The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “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.

  LILY DARE, THE TEXAS STAR

  & THE DARE DEVILS

  FLYING CIRCUS!

  Darling Airfield. Fri. & Sat. July 15–16

  Friday

  Airplane Rides All Day, a Penny a Pound!

  SATURDAY AIR SHOW

  Admission: $1 Per Carload

  (Load ’Em Up, Folks—No Limit on # Per Car)

  Single Admission: 35 Cents

  PROGRAM

  9 a.m.–12 p.m. Airplane rides.

  2:30 p.m. Miss Lily Dare, the Texas Star, will perform a stunning aerial ballet of loops, tail spins, whip tails, barrel rolls, upside-down flying and other thrilling stunts.

  3 p.m. Dare Devil Angel Flame will perform incredible wingwalking acrobatics 1000s of feet in the air while you hold your breath.

  3:30 p.m. Rex Hart, King of the Air, will perform more aerial stunts in his C3R Stearman, ending with his famous dead-stick landing. You’ll be gasping every minute! You won’t believe your EYES!

  4:00 p.m. Special on-field show. Drawing for a free airplane ride. Magic show for the kids and a Pony Express Race! This will WOW you—worth the price of admission all by itself! (Remember, just a buck for your flivver, fully loaded!)

  4:30 p.m. Incredible Dive of Death! Parachute jump by Angel Flame, holding a smoking flare in each hand. She will land on a MATTRESS provided by Mann’s Mercantile in Darling!

  5:30 p.m. Grand Finale! Aerial dogfight between the Texas Star and the King of the Air, as performed in the films Hell’s Angels and Dawn Patrol! Ends with a skywriting flourish!

  Purchase a new or used car from Kilgore Motors by Sat. July 16 and get a free airplane ride!

  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.)

  With a frown, Lizzy looked down at her list, wondering if she had reminded Aunt Hetty about the plant. “Aunt Hetty, did I ask you to pot up the Texas Star for the presentation?”

  “The Hibiscus coccineus, you mean,” Verna and Mildred said, almost in unison.

  “The Texas Star,” said Aunt Hetty firmly. She refused to use Latin names. “Puttin’ on the dog,” she called it—acting as if you were special because you knew a few words that nobody else knew (or could spell), in a language that had been dead since Hector was a pup. “Yes, you asked me, child. And yes, I potted it up, so it’s all ready for you to hand it over to the guest of honor. I promised Mildred I’d bring it over to her house before the party.” She gave Lizzy a kind look. “Now, you stop worryin’ so, Liz. You’re nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.”

  “I can’t help it.” Lizzy sighed. “I’m a natural worrier. And there’s so much to keep track of!” She felt that formless apprehension again, the uneasy conviction that with so much going on, something very serious was sure to go wrong—and this time, the finger of scorn would be pointed at the Dahlias. She looked down at her list again. “Mildred, do you need any volunteers to hel
p you with the party?”

  Mildred considered. “Myra May and Euphoria, from the diner, are catering the food. I’ve lined up two colored girls from Darling Academy to serve at the buffet, and a couple of boys to set up dining tables and chairs in the garden. Thanks for asking, Liz, but I think it’s all pretty well organized.” With a delicate laugh, she added, “We’ll be serving sparkling punch, of course—and a little something extra for those who like to imbibe. Roger has charge of that, naturally.” She leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “He usually tells our guests to bring their own corkscrew.”

  Verna snorted into her lemonade. Aunt Hetty chuckled. She might be a little old-fashioned, but she had never believed, as she put it, in “prohibitin’ what comes natural. And there’s nothin’ more natural on God’s green earth than good corn whiskey.”

  “Mmmm,” Lizzy murmured. Alabama had been officially dry since 1915, and the Volstead Act had taken effect, nationally, in 1919. But Lizzy had noticed that in Darling, there seemed to be even more booze after Prohibition than there had been when Alabama was wet. Judging from what she read in the newspapers, this seemed to be true across the country, too. At a time when ordinary folks were out of work and desperate, moonshiners and bootleggers were big business everywhere. They made sure that anyone who wanted to have a drink could get a bottle or two—even in the South, which, as Will Rogers joked, would keep on voting dry as long as there was anybody sober enough to stagger to the polls.

