A Leader?

THE YELLOW DOOR

 

Things are changing around the single home division we live in. Everybody knows everybody. We have two schools, grammar and high. They sit side by side near our little lake that freezes in the winter and in summer we can dangle our lines in for small fish. Sometimes they are so small we let them go. Once I caught a frog and my daddy couldn't get the hook out of its leg. He had no choice at all except throw the frog and the hook back in the lake.

 

Daddy is a mailman. He never misses his route unless he is very sick or the weather is too much for any man, woman or child to go walking.  Momma is a good cook and she can paint walls, furniture, pretty pictures. I love to help her or just sit and watch the magic she makes.
         
When school let out for the summer of 1968, Dad came back from his route, rumpled, tired, with news of what he learned. The empty dressmaking shop, next to the empty barber shop, had a big sign in the window. He showed Momma and me the pamphlet he had taken from a table inside.  'Coming to Kirksville–Charles Lansing Lmt. Brick row houses to be built along Maine St. Construction begins August 1, 1968. Come in and talk to us, see our model plans, get the best locations.'

 

I could see Momma's face turn all colors. She said loud and clear, 'I'd rather die than move away from here.' Daddy sat at the dinner table, praised her meat loaf, the crispy fried onions, kissed the back of her neck, and managed to drink two large glasses of iced tea. Sunday we three went to look at the drawings of the row houses that were available, if one wants a change in lifestyle and has a customer who wants to buy our house. It took a long time but the Mandorf's showed up eventually and a bargain was struck.

 

Momma wouldn't talk to Daddy or me. She walked around the house, around the block, looking like a washed out ghost. Soon it got too cold to walk around so we stayed inside. I helped collect cardboard boxesfor moving. Momma carefully put her paints and canvases in flat cartons, turned the rest over to Daddy who had a heck of a lot to handle even after he gave so much furniture, odds and ends to Good Will. His retirement fund from the Post Office helped. Every Saturday we rode over to see how our block of houses was coming along. The grass lawn in front was tiny but Momma bought small sections of a picket fence and hammered them into the dry sod. She hated our concrete porch with a steel railing. It was drab, colorless until she painted it a shiny bright green. New neighbors complained. That didn't bother her. In a few weeks other porches were green all shades of green which took away our 'oneness. '

 

As spring neared, Momma asked noone and decided to paint our white door, a sunny yellow. Neigbors rang our bell, a few threw eggs at our door. But did Momma get upset, angry, no? She just waited until other doors were yellow, all pretty shades of yellow.

 

What was left for her? Momma made orange polka dots on our door and was very pleased when the editor of House and Garden stopped by, discussed our row houses and ran a two page article, complete with Momma and her paint brush on the cover.