The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star (3 page)

“How’s the work coming, Aunt Hetty?” Lizzy asked. “Do you need any extra help?”

“Not if all the Dahlias show up for work on Friday afternoon,” Aunt Hetty said. She might be eighty years old, but she was well-organized and had a reputation for getting things done. “The Kentucky Wonders really took off and there are a
lot
of green beans to pick. There’ll be several bushels of sweet corn, as well as tomatoes, okra, eggplants, and squash—not to mention the watermelons. Lucy Murphy volunteered to load it all into that old Buick of Ralph’s and cart it off to the fairgrounds. Ralph has been laid up with a bad back, but if he’s able, Lucy volunteered him to set up shelves in the tent for our boxes and baskets and such.”

Everybody had to chuckle at that, for they all knew that, in spite of being young and pretty, Lucy wore the pants in the Murphy family. Bad back or not, Ralph would be setting up the shelves—and his two teenaged sons (by the first Mrs. Murphy) would be lending him a hand. The second Mrs. Murphy would see to it or know the reason why.

“I’ll ask Myra May to call the members and remind them of the picking party on Friday afternoon,” Lizzy said, making a note. Myra May and her friend Violet Sims owned the Darling Diner and were half owners of the Darling Telephone Exchange (with Whitey Whitworth, who owned the other half). Myra May was the communications chairwoman for the club, and whenever there was telephoning to do, she took care of it. Since many of the members were on party lines, a few calls went a long way toward bringing everyone up to date.

“I ran into Bessie Bloodworth at Mann’s Mercantile this morning,” Mildred put in. She sipped her lemonade. “She said she made an extra dozen half-pint jars of strawberry jam just for our booth. She’ll bring them on Saturday morning.”

“Oh, wonderful!” Aunt Hetty exclaimed. “People are crazy for Bessie’s strawberry jam.” She made a note on her notepad. “Does anybody know whether Obadiah Carlson has got enough watermelons to give us some?” Every year, the Watermelon Festival offered all the free watermelon that festival-goers could eat. It was Aunt Hetty’s job to round up the watermelons.

“I saw him at the courthouse yesterday and he said he’d bring a couple dozen,” Lizzy replied. “And Alice Ann says her Arnold has a wagonload for us, if somebody’ll come and get them.”

“Mr. Norris told me he’d bring a wheelbarrow full,” Verna chimed in. “His patch is in the field behind my house. He’s got some good-looking melons.” She grinned. “He was out there last night with his shotgun, threatening to pepper the backsides of a couple young kids he caught raiding.”

“If they’ll just wait a few days, they’ll get all the watermelon they want for free,” Aunt Hetty said tartly, adding Obadiah Carlson, Arnold Walker, and Mr. Norris to her watermelon list. “Everybody, if you hear about any more contributions, please let me know. One thing’s for sure, we don’t want to run out. That would be almost as bad as running out of hot dogs.” She scowled. “Or the Ferris wheel breaking down again.”

“Neither of which is going to happen as long as the Dahlias are in charge,” Lizzy said, but with greater conviction than she felt. For some reason—or for no reason at all, she didn’t know which—she was apprehensive about the festival. Something always happened, like Mrs. Peabody’s broken nose. What would it be
this
year?

She pushed away the worry. “Now, let’s go down this list of chores. Aunt Hetty, you’re done.” She put a checkmark by the first item. “I’m doing publicity. I guess you’ve all seen the articles in the
Dispatch.
” Lizzy was the right person for this job, since she wrote a garden column for the Darling newspaper and found it easy to write up the publicity for the festival. “I’ve also sent announcements to the
Monroe Journal
and the Mobile
Register
,” she added.

Mobile was two hours away by car, but city folks might like to make a day of it at a country festival—especially with this year’s big attraction. In addition, Charlie Dickens, the
Dispatch
editor and proprietor of the town’s printing shop, had printed up fifty fliers announcing the festival and Lizzie paid Old Zeke fifty cents to put them up all over town and out at the Dance Barn on Briarwood Road, and the Watering Hole. Because of the
very
special event, they were hoping to attract the biggest crowd ever.