  “Well, then.” Mildred sat back in her chair. “The party is all taken care of, the Odd Fellows are in charge of the carnival, and the air show promises to be a thrilling event. Lizzy has everything under control. And I, for one, intend to sit back, relax, and just have a good time.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Verna raised a cynical eyebrow. “It’s been my experience, Mildred, that when everything seems to be under control, that’s just the time when it isn’t. When everything just plain goes to hell in a handbasket.”

  Lizzy shuddered. “Don’t say that, Verna.” She looked back down at her list, which seemed to have grown longer and more complicated in just the past few minutes. “I can’t bear to think of it.” Or of that shapeless apprehension that was lurking at the back of her mind.

  “Oh, but it’s true,” Aunt Hetty said wisely. She patted Lizzy’s hand again. “You have got to stop trying to make everything turn out exactly the way you think it ought to, child. If you don’t, you’ll be crazy as a bedbug.”

  Afterward, Lizzy wished that she had paid more attention to Aunt Hetty. But if she had known everything that was going to go wrong before the Watermelon Festival even opened, she might have thrown in the towel at that moment and canceled the whole entire weekend.

  TWO

  Myra May Is in Trouble

  Myra May Mosswell reached up and switched off the Philco radio on the shelf behind the counter in the Darling Diner. “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town,” performed by Ted Lewis and his band, had been at the top of the charts for several weeks and it seemed like WODX, down in Mobile, was playing it every fifteen minutes or so. Every time she heard it, she wondered just what kind of silly fool would actually be ready to give up his palace and go back to that old tumbledown shack next to the railroad track, even if his silver-crowned queen—presumably his mother—was waiting for him. And what kind of man who lived like a king would let his gray-haired old mother live in a little old shack with a roof that slanted down to the ground? It didn’t make a lick of sense.

  Myra May herself had been lucky enough not to grow up in a shanty. Her daddy had been a prosperous Darling doctor and they had lived in a very nice house. Her mother, Ina Ray, had died when Myra May wasn’t any bigger than a minute—and she hadn’t died at home, either. She had been taken sick on a visit to her parents in Montgomery, where she was buried. Myra May had never even seen her mother’s grave.

  Dr. Mosswell, who felt his young wife’s loss very keenly, adamantly refused to speak of her, so Myra May had no secondhand recollections of her mother to comfort her. Nothing except for the gold-framed photograph she kept on the dresser upstairs, a striking young woman in the lacy white shirtwaist and ankle-length gored skirt of the prewar era, holding her baby girl in her arms. Every time Myra May looked at the photograph, she felt an aching emptiness in her heart. Her life would have been so different if her mother had lived to love her, laugh with her, and take care of her. Instead . . .

  Instead, Myra May had been brought up like a very proper young Southern lady by her very prim and proper Aunt Belle (whom Myra May irreverently called Auntie Bellum). In spite of this smothery upbringing, she certainly knew what a shanty looked like and smelled like, because there were plenty of them on the other side of the L&N railroad tracks. She also knew that every person of her acquaintance—that is, every man, woman, and child in Darling—would a darn sight rather live in a palace, although in these hard times, they would be happy if they had electricity and indoor plumbing and the rent paid up for the next month.

  Myra May glanced around, checking to be sure that everything was in order. It was a half hour past closing time on a Monday evening, and the front door was securely locked. The diner’s lights were off, except for the flickering red neon Coca-Cola sign on the wall over the Dr Pepper clock, which cast moving red shadows across the oilcloth-covered tables. The red-checked curtains had been pulled neatly across the lower half of the front window, the red and gray linoleum was swept clean (and mopped, where Mr. Musgrove, from the hardware store next door, had dropped the catsup bottle), and the red-topped, chrome-plated counter stools were wiped and stowed neatly under the long red linoleum-topped counter. Behind the counter, the coffee urn was waiting for its next-day job. And on the other side of the pass-through window to the kitchen, the cookstove top was clean and ready for Myra May to start the bacon and eggs and fried potatoes at six the next morning, and for Euphoria to come in at nine and start baking her Pie of the Day. Since tomorrow was Tuesday, that would be peanut butter meringue pie, which was a favorite among the noon crowd.

