Fannie and her big blue car

Windmill cookies and scary basements

We had just moved into the big house on Van Buren Ave. in St. Paul in 1968. There were only four of us kids then, my two younger sisters were still babies. My mom didn’t know anyone in the neighborhood except Fannie, a rather plump, proper lady who lived straight across the alley from us facing Blair Ave. I’m not quite sure how they met, but I think it was at the laundromat that used to be on the corner of Blair and Dale, the one with the 5¢ Coke machine that dispensed glass bottles.

When Fannie walked, her girdle and underthings swished beneath her dress. She always wore a pastel-colored dress, even in the winter. She had white hair that was cut short and gold-framed glasses. I don’t remember her ever smiling, but her face was friendly and pleasant to look at. It was the face of a calming, comfortable grandma.

Fannie’s husband died long before we moved in. He left her a very large light blue ’50s Packard sedan she parked in her garage. Most of the time, the car was covered up with an old sheet to keep it clean. Riding in it was like sitting on a sofa strapped to a set of four wheels.

Fannie did not drive often but when she did, she took the task very seriously. She would get all dressed up in her Sunday-go-to-meeting best — complete with white gloves — and drive the car slowly out of the garage. I can still hear the tires crunch on the street gravel as she drove all of 10 mph down the side street, my sisters and I in the back and my mom in the front.

We would never go very far. Fannie was scared she would crash the car and her poor dead husband would never forgive her. She said she liked to drive, but my mom would later tell us after Fannie died that she would only take the car out if my mom agreed to ride along with her.

When we got back from our short trips — usually to the rectory or the grocery store — Fannie would reward us with a windmill cookie she kept in a tin just inside the basement door. Me and my older sister were allowed to go in and get a cookie ourselves. It was a bit scary.

“It was cooler down there,” she would say. She wanted to make sure they would be fresh when us kids came over to visit. She never ate the cookies herself and I learned later that the only reason she bought them was for us.

But they always tasted a little musty and smelled a bit of Fannie.

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This essay is part of my first Little Legacy Book, Monkey with a Loaded Typewriter. If you are collecting your essays into a legacy/memoir book, let me know so I read your essays and support your effort.