The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Lucky bamboo (Dracaena sanderiana) looks like bamboo, with its woody, segmented stalk and bright green leaves, but it’s not invasive. A houseplant often grown in water, its genus name (Dracaena) comes from a Greek word that means “female dragon,” so-called because of its paradoxical association with independent strength and compliance. (The flexible stems of lucky bamboo are often bent into intricate shapes.) In China, this plant goes by the name fu gwey: fu, for luck and fortune; gwey, for power and honor. The number of stalks of fu gwey suggest different kinds of luck: three for happiness and long life; five for wealth; seven for good health. Groups of stems (three times three stems; three times five; three times seven) are thought to bring happiness, wealth, and health several times over. Another lucky thing about this plant: it requires almost no care at all. If you’re growing it in water, though, be sure to replace the water every few days to reduce algae growth.

  Morning glories (Ipomoea) in your garden are said to bring you peace and happiness—and guaranteed to bring a smile when you see them. If you put morning glory seeds under your pillow, your sleep will be restful and free of bad dreams. The Aztecs believed that the plant was a way of connecting with the Sun God; carrying the seeds would bring great good fortune. In voodoo tradition, the root of one plant in this genus, jalap (Ipomoea jalapa), is reputed to bring good luck in anything relating to money, but especially in gambling—and flirting. Carry the woody tuber in your pocket or attach it to a chain or ribbon and wear it as an amulet.

  Buckeye (Aesculus glabra) nuts—dried, oiled, polished—are also carried in the pocket or worn as an amulet. The buckeye tree is a relative of the chestnut and the nut is the same rich, mellow brown, but don’t try to eat it. (It will make you sick.) Like the jalap root, the buckeye was thought to attract good fortune in the form of money—and the ladies. (Miss Rogers said that she wouldn’t go into that part of it in her talk, but if you’re interested, drop in at the library and she can show you where to look that up.)

  Sunflower (Helianthus annuus). If you have planted sunflowers around your house or in your backyard, you are doubly lucky. Those large, sunny yellow flowers are guaranteed to brighten your day and bring you good fortune. At the same time, the tall, sturdy plants will serve as a shield to protect your home from bad luck. Other traditions: Pick a sunflower at sunset, wear it in your buttonhole the next day, and you’ll have good luck all day long. Sleep with a sunflower under your pillow; before sunset the next day, you will learn a truth you are seeking.

  Persimmons, peaches, oranges, and pomegranates. Sometimes called the “four fruits of good fortune,” each of these symbolizes a different aspect of good luck. Persimmons represent friendship, happiness, and a smooth path through life. (In Korea, a persimmon can also scare away a tiger—although Miss Rogers does not recommend that you try this.) The peach symbolizes contentment in marriage and longevity. The orange stands for prosperity and financial success. The pomegranate (which has a great many seeds) represents good fortune through many children. Keep a bowl of these four fruits in your home and eat one every day, and you will certainly have good fortune.

  Miss Rogers ended her talk by saying that it is all well and good to trust in luck, and it certainly won’t hurt to have a four-leaf clover in your shoe, a sunflower in your buttonhole, morning glories on your fence, and a persimmon, a peach, an orange, and a pomegranate in a bowl on your table. But she has more confidence in the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

  The Dahlias thanked Miss Rogers for another informative talk and then adjourned for cookies and punch, provided by Refreshment Committee members Ophelia Snow and Earlynne Biddle. Earlynne says that several people asked her for her persimmon cookie recipe. If you’re one of them, here it is.

  EARLYNNE BIDDLE’S PERSIMMON COOKIES

  1 cup persimmon pulp* (about 2 to 3 ripe persimmons)

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 cup sugar

  ½ cup butter, at room temperature

  1 egg, beaten

  2 cups flour

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon ground cloves

  ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

  ½ teaspoon powdered ginger

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 cup chopped pecans, walnuts, or what have you

  1 cup raisins

  Preheat the oven to 375 °F. In a large mixing bowl, beat the persimmon pulp, soda, sugar, and butter until creamy. Gently stir the beaten egg into the persimmon mixture, along with flour, spices, salt, nuts, and raisins. Using a teaspoon, drop dough on a greased baking sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. Makes about 3 dozen.

