When I Grow to Old to Dream – Sample Chapter

“I’ve Got a Feeling You’re Fooling”

From the MGM Production Broadway Melody of 1935

Music by Arthur Freed/Lyrics by Nacio Herb Brown

Vocal Chorus by Bob Eberle with the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra

Recorded on DECCA 560A

“Serves her right if you ask me, the way she toyed with men. She’d bat ‘em around like a cat with a mouse until she got tired of foolin’ with the fools. And then she’d bite their heads off and just toss ’em in the trash. Well, this time the tables were turned and she’s the one what got fooled. I guaran-damn-tee that was no accident. The way I see it, Ross McKinney saw his opportunity to get even with her for ditching him. So he give that ladder a good shakin’ and they was lights out for Nadine Pritchard. I’d bet my last bottom dollar on it. Lean your head back just a tad further, Baby Doll.”

“Nadine and Ross were having an affair?” I asked incredulously.  

Malinda Presnell was giving Emmer a shampoo and set, just as she’d done every Saturday morning at ten a.m. since Noah came over on the ark, as Granny Hughes was fond of saying. Malinda tested the temperature of the water spewing from the sprayer while her sister, Brenda Johnson, tucked Sparky Addington’s head of tightly rolled hair under a dryer and set the timer for twenty minutes.  

Brenda and her husband Jack own The Beauty Spot, a combination beauty salon and funeral monument masonry whose slogan is WHEN WE SAY PERMANENT, WE MEAN IT. Jack makes the funeral monuments and Brenda operates the salon, a pretty tidy arrangement, if you ask me. Malinda—who’s quick to point out she’s the younger sister—mainly just comes in on Saturdays for regular customers like Emmer, and to do haircuts for men. And to collect and dispense gossip, of course. Finding somebody so naïve as to not know this juicy tidbit about Nadine Pritchard and Ross McKinney’s affair obviously made her day.

“Lord, Sally Jane, where’ve you been hiding? Under a rock?” Malinda all but crowed. “Of course they was having an affair, as anybody in town could tell you. Leastwise, anybody what’s paying the slightest bit of attention. The two of ‘em fought like cats and dogs. You could hear it all over Aintree County. They’d break up and get back together right regular. And then he’d up and give her some cheap little trinket to try and keep her around.   

“I remember one time Ross come back from the flea market with a cubit zirlumium ring. Told Nadine it was a diamond. And she believed him! Flashed that thing all over town until somebody finally clued her in that it wasn’t real. And then she tried to act like she knew it all along. 

“She come by here one day and showed me the blamed thing. Well, I could tell right off the bat it was a fake, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. No siree Bob. I just let her go on making a fool of herself. Of course, she wouldn’t own up to who it was what give it to her. Made out like she had some young, handsome, rich boyfriend somewheres out of town. If that wasn’t a laugh and a half,” Malinda finished with a cackle to illustrate her point.

“What kind of ring did you say it was?” Brenda had moved back to her station and was patting the seat of the revolving chair. “I’m ready for you over her, Lolamae.”

“It was a cubit zirlumium,” Malinda repeated at the same time Emmer jerked her head up with a loud “OUCH!” 

“Is that water too hot for you, Honey Pie?” asked Malinda, the picture of innocence.

“You know perfectly well it is,” scolded Emmer indignantly. “My scalp is very sensitive, as you should know by now. I’ve told you repeatedly that I can only tolerate lukewarm water. And I am not your Baby Doll or your Honey Pie.”

“God love her sweet heart,” Malinda said, winking at me. “Isn’t she just the most precious thing?” to which I gave a noncommittal, vague smile. She then turned back to Emmer. “Well, we’ll just have to take care of that,” she said, adjusting the taps. “Is that better?”

“I suppose it will suffice,” said Emmer, closing her eyes and settling back in the chair.

Brenda was pulling strands of Lolamae’s hair through a highlighting cap. “A cubit zirlumium? Don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that. I’ve heard of a cubic zirconia, but never a cubit zirlumium. What is that?” Brenda asked, obviously taunting her sister. 

This kind of interplay is standard at The Beauty Spot. Malinda will say something that makes perfect sense only to her, at which Brenda calls her out. I always feel embarrassed for Malinda when this happens, but it doesn’t seem to bother her one bit. In fact, she seems to take it as a challenge and usually manages to counter convincingly, at least to herself. It does, however, generally take her some time to regroup.

“Could you give me a minute here? Could I have Just. One. Minute. Please?!?” she asked, punctuating each word. Then she turned back to Emmer. “Are we ready to dry off, Angel Face? There we go,” Malinda crooned, blotting Emmer’s hair with a towel. “Just come on over here and we’ll have that beautiful silver hair shining like the fender skirts on a ’59 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner in no time a’tall.” 

