A Short History of a Small Place by T. R. Pearson Read Free Book Online Page A

said new furnishings arrived in a boxcar from New York, including a countless number of Turkish rugs and a pair of cement cupids for the flower beds.
    The Pettigrews gave their first ball at Christmastime and Momma said it was lavish, just lavish. They hired out a chamber ensemble from Greensboro and a caterer from there also, and the engraved invitations were brought around from house to house by a local negro who had been given a black suit and gloves for the occasion. Of course all the good Baptists of Neely sent their automatic theological regrets since, as far as they were concerned, the only place you could dance to was Hell, but most everybody else would have attended or had to die first. The women made themselves dresses and the men had their funeral suits cleaned and pressed, and couples gathered in front of radios all over Neely and practiced the three-step, which very few of them could maintain for more than a half-minute at a time without misfiring and banging together. Even the younger, more agile Neelyites were clumsy waltzers though most of them could tapdance up a storm.
    Momma said it was a smashing success. Momma was only seven then and wasn’t invited herself, but she said her Momma and Daddy went and left her with a babysitter and that she and the babysitter snuck out the back door while Grandma and Granddaddy Yount were going out the front one. It seems that most everybody who was not in attendance on the dance floor was in attendance at the imported iron fence in front of the Pettigrews’ house, and Momma said there was such a crowd of people that she couldn’t hardly see anything until Deacon Furches picked her up and set her on his shoulder. She said the windows were hung with sheer draperies which gave the ballroom a soft, dreamy look and Momma said what music came out from the house sounded very far-off and magical. She and the deacon both agreed that it was a glorious affair and they decided that Miss Pettigrew looked especially handsome and comely in her pale-yellow gown and that Mr. Wallace Amory jr., in his formal black suit and with his mother’s dark features, was pretty in the way that antique princes and kings were pretty. Momma said Grandma Yount came home all flushed and lightheaded and complained that she’d done too much dancing, but Granddaddy said she’d just washed down too many finger sandwiches with too much champagne punch and he packed her off to bed. Momma told him she imagined it had been a glorious affair, simply glorious, and she said Granddaddy Yount thought for a minute and then responded that no, it had not been glorious exactly but had seemed to him very much like musical wrestling.
    Daddy said it was a good thing Wallace Amory could dance and look pretty because he was hardly able to do anything else. One of the underlings had taken charge of the business upon Mr. Pettigrew’s death and Wallace Amory left him to run the construction end of it while he hired a bookkeeper to take charge of the payroll and the supply expenses. Daddy said Wallace Amory took charge of the profits on his own. He had no other responsibilities as far as anyone could tell. He didn’t rise in the morning and head out to his daddy’s office and he rarely showed up at construction sites except for groundbreakings when there would be a photographer from the Chronicle handy. Daddy said Wallace Amory had a garden spade he’d painted gold on the blade and the grip, and he said about every half year you could open the Chronicle and find a picture of him stomping his gold shovel into the ground to mark the commencement of some sort of construction in Neely, but Daddy said he had no more of a hand in the completion of the building than the man who rings the bell at the track has in the outcome of the race.
    Daddy said Wallace Amory jr. was an accomplished piddler. He could engage himself for days on end in the sorts of chores an average man could dispatch with in an afternoon. And he was not ashamed