Twinkle Fiddles

Chapter Four

After dinner, as they left Hyman's and passed the joggling benches, Dylan suggested a walk through the historic district. He scrambled to walk on the paved side of Meeting Street and stay on Julie's left. She looked puzzled to him.

"Sorry," he said. "It's just this thing; I have to walk on the street side of you."

She continued her look. "Okay, whatever."

"It's this old Southern tradition thing that's all." He attempted to explain as his foot slipped off the curb. "A gentleman always walks on the street side, so as the buggies pass through the puddles, they don't splash ..."

"So, they don't splash the ladies' dresses." Julie's dimples beamed as she finished Dylan's thought.

He returned the smile. "Yes, so they don't splash the ladies' dresses."

"Tell me about your grandmother." They paused, waiting on the crossing street light, before advancing to the old City Market. Julie assumed as she requested again. "Your grandmother, she told you about the ladies' dresses and walking street side, didn't she? Tell me more about her."

They entered the City Market under the main Meeting Street entrance, as Dylan recalled his fond memories. "Oh, my grandmother, a true Southern belle herself. Yeah, she told me about walking street side and other manners.

"She told the best stories. My grandmother could twist a tale six ways to Sunday, with more characters than you could shake a stick at. We'd listen on her front, screened porch. She could take a normal day picking peaches, and it'd be a masterful account of storytelling. You'd never know where it was going, or who would show up. I'd like to believe they were all true."

At that hour, even in the late summer, the local vendors of the city market had long packed their tables and left for the day. A young black boy, of maybe seven or eight years, walked on the opposite side of the street. He was hassling tourist to give him a few dollars for a flower he had weaved from sweetgrass.

Dylan and Julie exited the market when the odor of horse manure blew from the street. It proved too strong to ignore. "I guess that one missed the bag," he commented in disgust.

"Yeah, guess so," she wrinkled her nose at the putrid odor.

They passed a locked shop with antiques. It had closed for the evening. Dylan slowed, his attention captured by an artifact in the display window. "I remember my grandmother with a yellow colored, porcelain bowl, just like that one. It had the same dark, hairline cracks in the sides. But they're thick so they don't break. She made the best pimento cheese in that bowl. She always used Duke's Mayonnaise; had to be Duke's. I guess that was her secret."

They both paused, looking into the closed storefront window. "She'd grate blocks of cheese she'd bought at the old Winn-Dixie store. The 'Dixie Store,' she'd call it. 'I'm going to town to the Dixie Store. Ya'll need anything?'"

Julie smiled watching Dylan's passion for his grandmother.

"As a child I'd reach in and grab a fist full, trying not to scrape my knuckles on her old grater, as she slid the block across it." Dylan looked up from the window, to Julie, who stood slightly behind his shoulder, admiring the antique bowl. "I'd take the small glass jar of pimentos and try to convince her we didn't need them, 'just cheese,' I'd say."

Julie continued her quiet observation.

"So, are you close to your grandmother too; she grew up with you in your house?" Dylan asked her re-calling a reference Julie had made over dinner earlier that evening.

Julie confirmed, "She moved down with us when we left Canada, but now is in an assisted living home. My mom's the youngest in a big family. It's her mother, so my grandmother's pretty old now, in her nighties. I probably don't see her as much as I should. You know how it is."