I was thinking how absurd a conversation between Malinda and Cousin Chippy would be, while Emmer walked stiffly across the room, as she always does when she’s been leaning back in the shampoo chair. In this case, however, it seemed likely that Malinda’s continued use of pet names in spite of Emmer’s admonition, and her employment of “The Royal We” had more to do with my mother’s rigid posture than time spent in the shampoo chair.  

“A cubit is something really big,” Malinda began as she commenced to blow drying Emmer’s hair. It was obvious she’d had enough time to concoct an explanation, and was going for it. “It’s in the Bible, which I read all the time, ‘ya know. And zirlumium is something brand new, something much shinier than…” She paused, then tried again. “Than…than…that other thing.”

She looked at Brenda expectantly, who looked back at her sister with a “What?” expression on her face. There was something of a pregnant pause while the sisters did a face off. Then finally, Brenda tossed Malinda a bone. “Zirconia?” she suggested.

Malinda didn’t dare try to pronounce the word. “Of course I know about that thing. They mix that thing together with aluminum and it makes zirlumium, which is ten times as shiny as that old stuff. So a cubit zirlumium is a really big, really shiny ring, which fools a lot of people. But, like I said, I knew it wasn’t a diamond from the get-go.”

“It was Brown Buchanan.”

Everybody looked around, trying to figure out who had spoken, but nobody appeared likely. Brenda looked at me, frowning. Then she raised her eyebrows as if she had just had an “Aha!” moment, walked over to the dryer, and lifted up the hood. “Did you say something, Sparky?”

“I said it was Brown Buchanan.”

“What about Brown Buchanan?” Malinda, of course, had to get in on this.

“He’s the man Nadine ditched Ross for, as anybody in town could tell you. Leastwise, anybody who’s paying the slightest bit of attention.”

I could see the red line on Sparky’s forehead where the dryer hood had been, but it was nothing compared to the veins in Malinda’s neck, which were bulging out like the pants of Nadine’s scarlet jumpsuit. Firstly, Sparky was mercilessly mocking her; and secondly, she’d apparently hit on something Malinda didn’t know. I looked at the sign up over Malinda’s station offering this sage advice: DON’T PISS YOUR HAIRDRESSER OFF. REMEMBER SHE CAN PLANT YOUR HAIR AT A CRIME SCENE. It made me wonder if Sparky should be reminded of that.

“Well, of course it was Brown Buchanan,” Malinda retorted quickly. “I believe I already mentioned that. I said Ross saw his opportunity to get even with Nadine for ditching him to take up with Brown Buchanan. You’d’ve heard me if you’d been paying attention,” she shot back at Sparky.  

By this point my mind was reeling. I’d been questioning Nadine’s affair with a man who was older than God’s dog, as Granny Hughes would say. Now I was stunned to think of her hooking up with Brown Buchanan, who was even older than Ross and married to a woman the devil himself wouldn’t take on. It boggled the imagination. I started to interject this observation when Brenda spoke up to debunk Malinda’s claim, setting off a full-scale battle.

“What the French toast? I don’t think so. Why, just this morning when you heard about Nadine breaking her neck when she fell off that ladder, you told me you were sure it was Ross McKinney who caused her to fall. And you said you wished you could find out who it was that Nadine had ditched him for.”

“Nooooooooooo, what I said was I wished I knew if the person she ditched him for was anywheres near that ladder. I knew it was Brown Buchanan, and I thought maybe the two of ‘em were in on it together.”

“You most certainly did nothing of the kind, Malinda Ruth Holtzclaw Presnell. And that makes no sense, anyhow. Why would they be in on it together? Everybody knows that Ross McKinney and Brown Buchanan are sworn enemies.”

“Shows how much you know, Brenda Sue Holtzclaw Johnson. They were enemies, BUT they’ve patched things up. You can find ‘em drinking beer together down to the VFW every Friday night.”

“I DON’T THINK SO, Malinda Ruth Holtzclaw Presnell. Why don’t you just admit that for once in your life there was a piece of gossip you missed out on?”   

The two of them were going back and forth, Malinda protesting with a barrage of “BUT’s” and Brenda countering with a volley of “I DON’T THINK SO’s” until Emmer cut them off with yet another “OUCH! You burnt my ear with that curling iron!” This gave Malinda an escape from what she knew was an unwinnable argument, so she turned her attention back to Emmer. And that gave me an opening.

“Would somebody please tell me why in this world Nadine would be having affairs with two old men like Ross McKinney and Brownloe Buchanan in the first place?” I questioned, at which point everybody in the shop shouted in unison, “MONEY!!”  

“Well, of course I know the Buchanan’s are loaded,” I said, somewhat shaken by the volume of their response. “But Ross McKinney? He certainly doesn’t seem like the tycoon type.”

This put Malinda back in the driver’s seat. “Ross McKinney’s got more money than Jed Clampett, but I guaran-damn-tee he’s got it squirreled away where nobody can find it. Leastwise, not somebody like Nadine who wasn’t nearly as smart as she thought she was. And you know how he got it? From the Buchanan’s, of course. That’s why him and Brown don’t get along,” she pronounced, then had to amend her testimony to cover her recent argument. “I mean, why they didn’t get along. Until just lately, that is, when they started drinking beer together down to the VFW. You’ve heard about the Buchanan family jewels that disappeared?”

