Up Close and Personal
By
Gerry Niskern
How interesting is your neighborhood? Let me tell you about the first one I lived in here in Phoenix when my parents moved us to Arizona in August of 1942.
Back before cell phones, television and the internet that keeps people inside their homes, things were different. If anything happened on your street, everyone saw it.
I remember on one of our first days in Phoenix hearing my mother gasp as she glanced out the front window. “Well, I never! I can’t believe my eyes. There’s a woman out on the front walk getting her newspaper, in her nightgown! And, oh my Lord, she’s smoking a cigarette!”
I’m sure there were plenty of female smokers back in the little Eastern town we came from, they just didn’t dare do it in public. Later that morning I got a good look at, Mrs. Beeson, our outrageous next door neighbor. Her thick ivory colored hair was pulled up into a bun. Olive skin, without a wrinkle, covered high cheekbones that framed deep cinnamon brown eyes. She was heavy, but strong and broad shouldered too. Her three hundred pound body was covered with a shapeless black polka dotted dress.
What fascinated me most was her cigarette that dangled by the barest tip from her lips. As she described the other families in the neighborhood and what branch of the service their sons were in, the Lucky Strikes never fell. The ashes grew longer and longer, probably about an inch I guessed. Just when I thought they would fall down on poor, tiny Mr. T, she would flick them off.
Mr. T. was her little Chihuahua dog who slept serenely on her high, firm, ample bosom. They didn’t have underwire bras in those days and believe me, she didn’t need one. She never bothered steadying him with her other hand.
As the days of the war dragged slowly by, Mrs. Beeson seemed to sense when the mailman had delivered another V-mail from one of mom’s younger brothers who were serving overseas. The doorbell would ring. Mom always quickly dried her eyes and opened the door to our rotund friend. “Where can I put my little but” were invariably the first words out of her mouth. Mom blushed, I giggled and sent me to the kitchen for an ashtray.
Soon they were matching story for story about mom’s brothers or Mrs. Beeson’s sons. The war was pushed into the distance for a little while and mom was soon smiling again. “Come home with me, honey. I want you to run to the drugstore to see if they got in any smokes.” As I waited on her porch for the money I remember looking at the small white banner hanging her front window. On it were two gold stars.