  *Earlynne says persimmons are very sharp-tasting unless they are dead ripe and soft, but please don’t leave them on the ground to get that way, or the raccoons and possums will have a feast and you’ll come up empty-handed. Bring the persimmons in, wash them, and let them ripen in a paper bag (not in your icebox) until they’re squishy. Peel them, take out the seeds and chop, then put them in a big bowl and whack them with your potato masher. After that you can put them through a potato ricer or a food mill and you’ll end up with perfect persimmon pulp. Or, if you’ve got a mesh laundry bag (Earlynne got hers from the Sears and Roebuck catalog), put your peeled, seeded persimmons in the bag and squeeze. However you do it, clean up afterward. Persimmon pulp dries sticky. Earlynne says it is the very worst glue you’ve seen in all your life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BESSIE GOES TO THE FIVE AND DIME

  About the time that Liz began working on her garden column, Bessie Bloodworth (freshly shampooed, cut, curled, and combed out) had just left the Beauty Bower and was on her way to do some shopping.

  The previous year, Bessie had served on the Bridge Club’s Calendar Committee with Mrs. Whitworth, and she was tempted to make a quick detour over to Peachtree Street and tell that poor woman how distressed she had been to learn that her husband had been kidnapped. It would certainly be the courteous thing to do, but Bessie reluctantly decided against it. Mrs. Whitworth was probably pacing the floor and biting her fingernails, waiting for the kidnappers to call about the ransom. Bessie certainly hoped that her telephone was working.

  Anyway, the courthouse clock said it was after eleven. The residents at the Manor—the Magnolia Manor, the genteel boarding house for elderly ladies that Bessie owned and managed—had given her their Monday list of things to pick up. She had better get started or she wouldn’t get home in time for lunch.

  Bessie was headed for the Five and Dime, on the south side of the courthouse square. On her list: three yards of narrow cream-colored lace to trim the pink cotton nightie Leticia Wiggens was making; a card of small brass safety pins for Miss Rogers; a Charm-Kurl Permanent Wave Kit for Maxine Bechtel; and a bar of Lifebuoy soap for Mrs. Sedalius, who had shown Bessie a magazine ad so she would be sure to get the right brand: “I value my daintiness too much to ever take a chance with BO, so naturally I use Lifebuoy!”

  None of Bessie’s ladies were what you might call well-off (in fact, Maxine was two months behind on her board bill), and they all cut corners where they could. Most folks had to do that these days, especially older ladies who had no children to take care of them. Everybody at the Manor was on pins and needles to see what President Roosevelt was going to do about getting them an old-age pension. Leticia even went so far as to declare that if FDR was on the ballot in 1936, she wouldn’t vote for him unless he got a pension bill through Congress. Most agreed that aid for the elderly was sorely needed, but some accused Mr. Roosevelt of getting his idea—social security, it was called—from Frances Perkins, his secretary of labor, and said that it was one of the soft-headed notions you got when you made the mistake of installing a woman on the president’s cabinet. Bessie herself was a staunch supporter of Louisiana’s senator Huey Long, who understood what folks needed and promised to get it for them. In the meantime, the residents at the Manor had to watch every penny they
spent.

  Darling was too small and out of the way for a Woolworth’s (the nearest was down in Mobile). But Darling folk were just as happy with their Five and Dime, which was owned by Reginald Dunlap. Dunlap’s sold just about anything under the sun as long as it had a five- or ten-cent price tag. The rock-bottom prices were designed to make shoppers feel rich, because they could buy lots of different things (even if they didn’t always need them). What’s more, everything was on the counter within easy reach, instead of being on shelves behind the counter, the way it was at Mann’s Mercantile. At Dunlap’s, you could pick something up and finger it and sniff it while you decided whether or not you could get along without it. If you didn’t, there wasn’t any clerk to frown and make you feel guilty for giving him the trouble of putting it back on the shelf.

  Five-and-dimes had gotten off to a rocky start. Frank Woolworth’s first store (in Utica, New York, back in 1878) was a failure. Nothing daunted, he put up the same red-and-gold sign, Woolworth’s Great Five Cent Store, at another location—another failure. Landlord problems closed the third store, and the fourth (in York, Pennsylvania) went broke in three months. But shoppers flocked to the fifth store, in Scranton, which boasted mahogany counters with glass dividers and glass-fronted showcases, bright lighting, and polished wooden floors. By 1912, when the company went public, there were 596 stores and the sale of stock brought over $30 million. In the Threadbare Thirties, department stores everywhere went out of business, but not the dime store. It was designed to weather tough times.

