something pretty from my mom

I graduated from high school at sixteen - had trouble finding a job because of my age. Of all places, since I never wore make-up, I worked the cosmetics counter at Woolworth's for a very brief time until my Daddy saw an advertisement in the paper. I applied and got the job with Indiana Abstract.
I sat at a desk and typed all day long - some days went to the court house and went thru dusty old records in the vault there. I worked with three phenomonal women. Laura Smith, Mabel Zumstein and Olive Peterson. Laura was the boss under the owner of the company, Merlin Porter (a distant cousin to Charlie's father). Laura and Mabel were in their fifties - I was just seventeen and Ollie (everyone called her that) was somewhere past seventy-five.
She had never married, worked in the court house since her teens, moving to the abstract company when her boss wasn't reelected. She was such a friend to me. We often had lunch together. The business was in an upstairs office across the street from the court
house. It was a big cavernous space with high tin-lined ceilings and great big windows - one of them a bay window that hung out over the sidewalk below. It was there we ate lunch and learned about one another and our lives.
Below the office was an office supply store and next door to it was a small cafe with booths on one wall and a counter with stools in front of it on the other wall. We would go down there once in a while for lunch. People from the court house and downtown would gather at lunch time but we had an advantage - we'd leave upstairs just a bit early and get a booth. The first week I worked there we were all in a booth when a man came in and sat down on a stool.
After a few minutes I asked, "Do you see that guy? He's got a real problem, look at the big lump on his hip." Everyone collapsed in giggles and Laura announced in a whisper, "That's not a lump, that's his bottle, he's an alcoholic - AND he's the county prosecutor!"
On another day, Ollie and I were going down the street to another restaurant. We were going along when she suddenly paused and looked at the sky, walking just a bit awkwardly as tho her feet were tied together.
"Don't look, Marcia, just keep walking. The string on my bloomers just broke." With a swift kick she tossed the fallen bloomers off the curb into the street, held her head high and continued walking. I'll never forget the expression on her face - it was that of a queen, someone who knows exactly who she is and tells the world. What a lesson for a greenhorn country girl!
Ollie was always inquisitive about my life. After my marriage she would ask questions about "living with a man". Our first child was Ollie's first child. She gloried in my pregnancy,
often asking if she could put her hand on my swollen belly to "feel the baby move."
I think Ollie is still walking tall and straight - on heaven's golden streets.