Pearls

When I was finally old enough to stray from home and explore the neighborhood, my pickings were slim. The other kids on the block were of the public-school variety who went shirtless a lot and had menacing dogs and parents. So I often took the easy way out and ended up across the street, at the home of an elderly couple who each bore the first name of Pearl.

The masculine Pearl went by his middle name, Glenn; it must have been the easiest decision of his life. Glenn wore what we kids called pop-bottle glasses, back when pop bottles were made of thick glass rather than today’s polyurethane. He was a sedentary coot, but in the evenings he liked to stand in his front yard and gaze open mouthed at the heavens. His glasses were so thick, he may have watched the moon landings from out there.

Glenn also had a heart condition and therefore could have dropped at any time, a fact that made him interesting to me, much the way I found Evel Knievel and the Flying Wallendas to be interesting.

His scrappy little wife, Pearl, was a character. Today the medical and psychiatric professions have all kinds of diagnoses that apply to her. I once got out a dictionary and looked up “paranoid” after hearing my mom talk about her.

Pearl had a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later. She cozied up to guns and sometimes charged through her front door and trained a big pistol on some imagined threat, looking very much like the undercover officer Christie Love from “Get Christie Love,” except that Pearl was seventy-five and as white as Edgar Winter.

As noted earlier, I paid the Pearls a lot of visits. What drove me there must have been our shared interest in the Kansas City Royals, for there was nothing else to attract me. She never offered soda pop or sweetmeats, and she boasted none of the novelty gew-gaws that lots of seniors kept around their houses for the sole purpose of impressing neighbor children, such as porcelain frogs that blow smoke rings or anatomically correct salt & pepper shakers.

Inevitably, while she and I chattered about Ed Kirkpatrick or the team's lame-brain owner, Glenn lost interest and dozed off in his recliner, his mouth hanging wide open. It was a frightful sight: many times I was sure I had just witnessed him passing to the other side.

One afternoon in May of 1971, Pearl wore the gravest of expressions as she beckoned me onto her gravel driveway with a solemn curling of an index finger, like one detective alerting another to a gruesome crime scene. I expected her to lead me inside the house where I’d find Glenn on the floor, belly-up and stiff as a board. Instead, she only wanted to grieve about the latest Royals trade, in which a white player (Tommy Matchick) was swapped for a black one (Ted Savage).

My folks didn’t have a lot of use for Pearl—and rightfully so—but after Harry S Truman died, my mom took her and me to the Truman Library to pay our respects at his public memorial.

That day, President Nixon was scheduled to attend as well, and as we drove to Independence, Pearl spoke with great confidence that some nut in the crowd would “pick him off.” Naturally, I began eyeballing the bulging satchel she had brought along.

Imagine my excitement as I realized there was a fair chance I’d become a part of history. Granted, our household hated Nixon, but the prospect of being a hero, of seizing a pistol from Pearl’s gnarled fingers, was more attractive than letting the villainous leader die.

When the motorcade finally arrived, the three of us peered down from an overpass and tried to determine which of the black sedans held Nixon. Suddenly Pearl began jumping. “It’s that one! That one! I can see his nose!”

Let the historical record show that the only thing she pointed as the president passed beneath us was her index finger.