Her question elicited a general chorus of assent. The missing Buchanan family jewels are legendary in Elk Station. I can remember Daddy Hank putting me to bed dreaming of treasure chests full of jewels buried in the sand on some remote desert island, to which they’d been spirited away from the safe in the Buchanan family mansion in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. I have no idea how they could possibly have gotten to such a faraway place, or why. But, like I’ve said, I always did have something of an active imagination.

“Well, Ross is the one who stole ‘em, sure as the world,” Malinda proclaimed. “Mark my words—Ross McKinney isn’t nearly the upstanding citizen everybody thinks he is. He’s a thief and a murderer, to boot. Why, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he didn’t do away with that television reporter, as well.”

“Good Lord, Malinda. You’re accusing Ross McKinney of murdering Nadine Pritchard and Geoff Coffee? What possible reason would he have for doing that?” asked Brenda. Then, “Sorry. Your hair’s so fine it’s hard to get ahold of,” she said when Lolamae protested that Brenda was poking her with the hook she was using to pull her hair through the highlighting cap. It was a touchy day at The Beauty Spot, in more ways than one.  

“I’d say it was Nadine who poisoned Geoff Coffee,” Emmer announced. 

“Why in this world would she do that, Emmer?” I couldn’t believe my mother was inserting herself into this discussion. And hadn’t she agreed with the Ne’er-Do-Wells who maintained that the poisoning was a result of a corn dog eaten at the Aintree County Fair?  

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Emmer continued. “Nadine Pritchard was a topless dancer at The Mole’s Ear in Johnson City before she supposedly cleaned up her act and wormed her way into Elk Station society. When Geoff Coffee showed up and was interviewing people about the town’s past, she couldn’t take a chance that somebody would spill the beans on her. In which case it would be broadcast on television and the reputation she’d built as a respectable citizen—Chamber of Commerce Director, as if that were some big deal—would be ruined. It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” Emmer concluded, then signed and sealed her opinion with a dainty sniff of her own nose. 

With that, everybody started talking all at once, tossing around thoughts and opinions.  

“I don’t think so. If Nadine thought she could get thirty seconds of television time, she wouldn’t give a rat’s ass what kind of publicity it was. That woman was eat-up with herself.” This from Malinda.

“What we need to do is figure out who would’ve been close to both Nadine and Geoff Coffee when they were killed. That would narrow down the list of suspects. My money’s still on Brown Buchanan. He’s a snake in the grass, mark my words.” This from Sparky. 

    “How could Brown Buchanan have anything to do with Nadine falling off that ladder? He’s getting that big award at the Centennial Celebration, so he’ll have to be on the reviewing stand watching the pageant. No reason for him to be at the rehearsal since he’s not in the pageant. What I really can’t figure is why Brownloe Buchanan’s being named ‘Citizen of the Century.’ Sure, he’s a big-shot business man, but it’s all from his daddy’s money. It’s not like he ever struck a lick at a decent day’s work himself.” This from Lolamae.

“I’m betting that Leonard Wiley killed both of them. You know good and well he was jealous of Geoff Coffee for invading his territory, and he probably thought he’d get to take over as director of the pageant if Nadine was out of the way. Can’t imagine he meant to kill her, though. Probably just wanted to bump her up a little, not bump her off. Hold your hand over your eyes, Lolamae, so I can spray you,” Brenda finished off the conversation and Lolamae’s hair with a Psssssssssssssssst of hair spray.   

It was then that Malinda remembered she had a piece of information nobody else had mentioned, and she laid her ace on the table.

“Well, if Leonard Wiley thought he’d get to be the director, he was sadly mistaken. Seems that Lulu Trivette is back in town, and she’s going to take over directing the pageant. Lord knows I wouldn’t have that job for love nor money. I hear the pageant is just one big gaum. No siree Bob. I wouldn’t have it if you give it to me on a Christmas tree.”

“Poppycock!” Emmer exclaimed, pushing herself up and out of the chair. “Haven’t you heard? She’s not Lulu anymore. She’s now LaRue. Lulu was my best friend a long time ago, but apparently that person no longer exists. Seems that I, also, was sadly mistaken,” she uncharacteristically confessed, as she counted out fifteen one dollar bills and slapped them on the counter. “Come on, Sally Jane. Let’s go. I have better things to do with my time than dilly dally around here all day.”  

I gave Malinda an apologetic smile as I followed in Emmer’s wake. She was moving so fast that I almost bumped into Buddy Clark, who was hurrying through the door from the other direction. “So sorry,” I mumbled, but he totally ignored me and pushed right by to occupy the chair Emmer had just vacated.  

As the door closed behind me, I could hear Malinda asking, “Just a little off the top as usual, Mr. Clark? So what’s the scoop down at City Hall?”