Oh, everybody knows Mrs. Taylor around here!
She was a young widow when I met her, way back when I was a little kid, her husband having died in the Vietnam War. Every Memorial Day, she had a whole bunch of other widows and veterans' families by for dinner -- my guess was that they got together to share memories and comfort each other and eat Mrs. Taylor's good food.
Not that Mrs. Taylor, even on Memorial Day, ever went off duty. Not Mrs. Major Taylor, as the grown folks called her. She was fighting a war of her own, and she was in it to win it.
My family couldn't move out of the neighborhood when drugs started to really take over. Too long a story to tell why. But while most of those who could leave left, Mrs. Taylor started making grocery runs, and that's when she got my attention and that of the local kids my age.
Mrs. Taylor's house was big, but not much to look at -- Major Taylor had been dead for years by the time all the trouble started, and although Mrs. Taylor did her best to keep the house up, it wouldn't be to his standard again for 25 years.
But it was the smell from within -- the irresistible odor of baked goodies, every day of the week. Even Sunday. Just a little later in the afternoon.
Mrs. Taylor's specialties were chocolate chip cookies and pecan bars. She made grocery runs three times a week -- bags full of flour and sugar and butter and chocolate chips and pecans and milk, plenty of cold milk to go with all those cookies and bars for anyone and everyone who came by. She had educational cartoons and nature shows and games for us kids to play too, and some of her vet and vet widow friends were always there to help out and talk with us about stuff and get us help with stuff. On your way home or if you couldn't stand to be at home, there was always a safe place to go -- Mrs. Taylor's house.
The local drug dealers got mad at Mrs. Taylor and thought about killing her and burning her house down. They were about ten years too late, though, because a bunch of us found out when we were big kids. First time kids like us ever worked with the police to clean up our community, but we weren't going to have Mrs. Taylor hurt or killed. So, with the help of the vets and vet widows, we helped the police run the drug dealers out the neighborhood. They were doomed anyway, because Mrs. Taylor had robbed them of their future clients.
No drug dealer in the world has anything to offer like what Mrs. Taylor had. The smell from within her house was pure love. We stayed on the love and off the dope, most of us, and grew up to be good kids and responsible adults. So, Mrs. Major Taylor, as the grown folks liked to call her, won the war for the neighborhood after all. And so did we.
Mrs. Taylor is still baking to this day, now an old widow, but hardly alone. We grew up and fixed up her house and the neighborhood, and we make the runs to the store for her and make sure she gets to her doctor's appointments and all her stuff with the vets and stuff. She's part of everybody's family around here. Nobody messes with Mrs. Major Taylor, or her neighborhood -- and they better not start, either.
Photo Credit: Emily Wilson on Unsplash