  Darling’s Five and Dime was one of a handful of stores conveniently located on the courthouse square, the hub of the little town. On the east side of the square was Mann’s Mercantile, which carried clothing and boots and tools and bolts of yard goods and kitchenware—and even (in the back room, on a secret shelf behind the horse harness and saddles) bottles of corn whiskey. Bessie wasn’t in the market for moonshine, but everybody in town knew where to get it when they wanted it.

  On the north side was Musgrove’s Hardware, which had everything you needed if you were building something or fixing something up—plumbing, roofing, lumber (stacked out back), and fence wire; baby chicks and ducklings and turkey poults in the spring, trucked in from the hatchery over at Monroeville; and seed potatoes and green onion sets for gardeners. Next to Musgrove’s was the Diner and the Exchange, owned by Myra May and Violet, which was the unfortunate focus of Darling’s discontent these days. Next door to the Diner was the Darling Dispatch, where Ophelia Snow was a reporter and sold advertising. And upstairs over the Dispatch was Mr. Moseley’s law office, where Liz Lacy worked. Bessie always smiled when she thought that on the north side of the square, five Dahlias were blooming in a row: Myra May, Violet, and Raylene at the diner; Ophelia at the Dispatch; and Liz at the law office upstairs.

  Next door to the Dispatch was Hancock’s Grocery, Darling’s only grocery store. Mrs. Hancock was sometimes rude and short-tempered, and she liked to give you her Temperance lecture while she was getting your order together and figuring up how much she was owed. But she would also give you credit if you asked for it, or trade a dozen fresh eggs from your backyard chickens for two pounds of flour or a pound of your fresh-churned butter for a half-pound of Hills Bros. ground coffee. And if your grocery bags were heavy, Mrs. Hancock would ask Old Zeke to load them in his red wagon and deliver them to your kitchen door.

  Before the Crash, Bessie had heard talk about the possibility of the A&P putting one of those new-fangled self-service grocery stores—a supermarket, it was called—on the vacant lot on the south side of the square, where Sevier’s Stationery had burned down back in the summer of 1927. People said it would be the kind of store where you carried a metal shopping basket over your arm and collected what you wanted, rather than waiting while Mrs. Hancock did it for you. Then you took your basket to a girl who sat behind a cash register at the front of the store, where you paid for everything and then carried it home yourself.

  But Bessie thought this was just talk, with the economy so shaky. At least she hoped so. If the A&P came to Darling, that would likely mean the end of Hancock’s. But while self-service might be convenient, the A&P wouldn’t give you credit. You’d have to pay every time you needed groceries, which might mean going without sugar or tea or coffee until Friday rolled around and you got your paycheck. The A&P wouldn’t take your eggs and butter, either—they had plenty of their own. And no delivery. Old Zeke would be out of a job and you’d be toting your own shopping bags.

  When Bessie got to Dunlap’s, she saw that something new had been added. Up to now, the front window had been a hodge-podge of whatever items had come in recently, displayed without any attention to making it pretty. Now, the window itself was sparkling, and the display—an attractive arrangement of Halloween witch masks and pirate masks and even a skeleton costume for little kids to wear when they went door-to-door for candy—was eye-catching. There were also a couple of carved jack-o’-lantern pumpkins and twisted streamers of orange and brown crepe paper, with toy brown mice and a stuffed squirrel peeking out of drifts of colorful maple and sweet gum leaves.

  Bessie paused to admire the display, thinking that the store’s appearance had definitely perked up since Mr. Dunlap (a widower with two grown-up girls) had married Audrey Lacy. The wedding had come as a big surprise to everyone in Darling, but especially to Liz—Audrey’s daughter—and to Bessie, who had known her since Mrs. Dribble’s elementary class in the old two-room schoolhouse on Chestnut Street.

