house guests who don't go home

house guests who don't go home

fiction
edward w pritchard

Her name was Johnie Walker like the whiskey and she rented her house to about ten tenants a month. She was the only woman but the old black men didn't bother her. They were past womanizing, at their age they lived to drink.

Mrs. Walker would take their pension or social security check, they would sign it over to her, and in return she would feed them and give them a warm place to live. The reason however the 70 plus year old Black men stayed was Mrs. Walker's liberal open bottle policy. The men could drink all day as much as they wanted as long as they didn't exceed twelve shots in a twelve hour period running 1Pm to 1AM. It was difficult for Mrs. Walker to count the shots but if she ever, even once caught some one cheating, out they went, no three day notice, just her and her 45 and they had 15 minutes to pack up and leave. Her enforcement policies kept people honest.

Mrs. Walker lived down in the poor side of town and her house sat real close to the sidewalk and street. Nothing happened on her front porch. The good ladies around her house didn't approve of Mrs. Walker or her tenants. They didn't approve of the lottery tickets she sold the men day in and out for double price and they didn't approve of the daily number that she sold to them and to others in the neighborhood based on the last two numbers of the closing Dow Jones industrial average for the day.

To keep her business away from her do gooder church going neighbors, Mrs. Walker had her small back yard completely covered in raised decks. Those old men would sit back there on a mismatch of old chairs at a bunch of old tables and play cards or listen to the radio or just sit and pass the day. Most of the old men had been raised in the South in Jim Crow times and our Northern City was not that hot to them, even in the middle of Summer.

Mrs. Walker cooked only lunch and dinner. A big pot of something would come out and it was a one pot meal. Lots of meat and then a couple of other things thrown in for flavor. Each of those old men would have a couple of thick slices of bread and butter and a huge bowl of her specialty of the day. Usually they wouldn't finish.

Mostly the men just wanted to drink. They preferred Chivas regal and she bought it for them. After they had a few drinks each day Mrs. Walker would cut the drinks with cheaper whiskey. I used to go get her a bottle often myself. I was one of her debit insurance agents. She paid about 150 a week in premiums on life insurance on the lives of a lot of those old men. If one died she collected on the policy, as beneficiary. First however, she made sure they had a nice simple but dignified funeral. I went to one and she was there and had the preacher at a church in the neighborhood give a nice sermon.

The men when they drank didn't argue or fight ever. Mrs. Walker was about six feet one at 75 years old so she must have been very tall once. She was direct with people and wouldn't let herself be pushed around. She had a good sense of humor and was fatalistic about life. She always called me policy man and when my first son was born she gave me a twenty dollar tip.

I met a lot of people like Mrs. Walker when I worked on a debit down in the Black part of town. That was before Black people had much equal opportunity and people like Mrs. Walker had to carve out a niche to survive. I learned about blues music from Mrs. Walker and I learned that you shouldn't have more than twelve drinks of scotch whiskey in a twelve hour period.