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Hunker Down with Kes

Thereby Some Have Entertained Angels Unawares

Posted

Mrs. Ethel Elizabeth Mitchum’s face had more wrinkles than a cheap cotton shirt fresh out of the wringer. But don’t think unattractive here. Her eyes literally sparkled when she talked to you. And she had the most approving smile you ever saw! Like she had been waiting, and hoping, to run in to you since she first woke up that morning!

She and Mr. Charlie lived in that big white two-story house behind the service station that was behind the Park Theatre on Main Street. I don’t remember a time when they were not in my life. I first began to notice them at church. They were there every time I was; which, with my parents, meant every time the doors were open!

“Miss” Mitchum would gently tussle my hair and give me a hug. Listen, I was five years old and hair tussling and hugging were two of the worst things on my list at the time! But I never minded when it was her. Boy howdy, that was about as high a compliment as I could give a person back then.

I have pondered on that over the years. Maybe I liked her because she was kinda short, too. She certainly wasn’t loud. Or maybe it was that warm, cozy, “safe” feeling you got just being around her. It was obvious, even to a small child, that she liked me first. Or maybe she was an angel sent directly from God to check on me.

Leon guessed her to be “older than dirt.” That had to be a little high! I figured sixties, maybe seventies. But, you know, when you are five, everybody looks old. I have come to realize as the years have turned into decades that she is timeless.

I can tell you this for dead certain positive; she has gotten prettier, younger and more hallowed upon my every remembrance of her!

And she didn’t get that way by telling us what to do. Heaven forbid! She never one time presumed to know more than we did...or give out unsolicited advice. She sure wasn’t like most adults. She actually listened to you!

She’d bend down—it wasn’t very far for her—to get on your level to ask how life was treating you or how the baseball game went on Thursday night or if you were doing all right at school. And then she waited until you gave a report. If you didn’t answer immediately, she just kept waiting until you started to talk.

Shoot, I told her my whole life story before I was six years old!

She had that approving nod...you know what I mean? Like whatever you were saying made perfect sense to her and she was glad you chose to share it especially with her. She never, one time, in all my life EVER said one discouraging, disparaging or uncomplimentary word to me. I believe if I had gone out and robbed two banks, beat up the preacher’s wife and kicked the dog away from the kitchen table, Miss Mitchum would have stood by me, loved me, no matter what!

That was a pretty special thing to know when you are seven or eight...or ninety! And listen, she wasn’t any kin to me at all. I wasn’t that lucky...

I got to looking for her first thing when we’d go to church. I’d walk over to her house for cookies and lemonade. You should have seen her laugh the day I pointed out that I was “as tall as her now.”

Somewhere between my twelfth and fifteenth birthday our conversations switched from baseball and Cub Scouts to girls. It was just a natural progression from all of our other conversations. She would quietly smile as I was “unloading” about my latest crush, the “best looking” girl in Latin class or the girl I’d met playing basketball down in Gleason.

Listen, you could tell Miss Mitchum things you wouldn’t dare tell your mother, brother or best friend!

She would come down to Motheral’s Drugstore and help me pick out a Valentine Card when “picking out the right card” was about the most important thing in my life. And when she realized I could only afford the forty-nine cent card, she “made up the difference” for the more expensive “perfect” card out of that little black coin purse she carried in her big black purse.

When I reached driving age, she insisted I bring any serious “friend” by her house for cookies, lemonade...and inspection! In about fifteen minutes she knew more about the girl than I did! She didn’t disapprove of any of them. But when Cathy “took her turn” she smiled and nodded with about as much certainty as I’ve ever seen.

The amber bowl she gave us for a wedding gift sits on our dining room table today...a reminder that I don’t need. People that have touched a life like Miss Mitchum touched mine are never very far out of reach. I think it’s part of that timeless thing.

Or maybe she WAS an angel from Heaven...

Respectfully,
Kes