  In fact, Bessie could not for the life of her understand how mild-mannered Mr. Dunlap—a small, timid man, thin-shouldered, gray-haired, with thick, round spectacles—could have summoned the courage to propose to the redoubtable Widow Lacy. But there must be more to the man than met the eye, Bessie decided, for he had proposed and been accepted. After the wedding, the newlyweds had driven down to Mobile for a week at the Wild Beach Motor Inn, right on the beautiful blue Gulf. Bessie had even gotten a postcard from the bride, with a heart drawn around the picture of the honeymoon cottage and a row of little hearts across the bottom to indicate that she was having a romantic time. When they returned from their honeymoon, Audrey had confided to Bessie that her new husband was a “tiger.”

  But the refurbished display window was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Inside the store, the new Mrs. Dunlap had worked other miracles, scrubbing and waxing the wooden floors, reorganizing the messy countertops, and building attractive displays that showed off the merchandise. There were racks of men’s neckties and leather belts and bins of socks and underwear and handkerchiefs. There were displays of women’s rayon and cotton hosiery and silk scarves and costume jewelry and sparkling tiered glass shelves of Cutex and Revlon nail polish in the latest match-your-dress colors of emerald green, mulberry, and cornflower blue, with a poster that showed you how to paint your nails in the popular new style: half-moons and tips left bare, with only the center of the nail polished. There was Maybelline makeup, too: mascara in tiny red boxes with little brushes; eye shadow in brown and black and even (gasp!) green. There was Tangee lipstick, which was advertised to change color, depending on your skin tone. Oh, and those precious little heart-shaped bottles of Blue Waltz perfume.

  For boys, there were kites, of course, plus the new green-and-red Duncan yo-yos, an orange-painted Amos ‘n’ Andy Fresh Air Taxi (with Amos and Andy riding in it, right out of the radio show!), and Marx balsawood airplanes with rubber-band windup propellers. Girls could cuddle the latest Flossie Flirt doll (with real shoes and a blue ribbon in her shiny brown hair) and the new Bottletot baby doll that drank out of her bottle, wet her diaper, and closed her eyes when she was put down. There were rolls of brightly colored hair ribbons for a nickel a yard and plastic barrettes and jacks and jumping ropes. And for girls and boys, games of Authors and Old Maid and Dr. Quack, and books in the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, all neatly arranged on a shelf where the kiddos could reach them.

  In fact, the whole store looked e
specially nice, Bessie thought—and Audrey Dunlap got all the credit. Mr. Dunlap ought to be very grateful, although she had to wonder whether he might repent of his bargain when Audrey got tired of managing the store and began managing him.

  This morning, though, Mr. Dunlap was nowhere to be seen, and Audrey herself—a large, heavy-bosomed woman with a penetrating voice—was waiting on a customer in Housewares. Specifically, Bessie saw, she was urging Leona Ruth Adcock to spend sixty cents for a new skillet instead of putting a new wooden handle on her old one. Bessie had to smile. Leona Ruth, who was wearing a purple dress with purple gloves and a purple hat with shimmering cockade of peacock feathers perched on her tight gray curls, hated to be urged to do anything. She was more than a match for Audrey and was putting up quite a fight.

  By the time Bessie found the lace Leticia Wiggens wanted (ecru, scalloped, seven-eighths of an inch wide, seven cents a yard), Audrey had given up battling with Leona Ruth. She hurried over to Dry Goods to measure out Bessie’s three yards against the wooden yardstick that was nailed to the counter. (Dry Goods was not self-help, since customers might yield to temptation and help themselves to an extra half-yard or so.) She rolled up the lace neatly and fastened it with a pin.

  “Here you are, Bessie,” she said. “That will be twenty-one cents.”

  “I have a few other things to look for,” Bessie said, and offered a compliment. “That front display window looks right pretty, with that crepe paper and leaves and those cute little mice. You did it all yourself, Audrey?”

  Audrey pressed her lips together. “If I’d had any idea I’d be doing store windows when I agreed to marry Mr. Dunlap, I might have told him no.” She gave an ironic little chuckle to show that she was joking, then glanced over her shoulder to see whether Leona Ruth—Darling’s most notorious gossip—was loitering nearby. Leona Ruth had wandered from Housewares to Brooms and Mops, but Audrey leaned closer and lowered her voice anyway.