How smalltown talk killed a young girl's friendship

Preface: This is a chapter from Al’s Bar: A Memoir, that spans the period from 1950 to 1964 when my parents, Bill and Anne Haug, owned a bar on Bigfork’s Electric Avenue. While some may remember these characters and events differently than I, this is my perception of the people and events that shaped my small life, not about facts that have no real meaning out of context. 

Harry Ardner was my best friend when I was a toddler. 

He lived in a one-room shack that adjoined the Mize’s barn, and helped Mr. Mize with the garden, chickens and general up-keep of the place. (Harry also had an invalid brother who lived in an old cottage on Dockstader’s property, but I don’t recall much of him).  

Harry wore a felt fedora, just like my Dad, and a dark shirt and khaki work pants held up by suspenders.  He had a round, kindly face, always smiling behind his bushy mustache. 

I often spent the afternoons at Harry’s to give my Mom a break from watching me. In the summer, I helped him weed the garden; in bad weather we sat at his kitchen table and read books or cut and pasted pictures from magazines with Lepage’s glue. He told me it was made from old horses, which made me cry so we started using Carter’s paste instead.  I loved horses.  Sometimes he fixed me lunch – a bowl of soup or stew heated on his wood stove, or a sandwich in warmer weather.  Then I took a nap under an old scratchy brown wool blanket on his cot-bed.  I hated naps at home, but somehow at Harry’s I seldom complained and went right to sleep. I think it was the snuggly feeling of his cot and the warm wood heat that did it. And the sense of security I felt with Harry.  

After my nap, Mrs. Mize rang the bell by her backdoor, which was the signal to come inside for cookies and milk. She was crippled from arthritis but always kind and good-natured.  Once one of the older kids in town told us little kids she was like the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel.  Since she was German it was believable, and I became afraid to visit her. I told Harry about this, and he reassured me it wasn’t true.  

This idyllic life went on for a couple years, until one day Mom said, “I don’t want you to visit Harry any more.”  

“Why  not?” I cried in consternation.  She exchanged looks with Dad.  

He picked me up and said, “You’re a big girl now, and don’t need to be bothering Harry.”  

“But, but….”  I couldn’t talk through my tears.  Finally I managed, “But Daddy, he needs me to help him in the garden.”  Daddy hugged me close and I could tell he was stifling his own tears.  Then he set me down.  “Go sit at a table and draw me a picture.”

I went to a booth and drew of picture of Harry at his shack, and me on the other side of the fence with tears in my eyes; and the sun behind a cloud.  I thought about Harry.  No more afternoons munching fresh carrots pulled straight from the earth and into my mouth.  No more naps on his cot.  No more stories.  No more pasting pictures.  

“Mom, can I visit Mrs. Mize and show her my picture?”  She looked at Dad; he nodded in assent.  “OK, sugar, but be back here for lunch.”  I went often to the Mize’s with a hope of seeing Harry, but he never came in when I was there.  He stopped visiting Dad at the bar, too.  It was like he’d moved away, and yet I knew he still lived in the shack.  

Then one summer afternoon when I was six, Mom said, “Would you like to visit Harry today?”  

I was dumbfounded, but I went over and knocked on his door.  I heard him get up from the table to open the door. “Come on in,” he said, grinning ear to ear. 

“Hi, Harry,” I said as I stepped up into the shack and sat in the chair he pulled out for me at the table.

We read a few books, and he fixed me cookies and milk.  But it just wasn’t the same. I still loved him, but I was a big girl now and didn’t need an old bachelor for my best friend.  I still visited him from time to time that summer, but after school started. I didn’t go back.  I knew I’d broken his heart, but I’d made new friends and didn’t have time for Harry any more. Some time that winter, his brother died and Harry moved away.

Many years later I learned the reason for the abrupt separation.  Dad had gotten wind of the talk around town about a little girl like me spending so much time alone with an old man.  Dad trusted Harry, but the talk was wearing him thin.  He told Harry about the talk, and between them they decided it was best if I just stayed away.  Poor Harry! It must have been like losing a daughter.