  Myra May sighed. That is, if Euphoria came in tomorrow, which she might not. She had taken off her apron and gone home sick after this morning’s breakfast—at least, that’s what she’d said, although she didn’t look sick to Myra May. Which left Myra May, Violet, and Earlynne Biddle’s boy Bennie to handle the noon crowd and the supper crowd by themselves. Again.

  At the back of the diner, the door to the telephone exchange was open and Myra May could hear the low murmur of Nancy Lee McDaniel’s voice as she worked the switchboard. There was a cot with a pillow and a blanket back there, so Nancy Lee or Rona Jean Hancock or Henrietta Conrad—whoever was on overnight duty—could catch forty winks between calls. All three were light sleepers, which was good, because they had to wake up fast when somebody rang the switchboard. After midnight, calls were usually emergencies, either for Doc Roberts (somebody having a baby or one of the old folks sick) or for Sheriff Roy Burns (somebody getting liquored up and using his neighbor’s cow for target practice). And just last Friday, Nancy Lee had fielded a call for Chief Pete Tate of the Darling Volunteer Fire Department. Mr. Looper’s barn was on fire. Resourcefully, Nancy Lee had remembered that Friday night was Chief Tate’s poker night and had overheard (on the exchange, where else?) that this week’s game was in the back room at Musgrove’s Hardware. The chief got the word and Mr. Looper’s barn was saved.

  Past the open door to the telephone exchange were the stairs that led up to the flat that Myra May shared with her friend and co-owner, Violet Sims, and their little girl, Cupcake, the sweetheart of Darling. At this very moment, Myra May could hear Violet’s light footsteps over her head as she moved around, putting Cupcake to bed and getting ready to settle down to some needlework (she liked to embroider little things for the baby) or a library book before bedtime. Violet was one of Miss Rogers’ most devoted customers at the Darling Library. She liked to improve her mind.

 
Myra May took off her apron and hung it on the peg beside the door to the exchange. She was well aware that their upstairs flat was not a luxury penthouse and the diner was by no means the Ritz. That distinction belonged to the Old Alabama Hotel, on the other side of the courthouse square, where guests sat down to dining tables that were all gussied up with white tablecloths, damask napkins, tall candles, and crystal bowls of flowers. And while they enjoyed their tomato frappe, asparagus vinaigrette, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, and maple nut sundae, they could listen to Maude LeVaughn playing tasteful dinner music on the rosewood square grand piano in the hotel lobby. Everybody said that it was all just as elegant as the finest Mobile hotel.

  The Old Alabama, however, had recently raised the cost of a meal from seventy-five cents to a dollar, which generally limited the clientele to traveling gentlemen who had come to Darling on an expense account—and there weren’t too many of them, these days. Most Darlingians couldn’t fork over four bits a plate for dinner, even if it did come with flowers, candles, and Maude LeVaughn at the piano.

  On the other hand, almost everybody could afford a meal at the Darling Diner. The tables were covered in oilcloth; the paper napkins stood up proud in a shiny metal holder with red Bakelite salt and pepper shakers on either side; and instead of Maude LeVaughn’s keyboard rhapsodies, the Philco behind the counter was likely to be reporting the current price of pork bellies and soybeans or playing Ted Lewis and his “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town.”

  But you could get a plate of fried chicken, meat loaf, or liver and onions, along with sides of boiled cabbage or green beans or okra with fatback and onions, or potato salad and sliced fresh tomatoes, plus all the coffee you could drink. This would set you back just thirty cents, plus ten cents if you wanted a piece of pie—a generous piece, one-sixth of a whole pie instead of the measly one-eighth served over at the hotel.