If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard

Every two weeks, she would walk or hitch a ride over to Ann Cleaver's house.  Ann Cleaver's husband, Charles, was an old friend of my father's -- one of the few old friends who was not a Greek -- and the guy who made sure that my father had all the insurance for life, home and business that anyone could ever want.  Ann and Charles lived over on Oliver Lee Drive, about 2 1/2 blocks from our house.

I hated that street name and always said it, if I said it, with some disdain.  When giving directions to my house, I never mentioned Oliver Lee Drive because, to me, Oliver Lee sounded like Billy Bob or Thelma Lou.  It sounded hoosier, tacky and low class.  I didn't want Oliver Lee in my neighborhood, tainting the beautiful, resort-sounding Sunset Drive on which my family lived.  I didn't even want Oliver Lee in Belleville, which means, as I love to tell people, "beautiful village" in French.  That hoosier street name made me feel cheap and dirty, not beautiful like I should.  Now, as an adult, I know that there was really no difference between the houses on Sunset Drive and Oliver Lee Drive -- they were just as big, they were just as nice and they were filled with the same nice people decorating their rooms with family pictures and Blue Boy and Pinkie knock-offs and little porcelain vases in the shape of beautiful lady heads with plastic flowers.  But, really -- Oliver Lee?  Why had the mayor given that street so close to mine 2 names like a hillbilly?  It made us all look bad.  Worse than that, it made Belleville look bad. 

Anyway, Ann and Charles lived on Oliver Lee Drive and Charles had taken the garage of their house and, with his own 2 hands, turned it into a beauty salon for his wife.  In the world I knew back then, that was called true love.

Ann was one of my mom's favorite friends, another anomaly because she wasn't Greek either.  She did have dark hair like the rest of my mom's good friends from church -- but she couldn't make baklava or church bread if her life depended on it.  And she was a beautician.  In my world, Greek ladies were not beauticians.  They were cooks, mothers, aunts, restaurant owners or, in Barbara Doudouvini's case, a single working gal in downtown St. Louis.

But Ann was a non-Greek beautician in her garage salon built on love.  The problem with Ann was that she was not a very good beautician.  She was a very nice person and always told funny stories -- but, styling was, well, let's just say that styling was just not her style.  She did not pay much attention to detail and she drank too much.  Mom would shake her head and say that "Ann's breath smelled like shampoo again."  This, I found out when I was in 7th grade at Emge Junior High School was Stella-talk for vodka.  Because of Ann, anyone who drank was said to "love the shampoo" and all shampoo was vodka.  Anyway, or so goes the Stella story, Ann would nip into the shampoo while she was watching her stories (Stella-talk for soap operas) after Charles left for his insurance office every day.  Since Mom's hair appointments were always late in the afternoon -- she liked to watch her stories too -- Ann was well on her way to being the most shampood up lady in Belleville.  This was true at least if you heard all the breaking shampoo bottles hit the bottom of the garbage truck every Monday when it came around Oliver Lee Drive.

When Ann put the old lady blue dye on my mom's hair -- "it's not dye, I don't dye my hair," Mom always said, "it's only a rinse.  That's why it comes off on my pillow case, dye doesn't do that.  I don't want to look like Irini Gotschoff with her hair still coal black at age 60.  All that does is make her wrinkles look worse" -- Mom always felt pampered, turning herself into a proper little old lady.  She knew that the blue dye -- I mean, rinse -- was just for old ladies and, frankly, she did not care.  She was an old lady, was proud of being an old lady and she had earned the right to be an old lady with her hair dyed -- I mean, rinsed -- blue.  To be honest, the blue was not really blue but steel gray, like an old battle ship or destroyer from World War II.  It actually looked good in Mom's silky smooth, naturally wavy hair, always soft like she had conditioned it which she hadn't.  So, bottom line, if the rinse made her happy, dye away.  I mean, rinse away.

But, poor Mom -- what she went through to get it just the right shade of blue.  In addition to her hair, Ann also "rinsed" Mom's forehead, the tippy tops of both of her ears and a weird pointy Dr. Spock like area on the back of her neck.  Those errant blue rinsed areas rubbed off on her pillow case too after a while, but, for a few days anyway, Mom always  looked like she had been eating blueberries. Vigorously.  Without using her hands.  Sometimes, Mom would change her appointment day with Ann to make sure that there was plenty of time between the rinse and some big special event like a wedding, the AHEPA May Festival, or the Philoptochos Annual Dinner, so that the blue dye -- I mean, rinse -- would wear off her forehead, ears and Dr. Spock neck.  "It was a small price to pay," she said, "for such a dear old friend."

Dear old Ann also poked Mom in the face and head with the scissors and the brush handle.  For several weeks after one styling, she had 2 scabs dangerously close to her eyes.  After that appointment, she started wearing her glasses while Ann worked on her "so I can see what the heck you're doing to my hair, Ann."  Other fresh wounds and red marks appeared periodically but even those did not deter my mother.

