The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

Ophelia Snow, vice president & secretary

Verna Tidwell, treasurer





The Darling Dahlias Club Roster, October 1930





OFFICERS


Miss Elizabeth Lacy, president. Secretary to Mr. Moseley, attorney at law, and garden columnist for the Darling Dispatch.

Mrs. Ophelia Snow, vice president and secretary. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow.

Verna Tidwell, treasurer. Secretary to the Cypress County probate clerk.





CLUB MEMBERS


Earlynne Biddle. Married to Henry Biddle, the manager at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. A rose fancier.

Mrs. Bessie Bloodworth, Darling’s historian. Owner and proprietor of Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse and gardens.

Mrs. George E. Pickett (Voleen) Johnson, wife of the owner of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Specializes in pure white flowers.

Mildred Kilgore. A collector of camellias, Mildred is married to Roger Kilgore, the owner of Kilgore Motors, and lives near the Cypress Country Club.

Aunt Hetty Little, oldest member of the club, town matriarch, and lover of gladiolas.

Myra May Mosswell, owner of the Darling Diner and an operator in the Darling Telephone Exchange. Lives in the flat over the diner. Has a vegetable garden.

Lucy Murphy, the newest member of the club. Lucy is married to Ralph Murphy and lives on a small farm on Jericho Road. Just planted a peach orchard.

Miss Dorothy Rogers, Darling’s librarian. Miss Rogers knows the Latin name of every plant and insists that everybody else does, too. Lives in Magnolia Manor. Beulah Trivette, artistically talented owner/operator of Beulah’s Beauty Bower, where small groups of Dahlias gather almost every day. Loves cabbage roses and other big, floppy flowers.

Alice Ann Walker, bank cashier. Her husband, Arnold, is disabled. Loves spring-flowering bulbs.





ONE





The Naked Ladies


Elizabeth Lacy opened the small shed behind the Dahlias’ clubhouse and stowed the rakes, hoes, and spades inside. She closed the door, took off her floppy-brimmed hat, and turned to Verna Tidwell.

“The garden looks really swell, don’t you think?” she said, surveying the result of the afternoon’s hard work.

“Well, it ought to,” Verna retorted crisply, stripping off her green cotton gardening gloves. Her brown hair was short and combed straight back from her face in a characteristically no-fluff style. “We’ve poured a lot of time and sweat into this place over the past few months. How many Dahlias were out here this afternoon, slaving in the sunshine? I counted ten. That’s a good turnout.”

Lizzy stretched down and touched her toes, working out the kink in her back that came from kneeling in front of the phlox bed for two hours, pulling weeds. “Ten is right. Voleen Johnson said she had company, and Ophelia’s boy was playing in the baseball tournament at the fairgrounds. Oh, and Myra May had to work the switchboard because Violet is up in Memphis.” She straightened up and stretched her hands over her head. “Her younger sister just had a baby and Violet’s helping out. Myra May said the sister isn’t doing too well.”

Verna stuck her gloves in the pocket of her gardening skirt, wrinkling her nose distastefully. “Have you ever noticed that Voleen always manages to have out-of-town company on one of our work days? If you ask me, I think she invites them on purpose, so she doesn’t have to come over here and risk breaking one of her fingernails, all pretty and polished up.”

“You might be right,” Lizzy said, in a noncommittal tone. She didn’t like to criticize other people because you never knew when they might be criticizing you, and they might not be as nice about it as you were. But it was definitely true that Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson rarely lent her perfectly manicured hands to the task when it came to the Dahlias’ garden. Or her own beautiful garden, for that matter, since she had a colored man who did all the work for her. The George E. Picketts were among Darling’s hereditary nobility and Mrs. Pickett’s garden was a showplace, with never a leaf or a twig out of place.