PEGGY’S NEW HOUSE
Saturday afternoon Todd and Susie were going to the housewarming party of Peggy, one of their Marshall friends and a person my wife Kathe liked to be with. Peggy has been renting a tiny house and is finally buying a house of her own. And what a house it is. It has two floors, the home of a builder who loved doing fine carpentry with wonderful porches outside and decorative wood work inside. No furniture yet, only one recliner, but now Peggy has to start searching for furniture and will enjoy picking that out.
Peggy’s realtor, Danny, was also there. She plays drums in a band that is soon to tour Europe and writes short stories and has an electric smile.
The other people there were all interesting. I discovered that Peggy’s sister Libba Kiser, had gone to Warren Wilson and then become a landscape architect and finally a horticultural therapist, healing people through surrounding them with plants. In fact, she was just about to go to Taiwan to give a talk on horticultural therapy. She had taken at least one of my classes, I don’t know which one, and was afraid to ask her response, since I remember very few college teachers who stimulated me.
But she was very friendly, everyone was, and I found it pays to be 87 and still kicking and going to Bogata in three weeks with Susie. I guess it gives people a feeling that there is still life at the end of the road, although I was so tuckered out from a long morning in the sun at the Black Mountain Sourwood Festival that I’m afraid I was a sad sack needing a porch chair to sit down on of which Peggy had about six. But it was a fun afternoon.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 