She said, “It’s a good thing they didn’t have a boy and called him Nuckle. That would have made a name, wouldn’t it . . . Nuckle Knott. But then,” she mused, “we went to school with a boy with the first name of Lard, only it was spelled Laird but they called him Crisco all his life anyway. I don’t think he ever married, or leastways I never heard if he did. He used to sell buttons.”
Hamm opened the door to escape. He knew from past experience that these farm women were starved for company and would talk for hours to a total stranger. “Well, thanks for everything, Mrs. Shimfissle,” he said as he hurried out the door and down the back steps. She followed him and opened the door. “Hey, wait a minute—I forgot your last name.”
He turned around and called out, “Sparks, ma’am, Hamm Sparks.”
“Sparks? Like electrical sparks?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, as he waved over his shoulder and ran for the car.
Aunt Elner Saves the Day
AFTER THE SALESMAN left Elner called her sister Gerta Nordstrom and told her she had just met a man named Hamm. Gerta laughed and said, “Next you’ll be telling me you met a woman named Egg.” There were three Knott sisters, Elner, Gerta, and the youngest, Norma’s mother, Ida. Despite the fact that everyone in town knew all three had been raised on a midwestern farm, sometime after she had married Herbert Jenkins, Ida suddenly started dropping little hints here and there that she was descended from a fine old southern family who had fallen on bad times. By 1948 she had alluded to her aristocratic forebears so often that she began to believe it. This delusion about her background had started nine years ago, after she had seen the movie Gone with the Wind a dozen times at the Elmwood Theater. She was convinced she recognized Tara and therefore must have lived there in a previous incarnation. It never occurred to her that “Tara” was only a movie set or that her recently acquired southern accent was only a poor imitation of an English girl doing a poor imitation of a southern accent. The only real southerner in town was a seventy-eight-year-old widow lady named Mrs. Mary Frances Samples, born in Huntsville, Alabama. She too had been adversely affected by the movie. As if losing the War Between the States was not bad enough, she had been completely devastated when it was announced that Tallulah Bankhead, a true daughter of the South and a fellow Alabamian, had not been cast as Scarlett O’Hara. Mary Frances Samples vowed never to see another movie as long as she lived. She said her only consolation was that “at least the role did not go to a Yankee girl.”
Mrs. Samples aside, Ida was bound and determined that her daughter, Norma, was going off to college in the Deep South. It might be too late for Ida to fulfill her rightful destiny as a daughter of the Confederacy, but she secretly envisioned herself in her later years visiting Norma and sitting on the veranda of her large plantation home in Virginia, being waited on hand and foot. A vision Norma did not share. All she ever wanted to do was marry Macky Warren and settle down in Elmwood Springs and start a family. Norma and Macky had been girlfriend and boyfriend since the seventh grade. And on the night of the senior prom, when he gave her an engagement ring, nobody was surprised. But Ida was at once adamantly against it. In fact would not hear of it. “I like Macky,” she said, “but no daughter of mine is marrying a little small-town hardware-store owner’s son.”
“I will, too!” said Norma.
“Over my dead body,” said Ida. “Besides, you are not marrying anybody until you finish college.”
Norma looked to her father for help but he had not stood up to his wife in years. Doomed! For a while Norma and Macky became the local Romeo and Juliet. Everybody took sides. Ida on one side and everybody else on the other.
Living so far out in the country, Norma’s aunt Elner had not been aware of the tragedy of her niece and her boyfriend until one afternoon when the two drove out to see her. Norma was miserable and teary and Macky just sat stoically, trying to be brave. “Aunt Elner, if she makes me go to that stupid college and leave Macky here alone, I swear I’ll just kill myself. She’s going to make us waste four years of our lives because of some whim.”
Macky looked at Norma. “I’d go with her if I could but I can’t with my daddy being so sick—I’ve got to stay here and help him run the store.” Then he looked over at Elner and asked earnestly, “Mrs. Shimfissle, what would you think if we were to elope? Would you be willing to come with us?”
Elner was taken aback at this request. “Oh no, Macky, you don’t want to do that. Just give it a little while longer, I’m sure she’ll come around.”
“What if she doesn’t?” asked Norma.
“I believe she will. But let’s just hold our horses and wait and then we’ll figure out what to do from there.”
After they left, Elner stood in the yard and smiled and waved good-bye until they were out of sight. Then she went inside and picked up the phone.
“Ida, this is your sister. Now, what’s all this mess about you not letting Norma marry the Warren boy?”
“I didn’t say she couldn’t marry him, Elner. I just said not now.”
“Why not now?”
“Because I want her to go to college first, where she will get an education and at least have a chance to meet boys from the nicer families. I know she doesn’t think so now but in the long run I know she will be happier and better off if she at least dates a boy from her own kind . . . maybe someone from a fine old southern family with a similar—”
Elner, not letting her finish, snapped, “Oh, Ida Mae, give it up. You are not from some fine old southern family. Your grandfather was a German pig farmer from Pennsylvania and everybody knows it. Up to now, Gerta and I have always babied you and let you carry on with all your silly little airs because we thought it was cute but I can’t stand by and see you ruin Norma’s life over your foolishness, so you just stop all this nonsense right now.” Then she hung up.
Ida stood with phone in hand and her mouth open. Elner, the oldest sister, had practically raised her when their mother died and had rarely if ever spoken harshly to her in her life. Still, Elner said later, “I hated to do it, but drastic times calls for drastic measures.”
The next day Elner was way back in the yard picking butter beans when she heard the phone ringing. Whoever was calling would not hang up, so she figured she better get it in case someone was dead. When she picked it up an excited young Norma was on the other end.
“Aunt Elner?”
“Hey.”
“You are not going to believe what happened. Mother said I could marry Macky and not have to go off to school.”
Aunt Elner pretended to be surprised. “Well, I’ll be . . . What did she say?”
“She told me that if I wanted to ruin my life and destroy my chances of happiness forever that I had her permission—isn’t that great?!”
“Oh, honey, I just couldn’t be happier for you,” she said while emptying the butter beans from her apron into a bowl. “I told you she’d come around.”
“You did. Anyhow, we’re going down to the church this afternoon and set up the date.”
“Good. Best to move fast before she changes her mind. You tell little Macky I’m glad it worked out.” A little while later, after Elner had her beans cooking on the stove, the phone rang again. This time it was Macky. “Mrs. Shimfissle, I just called to thank you. I know you must have done something to get Norma’s mother to change her mind.”
“No no, honey, she has her own mind. She did that all by herself.”
“Just the same, if you had not said something, and I know you did, it’s no telling what that crazy woman might have done to break us up.”
“I’m just glad it’s all going to work out. . . . And, honey . . . I know Ida’s caused you and Norma a lot of trouble but try not to be too hard on her. With all of her faults, I don’t think she means to hurt people. She’s just desperate to be somebody she’s not and doesn’t know how to go about it.”