A Bit About Phoebe

Phoebe is special. She, long ago, lived beside my father and grandparents as a shut-in near Center Square Pa.. I remember her as tall, thin and ghostly. Rarely did I see her step outside of her parents house and never did I see her venture from her back porch. When her parents died, she moved into a state funded, second floor, rear apartment, in an adjacent town. Her apartment is crowded with caged birds, covered in blankets. I visit her when I can and enjoy reliving the days of old through stories and photographs. This time, her face lit up like never before as I told her my experiences from Grassy. "I've been there," she said, and began to tell me her story. Two friends, Jack and Bucky, took her there to crab when she was 16. They angrily left her on the dock, when she was afraid to step into the rocking boat. While Phoebe stood rejected, watching her so called friends row away for a day of crabbing, Thelma, George and Beeler appeared, hoping to comfort her with a pitcher of ice-tea and a tray of cheese and crackers. Phoebe got up from where we sat talking, she gathered one of her parakeets and then showed him to me. "This is Neptune," she said, pushing the bird my way. An unmistakable glow shined around the intelligent looking fellow. "The man gave him to me," she said. I quickly realized that Neptune would have to be an impossibly old bird and that perhaps it was one of Beeler's charmed aviary. Her story rolled on How George had run off her friends and thrown back their crabs demanding that they never return, how he later put her on a bus bound for the city and more, but due to my limited space, I will leave some things to your imagination. This is the case in many of these stories, which have only been altered for brevity, and my dedication to the art of spinning a yarn. They are however, much more truth than fantasy.

1913