A rootin’ tootin’ good time

When P and I moved into our home almost nine years ago, we had been married about eight months and we were twenty-six years old. We were so excited to move into our first home that we didn’t even care that the inspection had shown that it had an air conditioning system that pre dated our births and that using the microwave required turning out all the lights in the entire house so as not to blow a fuse. What a couple of sweet kids.

Our house is on the corner in a neighborhood that was developed in the 1920′s. After we moved in, we discovered that our neighbor across the side street had lived in her house since the 1950′s. Her name was Tillie and she was ninety-six years old. Actually her name was Adeline, but according to the story she told us, back in the 1940′s while her husband was in the war, she drove herself around town in spite of the fact that she didn’t know how to drive. Her driving skills led the priests at her parish to nickname her “Rootin’ Tootin’ Tillie”. The “rootin’ tootin’” went away, but Tillie stuck.

Anyway, we first met Tillie after she had her home health nurse bring us over a tin of assorted chocolate candies and we walked over to her house to say thank you. She knew a good thing when she saw it and it wasn’t long before she was calling P to come change light bulbs, hang her U.S. flag, and other such jobs. She actually never called him P, she called him T…which just made it all the funnier when she’d call us on the phone to request that he fix her clothesline or whatever the chore of the day happened to be.

Tillie had never had children of her own and her husband had died when they were seventy, so she had been a widow for thirty-six years. She had a niece and nephew that came over to take care of her, but they weren’t necessarily a lot of help seeing as how they were eighty. They would pull up to take her to church every Sunday in their Caddy and watching them all get back in the car was almost painful. You could never quite tell who was helping who, and after her eighty year old nephew started wearing a neck brace, he’d just pull out from the curb without ever looking to see if a car was coming. P and I would just hold our breath watching the whole scene unfold.

Pretty soon after we moved in, she started calling me to take her to run errands. We’d head out to the Hallmark store so that she could stock up on cards for all her great nieces and nephews. I can’t tell y’all how many hours I spent standing in Hallmark while Tillie opened every single card and LOUDLY read every single one out loud to me. Sometimes at night I can still hear her voice saying “TO A DEAR NIECE, YOU ARE SO SPECIAL” and then she’d say “No, no, no that’s just not right” as she moved on to the next card. And the next card. And the next card.

On the way home from Hallmark, we’d usually stop at HEB. She had never gotten over the fact that the HEB used to be a Handy Andy and would always tell me, “Honey, you could even buy your underwear there and I am always in need of new underwear”. Tillie had reached the point in life where you can just air all your thoughts and no one really thinks twice about it and if they do, you don’t care.

I’ll never forget our first trip to HEB when I helped her get a basket and she assured me that I needed to just go ahead with my shopping and we could meet at the register. I zipped through the store, got everything I needed and came back to find Tillie about one aisle from where I had left her. From then on, I always walked through the store with her and one of the greatest memories of these trips is when she cornered the store manager and went on and on about how you can buy cheese in cubes or slices or any other such foolishness, but “Why in the world can’t you just buy a block of rat cheese?” He had this blank look and questioned “Rat cheese?” and she said “Yes, you know like you put in rat trap to catch a rat”. He asked, “Ma’am are you needing to catch a rat?” and she looked at him like she couldn’t believe she was having this conversation and said, “Of course not. I’m needing to eat some cheese. A block of rat cheese”.

P and I started taking her out to eat about once a week. One night we were at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant where Tillie had eaten for years. Our waitress came to take our order and Tillie told her “Honey, I hardly recognized you because you’ve gotten so fat”. I wanted to crawl under the table, but Tillie told me “Honey, she needs to know. She has gotten fat and I’m just being honest”. I feel fairly certain that our waitress may have spit in our food.

The priests from her parish came to visit her on Sundays and she’d always talk about how they liked to drink her vodka. In fact, she claimed that drinking vodka was part of what kept her alive for so long. Sometimes she’d start to lose her balance while we were out and she’d say, “Honey, I can’t remember if I’m drunk or just old”.

A few years later, Tillie had to have her gall bladder taken out. After she got home from the hospital, I went over to visit and she insisted on showing me her incision because “Honey, you just won’t believe it, they just take it out through your belly button. Have you ever heard of such? Through your belly button”, and as I tried to protest that I didn’t really need to see it, she lifted up her nightgown to show me her belly button and let’s just say that gravity isn’t kind to you when you’re ninety-nine years old and so along with her belly button, I saw other parts of her anatomy hanging down there right next to it. Oh yes ma’am, Tillie and I knew each other well.

Tillie always sat in the sunroom on the back of her house and y’all can guarantee that she knew everything going on in the neighborhood. If I hadn’t been out of the house all day, she’d call around 5:00 that evening and say “Honey, your car hasn’t moved all day. Are you sick? I hope you’re not sick. Call me and let me know you’re not sick.”

A few years after we moved into our house, my former hairdresser and his life partner moved into the house behind ours, with their two adopted little girls from Cambodia, a seventy year old Hispanic housekeeper, and a Philipino nanny. Their house was easily visible from Tillie’s house and one day as we were headed to Bun and Barrel to pick her up a barbecue sandwich, Tillie pointed to that house and said “Honey, that is an ODD assortment of people that live in that house. What do you think is going on over there? I can’t figure out who goes with who.”

God bless her.

Tillie used to always tell me that she was a survivor. She was born and raised in a mining camp in New Mexico and had to work hard throughout her childhood. She married her husband and moved to South Texas where she worked at the church for over thirty years. She had survived the death of her husband and two bouts of breast cancer. She always said “The devil doesn’t want me and the Lord’s not ready for me yet”. I think she was right and God knew He’d have His hands full once she got there.

Tillie lived to be 101. She died right after Caroline’s first birthday. The neighborhood just isn’t the same without her, but I guess the Lord decided He was ready for some entertainment.