“Verna, what about you?” Lizzy asked, going to the next item. “Have you made the arrangements for the tents?”

Verna was responsible for making sure that the tents and booths were set up and ready for their occupants. She also had to manage the tickets, and supervise the volunteers who cleaned up the fairgrounds after the weekend was over. Altogether, this was a big job, but Verna was the acting county treasurer, the first woman ever to hold that position in Cypress County. She was good at getting things done because she was the one who knew where the bodies were buried. She didn’t have to say one single word: she just looked at people with those dark, searching eyes of hers and they decided they’d better do whatever they were supposed to do, right
now.

“The tents are supposed to arrive on Wednesday afternoon by train,” Verna said, “from the rental agency in Mobile that supplied them last time. The guys from the Masonic Lodge are setting them up on Friday morning. The Chamber of Commerce will be manning the ticket booth, starting Friday evening. I think we’re all set.”

Lizzy made another checkmark. “Mildred, you’re next. What’s up with the Odd Fellows? I truly hope they haven’t booked the same carnival they brought in last year.”

“Amen to that,” Aunt Hetty said fervently.

“They wouldn’t dare,” Verna said in a dark tone.

“They didn’t,” Mildred said. “They’ve booked an outfit called Tinker’s Traveling Carnival. The hard times have driven a lot of the smaller carnivals out of business. But they finally located Tinker’s, and they hope it will work out.”

“Tinker’s Traveling Carnival.” Lizzy made a note. “When are they getting in?”

“Thursday night, on the railroad,” Mildred replied. “They’ll set up on Friday and open in time for the Family Fun Night Friday evening.” She looked around the table. “And yes, there will be a Ferris wheel, which the Odd Fellows guarantee will
not
break down.”

Verna chuckled. “Can the Odd Fellows put that in writing?”

Mildred ignored her. “There will also be a merry-go-round, a pedal-car ride for the kiddies, and games for everybody—shooting gallery, high-striker, baseball throw, coin toss, and darts. Oh, and the usual cotton candy and hot buttered popcorn machines.”

Aunt Hetty shook her head. “Lots of ways for young people to spend money they don’t have, just for a little fun.”

“But people
need
fun,” Mildred protested. “Especially these days, when everybody is worrying about something.” She sighed heavily.

Lizzy doubted that Mildred had anything to worry about. She and Roger lived a picture-perfect life. They had a beautiful house, a lovely young daughter, and financial security. But now that she thought about it, Lizzie believed that Mildred had been looking a bit wan and worried for the past couple of weeks, as if something serious was bothering her. This was unusual for Mildred, who was usually a happy-go-lucky, carefree person.

“People don’t short themselves where fun is concerned,” Verna put in. “Mr. Greer says movie attendance is better than ever.” Don Greer and his wife Charlotte ran the Palace Theater on the courthouse square. Even though it cost a quarter to see a movie, it was one of the most popular places in town. “He says people would rather skip a meal than miss the latest Gable or Garbo,” she added.

“Well, people won’t have to skip a meal to come to the festival,” Lizzy said. “Admission is only fifteen cents, and that includes free watermelon. Of course, there’s another dollar a car for
the air show, and the airplane rides cost a penny a pound per passenger. But people who don’t have a dollar to get onto the airstrip can watch from the fairgrounds.”

At the mention of the air show, everybody brightened. The Darling Lions Club usually sponsored an exhibition golf tournament the same weekend as the Watermelon Festival. But it was hard to entice competitive golfers to Darling and attendance at the tournament had been declining. So this year, the Lions had decided to try something different, in the hope of drawing people from as far away as Mobile and Montgomery.

The new and very exciting event was Lily Dare’s Dare Devils, featuring the gorgeous Texas Star herself, Miss Lily Dare, and her partner, handsome Rex Hart, “King of the Air.”

