. And—“

“—I know, don’t open my eyes,” she finished. She was using her left hand to guide herself down, for there was nothing on the right side. Fortunately, she didn’t like clutter, so there were not obstacles on the narrow stairs for either to trip over. Her friend Millie kept all matter of household articles on her narrow basement stairs. Leta always thought that more than a hazard, it showed a lack of household maintenance.

After they reached the bottom of the steps, he guided her on the boards covering the dirt floor through the large room that ran both the length and width of their home.

Then they stopped.

“Okay,” Albert said, just after releasing his guiding hand from her elbow, “you can open your eyes now.”

To be continued.