Worse yet, Ann passed gas a little each time she took a step.  "Whether it's from weak muscles or too much shampoo or because she doesn't care, I just don't know but it smells AWFUL so I think it's the shampoo, you know, messing up her system," Mom sometimes confided.

My mother never said the word "fart" because she considered that word to be common, dirty, a 4 letter word, the real F bomb of the late 60's/early 70's.  Back then, nobody I knew ever said the real F bomb that sounds like a familiar old friend to me at this fucking point in my life.  As a sheltered little Greek kid, though, "fart" was the worst thing that I or anyone else could have said.  "Picture yourself this close to where it happens" Mom would say, trying to get me to not say the F word.  She would then hold up her thumb and forefinger about a quarter inch apart.  That seemed to do the trick.  There was no "pull my finger" at 229 Sunset Drive, oh no.

So, when someone in my family passed gas, which no one did very often in the freedom of our house and amongst the love and familiarity of our family unless we were in the bathroom where it was okay, according to Stella Evangeline Hassett Hages, we called it "plutzing.

To be funny, my father would sometimes stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the back room and lift one of his little hairless chicken legs up in the air, slipper dangling and smiling that big goofy toothy grin he had, pretending to be ready to plutz if someone didn't pay attention to him.  Oh Jimmy" Mom would say, seriously angry "stop that.  Go upstairs to the bathroom if you need to do that."  He would laugh and wave her away, then smile back at me, our little joke against Mom.  One time when I was in the 5th grade, he, well, let's just say he mis-calculated, and after lifting his little chicken leg in the air and pretending to hunker down a little, a terrible accident happened.  The look on his face changed from mischief and glee to horror and shame, and he took off up the stairs, as fast as those little chicken legs could carry him.  "That serves him right," Mom said, "I hope he has to change his shorts."

We may not have been allowed to say "fart" but we sure did talk about plutzes a lot amongst ourselves.  I could also recognize each family member by their distinct plutz signature.  My dad's were the worst of course -- he was the lion of the plutzers, something to aspire to.  My Mom's smelled like little bursts of "My Sin," her favorite perfume.

Sharon's plutzes always smelled like root beer floats and Jeri's, like tartar sauce.  My cousins, like us, also didn't use the F word but they refused to call them plutzes -- too lower class for them, I guess.  They called them "litseys" which just seemed too uppity and embarrassing to me and I think it's just a varation of plutz anyway.  If you're going to re-name something, either make it better or just surrender and use the best word possible even if you didn't think of it.  They were always stealing our lines and pretending to be better than us.

Anyway, even with Ann's plutzing, my mom liked getting out of the house just a little bit once in a while.  She would usually ask Thela to drive her over for her hair appointment or, if the weather was nice, she would walk the 2 1/2 blocks down Sunset Drive, up Werner Road and over onto Oliver Lee.  She would look at people's houses and the flowers and the trees.  This was like a little vacation for her.

Mom also knew that, if she didn't go to Ann for her hair, the only hair that Ann would be styling was on dead people at Kurrus Funeral Home and Mrs. Wright who was about 90 years old, only had about 3 snow white hairs and couldn't hear the plutz with each step Ann took anyway because she refused to wear her hearing aids.  Apparently, Mrs. Wright thought that hearing aids could signal the aliens and "under no circumstances am I gonna help them damn aliens take over the earth.  No sir."  In the summer, I used to jam toothpicks into the Wrights' doorbell just to hear it ring all day long until her husband, Leroy, got home from work.  The sound of that ringing over and over again for hours made me and Mary Kay McNamara laugh so hard we almost wet ourselves, lying in the grass in the Wright's side yard.

At the time, I could never understand how Mom could could go to Ann Cleaver to get her hair done, putting up with the pokes, prods and plutzes much less why she would dye -- I mean, rinse -- her hair old lady blue.  When I questioned her, she usually didn't respond or she would say "you'll understand some day" or "where else would I go?"  Well, she could go to the House of Charles in downtown Belleville but, really, "why would I go all the way down there when Ann is so close?"  And so dear.  And, to be honest, I don't think anyone else in town had the right shade of blue for my mom.  Oh, I don't know about that -- what about Cy Vernier's Paint Store?  Suffice it to say that Mom knew the old lady blue hair was a joke to some but, to her, it was simply age appropriate.  A badge of honor.  She was over 50 and it was just what she was supposed to do.

So, there, in the quiet late 60's/early 70's in Belleville Illinois, where life was simple and you didn't have to lock your doors or worry about where your kids were after dark, my mom lived with the old lady blue hair, the scabs and blueberry stains and, yes, even the plutzes of one of her favorite and dearest friends.