When the announcement was made a few months before, the people of Darling could scarcely believe their good luck. Miss Dare was one of the most famous female pilots in the country, almost as famous as Amelia Earhart. Airplanes seemed to be on everybody’s mind these days. Just two months before, Miss Earhart had flown solo from Newfoundland to Ireland in 14 hours and 56 minutes—the first woman and only the second person to fly alone across the Atlantic. The first was Colonel Lindbergh, of course, just five years before, in 1927. Miss Earhart looked so much like him—the same cool, direct gaze, the same wide forehead and freckled nose, the same shyly engaging grin—that the newspapers had taken to calling her Lady Lindy.

And just like Lady Lindy, Lily Dare had caught the attention of the public. Everybody in the country had read about the Texas Star and seen photographs of this beautiful, exotic-looking woman dressed in her trademark flying costume: white leather helmet, goggles, and white flying suit with a long, flowing red scarf looped around her neck. Known as the “fastest woman in the world,” she had participated in all the major women’s long-distance air competitions and flown as a stunt pilot in the dogfighting scenes of Howard Hughes’ famous war movie,
Hell’s Angels.
What’s more, she was a founding member of The Ninety-Nines, an association of pioneer women trying to fly high in a man’s world. It hardly seemed possible that a nationally famous female pilot was actually bringing her flying circus to Darling, which was definitely not the biggest small town in the state of Alabama.

But in fact, this glamorous, exciting woman
was
coming to Darling! And as everybody in town knew by now, she probably wouldn’t be coming if it hadn’t been for Mildred Kilgore’s husband Roger, who was president of the local Lions. Roger had met the Texas Star a couple of years before when she put on an aerobatic show at a national Lions Club convention in San Antonio, Texas. It was said that Roger—a silver-tongued charmer with a strong resemblance to the new screen sensation, Clark Gable—had
sweet-talked
Miss Dare into bringing her Dare Devils to the Watermelon Festival. That’s what the men were saying at Bob’s Barbershop, anyway, punctuating their remarks with knowing nods and sly winks. This was according to Lizzy’s boyfriend, Grady Alexander. Lizzy hadn’t believed it, though. The idea seemed so ridiculous. Why, Roger and Mildred had been married for nearly fifteen years! Everybody said they were a perfect couple.

Miss Dare was due to land her airplane, which was also called the Texas Star, on the grassy airstrip just west of the fairgrounds on Thursday morning, with other members of the team flying in later that day. The fun was scheduled to start on Thursday evening, with a special showing of the movie
Hell’s Angels
at the Palace Theater, which Miss Dare was expected to attend. On Friday, there would be airplane rides for anybody who could pay a penny per pound of his own weight for twenty minutes aloft—or
her
own weight, if any woman was brave enough to hop in that plane. And on Saturday afternoon, there would be an air show with Lily Dare and Rex Hart.

But the Texas Star and the King of the Air weren’t the only attractions. A well-known aerialist, stuntwoman Angel Flame, would also perform, doing headstands, wingwalking, wingdancing, and other high-flying acrobatics. She would also execute her incredible “Dive of Death,” a free fall from an altitude of 10,000 feet. At the last moment, just when everyone thought she must surely perish in her plunge, she would open a parachute. And then of course, there was the field show, with a magic act for the kids, a car crash, and a clown.

And if this weren’t enough excitement, there was also going to be a party, a fancy black-tie affair given by Mildred and Roger Kilgore, who had a reputation for giving the best parties in the entire town of Darling. At the party, the Dahlias planned to present Miss Dare with a beautiful Texas Star hibiscus:
Hibiscus coccineus
, according to Miss Dorothy Rogers. The hibiscus, which had a gaudy red blossom, would be planted in the garden at the Dahlias clubhouse, with a plaque honoring Miss Dare’s visit. And because the Dare Devil Flying Circus was coming to Darling at the invitation of Roger Kilgore, Mildred had invited Miss Dare and Miss Flame to stay at the Kilgore home. (Mr. Hart and the rest of the team would be staying with the airplanes, at the airstrip.)