When a Tuscaloosa roommate moved out of state and I couldn’t afford to keep our house by myself, my old roommate Debbie came to the rescue and offered me a room in her place. She was living in an old house that had been split into a side-by-side duplex while she worked on her doctorate. At one point, her sister and brother-in-law lived in the other half and a couple of years later, my brother moved into that half. The rooms in Debbie’s place were quite large, but it was still a tight fit for two people. However, since we’d begun our roommate relationship years before in a tiny dorm room, space wasn’t an issue.
I don’t seem to have many photos of that place, and none from outside. Here’s a picture of me sitting on the couch in my bedroom with my good friend Susan, who I met when I was working for the VILEST PERSON IN THE WORLD, but she was a bright spot in that ordeal. In time, I introduced Susan to the man who would become her husband–in fact, they married just a couple of months before Tom and I, and both Susan and Joe were in our wedding.
An elderly couple lived next door to that house, and though I rarely saw his wife, Mr. Crawford was a good friend to Debbie and always really nice to me. He had a huge garden that he tended himself, and he was always giving us fresh vegetables that he’d grown.
One afternoon I was in the backyard with my dog Hamlet, and Mr. Crawford came over to talk to me. He decided one of the plants needed water, and as he reached for the hose, he spied something in the dirt, bent over to pick it up, then gave it to me.
It was the first time I’d ever seen a Walking Liberty half dollar. No telling how long it had been buried before it surfaced, but I’ve kept it all these years to remember our kind-hearted neighbor and the cozy home that I had for a while in Debbie’s house.