Dear Friends:
Betty Hoober is gone. Even though I know she is gone and will never be back, when I drive by, sometimes I wave to her vacant house. When she lived there, it was required to wave to her house whether she was visibly in residence or not. If, Lord forbid, you happened to forget to wave and she was in her customary seat by the porch window, you would soon hear about it from Betty.
Betty was a Roscommon character. She was our neighbor for several years and her leaving was sudden even though we knew it was overdue. She lived in the bright yellow house just down the road from us and she stopped by on occasion to chat. Chatting with her neighbors was her hobby. If you wanted to know anything about anyone in the neighborhood, Betty was the one to ask. Some might call it gossip. They would probably be correct although it was Betty’s entertainment so it was hard to fault her since she was an older woman with nothing much else to do.
Betty was a friendly sort; open and congenial and she expected the same from you. After meeting her, most people would learn her life story. She wasn’t shy about asking personal questions either, although, truth be told, she was more interested in telling about herself. Betty was also one to speak her mind. If you didn’t stop for a visit often enough, she was sure to tell you about it.
In addition to chatting with the neighbors, her hobby seemed to be looking out her porch window to keep track of the cars that invaded our neighborhood. Whenever a car went by that she didn’t recognize, you could expect her to come calling shortly with the inevitable question, “Did you see that brown car that went by this afternoon?” If there were ever any criminals in our neighborhood, they wouldn’t stand a chance with Betty on the job. She would know their car, where they went, where they came from, and, given an afternoon, their names and any dirt about them that happened to be known in the county.
Betty came from the south and adopted Roscommon as her home. Her story was like that of thousands: after the war, with jobs aplenty and salaries rising, lots of folks from the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee came north to work in the automobile plants. Betty and Lester were among them. Betty worked and raised one child, Dean. Although the family lived in Detroit longer than Kentucky, their legacy never left them. Betty had a pronounced accent and a manner of speaking that belied her birthplace. She was definitely a ‘down-home’ sort with a focus on the fundamentals of living and little time or interest in modern technology, world events or the complexities of modern life. With Betty, it was more about children, loving, getting along, and the price of milk.
After Lester retired, he and Betty moved to Roscommon and set up housekeeping in the modest yellow house along our road. Lester enjoyed his retirement for a few years and then died suddenly. Betty liked Roscommon and decided to stay on even though she had no family in the area and her only son, Dean, seemed content to visit by telephone. Betty’s only overnight visitor was her grandson that she called Little Dean. We could tell when he made an occasional visit by the leftovers in Betty’s yard. Over the years Little Dean left a boat, a shed, a trailer and a few other odds and ends that he couldn’t find room for in his own yard downstate.
Betty seemed happy for most of the years that we knew her. She talked about her loss of Lester but never complained of loneliness, apparently content to watch over our neighborhood, talk with the neighbors and take care of the business of daily living. Betty’s appearance seemed to fit the North Woods. She had grizzled gray hair, a girth that seemed equal to her height and an absence of teeth unless she was on one of her visiting forays around the neighborhood. She didn’t seem particularly upset if you caught her without her teeth, mostly she grinned and said she wasn’t fully dressed. She wore a coat or a sweater most of the time and complained about the snow in winter although she didn’t let it stop her from climbing in her Pontiac for a neighborhood tour.
Betty talked a lot about her health and last year she complained about feeling tired. It was a surprise some weeks later when she announced that she had visited a doctor and he said she was suffering from leukemia. After several visits, he told her that she had no more than 18 months to live. Betty decided she didn’t like her doctor so she managed to get a referral to another. After several weeks, she reported that the new doctor said she didn’t have leukemia at all. She had something else, she said, but she wasn’t clear about what it was, only that she had to take periodic blood transfusions. She said when it was her time to go, she would be ready and that was that.
Some months after Betty began seeing the new doctor, she collapsed at home and was taken to the hospital. I went to visit her and found her as feisty as ever. She didn’t seem to know what had caused her collapse, didn’t care, and was as anxious to leave the hospital as they seemed to be in discharging her. Her son Dean called while we visited and asked if she still had the big TV at her house.
After the hospitalization, Betty seemed to have lost some of her spark. Her visits became fewer and her conversation was marked by repetition and forgetfulness. Soon, Betty’s car was missing. She told me that ’they’ took her license and someone in the neighborhood must have turned her in. I suspect she was up to her old tricks of trying to find out who the culprit was. Shortly thereafter, I saw her car parked in her driveway and Little Dean was at her house. When Little Dean left, the car disappeared.
Over that winter, it became apparent that Betty needed help. Each time I visited, she said she had just talked to her son Dean and he was worried about her. I had never met the man and had never seen him at her house. During my visits, I asked Betty if she needed anything from the store since she no longer had a car. Other neighbors also helped by purchasing things for her. Several of us compared notes and observed that Betty was losing weight and becoming more confused.
Suddenly, a “For Sale” sign appeared in her yard. I asked her what was happening and she said she was going to move and Dean was helping arrange things. Some weeks later a moving van showed up in her driveway. I stopped and finally met Dean. I thought I was seeing double; he had a large waist, gray hair and no teeth and he talked with a noticeable accent. He explained that he was moving Betty to Colorado. He said he had always liked it there. He was uncertain about where they would live since they hadn’t made any arrangements about that. “There are plenty of places to rent,” his wife said. Betty smiled a toothless grin. Dean looked at her and smiled. I smiled and said goodbye to Betty.
Some weeks later, I learned from a neighbor that Betty had called. Betty reported that she and Dean had a disagreement on the way to Colorado and Dean dumped her (her words) at a nursing home and then continued on his way with her big TV. A few weeks later, about the time the bank took possession of Betty's yellow house, I learned that Betty passed away at the nursing home. I hope Dean enjoyed the big TV.
