An Unbelievable Day With Aunt Louise

The highlight of my twenty-year career as a private eye had to be the time I was asked by my aunt, one Gladys Van Hoffman, to find a woman she knew growing up in Mannington, West Virginia. Aunt Gladys moved up to Wheeling after college, had worked hard, married well and prospered greatly. I wasn't enthused about the mission, but I hopped into my aging Ford sedan and headed south anyway. My car was a humble one, with black paint peeling everywhere and front fenders that were so loose they flapped-or waved. Whenever oncoming traffic saw me they didn't know whether to head for the berm or wave back, and it had a lot of rattles. Every time I hit a large pothole it sounded like two skeletons making love on a tin roof using an empty soup can for protection...but it had a good heater.

Ruggles Avenue was a normal street in small town coal country directly off the main drag with small, one story, clapboard homes in normal states of disrepair. Some were privately owned and some were "company houses" owned by employers who made sure the tenants were only one payday away from destitution. My subject of inquiry was independent of any and all villains who would raise their thumb and see her face. Louise Alma Wells was a feisty smoker, drinker and storyteller whose barren womb had given her a soft spot for small children, handicapped old men and grieving widows throughout Marion County. All those that she liked referred to her as "Aunt Louise." All those who thought carelessly enough to anger her called her "that crazy woman in Mannington." As it was a raw day in November 1968 I hoped she was near, and I had every intention of becoming likeable as I knocked on number 225.

"Yes?" she asked.
"Morning, Mrs. Wells. I'm Jake Johnson, nephew of Gladys. I assume my aunt told you I was coming?"
"Told me? Hell yes...wrote me once and called me twice. I hear your Aunt Glad-ass has given up the hard stuff, real staunch against it now. You aren't one of those dry-dicks, are ya'?"

I hadn't heard that term in years. A "dry-dick" was a cop who enforced bootleg liquor laws, going all the way back to Prohibition.

"No ma'am. I'm actually a private investigator doing this pro bono."
"What's that mean?"
"Just for the hell of it."
She looked me up and down and sideways.
"Well...just don't stand there letting out all my cookin'

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