The Alma Warning

       One day when I was about ten years old, Mom was going to get her hair cut, and I opted to go with her to get my bangs trimmed. The lady Mom was using at the time lived down Back Creek Road and worked out of her finished basement. After a phone call to Kay, I guess to confirm the appointment or to ask if it was all right to bring me along, Mom hung up and then said that she had to talk to me about something.

          Kay had told her that Alma was there getting her hair done, and Alma would be there through Mom's entire appointment. Alma must have been getting her hair set and dried, and that takes a while. So it was important to both Mom and Kay that I be prepared for Alma.

          Mom said, “There will be a woman at Kay's salon. She is an alcoholic. You will not act like anything is strange at all – even if she says stuff to you that does not make sense. Alma will have a drink with her. You will not make any faces or gestures or comments to indicate that you have noticed she is an alcoholic.”

          Alma was married to Frank, and together they owned and ran the tavern across the street from the law office where Mom worked. It was the same tavern that was the site of the famed typhoid well from the century before – and even though Frank and Alma were old, the typhoid incident was long before their ownership of the bar. I was never in the tavern – before or since. I assumed they did not sell food or my family would have frequented it once in a while – but I could be in error about this. Nor had I ever met either Alma or Frank before that day. I did know their names however, but only as the people who ran the bar – it had not crossed my ears before that either of them had a drinking problem – Mom and Dad never talked about it that I know of.

          But Alma was an alcoholic, and I was about to meet her and I was to have perfect manners in front of her.

         When we got to Kay's, Alma was sitting in one of the chairs. She had rollers in her hair, and in one hand Alma softly shook a glass that tinkled the ice in her orangy-looking drink. She smiled at me and made small talk that was not too strange.

          And I managed to behave myself in spite of the fact that Kay cut my bangs way too short.

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