GRANNY'S BEST PAL

Mrs. Breck, small, extrovert, cheery, of good, singing voice, was
the only street inhabitant besides Aunt M., three blocks up, who could,
and would, open our door and walk in without waiting to be asked. She
was my Granny's best pal. Mornings, she would hurdle our back fence for
morning tea--3 cups and 3 biscuits-- and gossip. Afternoons, my Granny
would painfully scale the back fence for afternoon tea--3 = 3--and more
gossip.

Mrs. Breck kept Granny in touch with or informed about local gossip and
trivia or, to be more precise: Who of my Granny's contemporaries had
just recently died. She always shouted a brisk greeting or opening
remark: "Aw Granny, ken who;s deid?" (Tr. "Oh Gran, do you know who has
just died?")

Mrs. Breck did not realize that, everyday, she was a constant and
crushing reminder to Granny of Granny's own mortality and her being,
statistically, not too far away from death. She was also an emissary of
a vague, downtown people, called "they." "'They' say that...." "'They'
are all talking about...." "'They' tell me there's a lot of that going
about."

After her windowhood (and after her son, Tim, got married), Mrs. Breck
got her unmarried brother-in-law, Bobby, to move in as lodger, to cut
grass and do chores.

Life became comfortable with the extra income, although Mrs. Breck
still rose at 5 am daily to clean the local, elementary school. Bobby
was a quiet, homey-type guy, who lavished "favorite uncle"-type
presents on his many nieces and grandnieces, etc. But he also may have
been a bit, sexually repressed, for his taste in literature ran to
lurid, sexy Mickey Spillane -, Jacqueline Suzanne - type,
railway-station-stall mush like "The Blonde Wore Pink" or "Naked
Quarry."

Most these books finished up on my parent's night-time, bedside table
and, ineveitably, landed right into my very own hands. I can still
remember the lilting, sensuous prose "a hot veil of passion passed over
his head as he slid his hand along her silken thighs." I can also
remember being slightly disappointed in my parents, for their
succombing to such stuff.

But, for such books, I was also always grateful. Next to the big,
illustrated, 20-years old, medical volume, such books were the only,
convenient source of info on "what, exactly, people had and what,
exactly, for."