One of my dear neighbors, a Mrs. Finch, died this week, of bone cancer.

If you recall, my sister Betty Jane, also died of that disease.

Betty and I never real close as my time in the service took a big chunk out of our brother-sister relationship.

I have been told, she, at one time, worked in what was then called a ”nursing home,” for elderly folks.  She never married, and as I know, had few, if any, boy friends.

Two things I remember most about Betty, was, she was a first-rate tomboy!

Not the seed spitting kind, but the run faster, fast-pitch a softball better, and trick ride a bike as well as any boy around, kind.  I have pictures of her in square dance regalia, so she did grow into a lady after a bit.

The other thing, she was a die hard ”soaps” fan.  She knew all the characters in action at the time.  And could name them alphabetically!

I came in from school one afternoon, and there she was, sitting right into the radio, and just crying her eyes out!  One of the characters, Madeline, had lost her baby, and was having a bad time coping!  I tried to comfort Betty in her grief, but she would have no part of it!  Then I realized that she enjoyed living with these actors!

Stella Dallas was the queen of the soaps for a ling time.  Oh, what a time this poor lady had, between ”affairs,” divorces, lost babies, battling other characters, and the like, and then throw in a murder or two!

Mt dear sister, bless her heart, reveled in these things.

One of these operas, was a story about a girl from a mining town in the west, and the closing line each day was the question, ”Can this girl from a little mining town in the west find happiness with Lord so and so,”  and I don’t remember the rest of it.  I can’t recall the name of the show, but Betty loved it!

Sometime, at night, when I get restless, I wonder, did this girl from a little mining town in the West ever find happiness, with whoever she was to find happiness with?  And then the real puzzler, what ever happened to Stella Dallas?  Somebody once said that she quit showbiz, and opened a high-end boutique in a large Texas city!  Really?  Do you suppose that city was Dallas?

RW

8/20/10