Fannie Flagg - I Still Dream About You

What the judge’s wife said was accurate. Mrs. Flower’s lawn had never looked better. It was as if someone had laid a fresh new green carpet in her yard with not a weed to be seen. As it turned out, little Hazel, being so close to the ground, could see the weeds much better than someone looking down from above. And she was fast: scooting on her little bottom across the yard, she could cover more ground in an afternoon than a grown man could in an entire day. As word spread, pretty soon, little Hazel Whisenknott was pulling weeds for everyone for blocks around and for most of the ladies in the judge’s wife’s bridge club. And they all agreed that once little Hazel Whisenknott had worked in your yard, the weeds didn’t seem to come back. It was like some mystical thing, they said, and they wondered if maybe she had some secret midget knowledge. Mrs. Jack Mann, over at Sixteenth Street, said she thought that Hazel might really be a leprechaun.

But in the meantime, although she was only eleven, little Hazel was saving every dime she made to one day send herself through business school, and by age thirteen, she had been interviewed by the Home & Garden section of the Birmingham News . Asked what constituted a good weed puller, she gave an answer that appeared under her photograph, captioned:

Little Hazel Whisenknott, The Weed Puller of Woodlawn, says, “Not only does a gardener have to love beautiful lawns, they also have to hate weeds.”

Her father had puffed up with pride and had bragged to his co-workers out at the Birmingham Ornamental Iron Company, “Only thirteen years old and already quoted in the paper!”

Hazel had been a success from the very beginning. In high school, she was voted president of her class and head cheerleader. At football games, when she ran out on the field dressed in a smaller version of the blue-and-gold Woodlawn High School cheerleader outfits, doing a series of back flips, the crowd would roar with delight, even those there to cheer for the other side.

After Hazel graduated from high school, her father took her to see a mechanic he knew, who rigged up a car for her with special hand pedals and brakes. She then started driving all over town and selling magazines from door to door, and with the money she made, she sent herself to business school at night and became a CPA and got her real estate license. Always ahead of the curve, she knew that after the war, housing would be in big demand. And so, in 1953, she set up a little one-room office and, six months later, hired Ethel Clipp, her first employee. Up until then, real estate had been mostly a man’s profession, but Hazel quickly changed that and hired only women. She gave them great benefits, and they loved her for it and worked doubly hard, and by 1955, Red Mountain Realty had opened eight new branch offices and was on the way to becoming the largest real estate company in the state.

Hazel also believed in promoting herself and had been an occasional guest on the popular Good Morning Alabama television show. On the afternoon of July 31, 1968, she walked into the WBRC television station manager’s office, looked him in the eye, and said, “Mr. Slinkard, I am by far the most unique individual you will ever meet. I even fascinate myself! So, I got to thinking that maybe I should have my own show.”

Several months later, after House Hunting with Hazel went on the air, he had to agree. The ratings shot through the roof. Hazel introduced people to new neighborhoods and new subdivisions they’d never known existed. She interviewed experts on obtaining a mortgage, buying, selling, renting, decorating, and landscaping. Suddenly, women all over Birmingham wanted to get into real estate, and people who didn’t even know they wanted to move started selling their houses and buying new ones. Hazel soon became a local TV celebrity and loved every minute of it. Sometimes, on her lunch hour or when she had nothing scheduled, she would make Ethel go downtown with her and stand on the corner of Twentieth Street, in front of Loveman’s department store, shaking hands and handing out business cards. After about an hour, when Ethel’s feet were killing her, Hazel just seemed to get more energized and would ask, “Don’t you just love people?”

Ethel, who had always much preferred cats to people, would reply, “Only in small doses.” Hazel, surprised, would say, “Well, I don’t know why-I just can’t get enough of them.” And it was true.

In 1971, Hazel informed Ethel she didn’t like being alone at night and was going husband hunting. And that year, when she went to the Little People of America convention, she found one and came home with a little husband. Little Harry, an Italian dwarf from Milwaukee, just like the rest of the world had fallen under Hazel’s spell. It was a very good marriage-she adored him, and he adored her.

But years later, after Hazel died, Little Harry was devastated. He turned the business over to a management firm and moved back to Milwaukee to be with what family he had left; like everybody else, he was lost without her.

They all missed her. That smile lit up the room, and her heart was as big as the moon. Of course, Team Hazel couldn’t help but think of her every time the phone rang. Hazel had her favorite song programmed into all the cell phones. It was annoying to have to listen to “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover” all day long, but nobody had the heart to change it.

So many things reminded them of Hazel. Even the color of their cars. Hazel had worked out a great leasing deal with the Mercedes dealership, for all her agents to get a brand-new blue Mercedes every year. Hazel liked blue; she said it reminded her of her other favorite song, “Blue Skies.” Hazel always did love a happy song, and a happy client.

One of Hazel’s biggest assets in business was her ability to compromise. Negotiating the sale price of a house, when she was within range of the exact price she wanted, she would bang the table with her little fist and exclaim, “Close enough!”

“Always leave everybody thinking they got a little something,” she said. Hazel’s motto for selling a house: “Put its best face forward. Move it fast. Don’t let it linger.”

A T FOUR A.M., JUST AS MAGGIE HAD FINALLY DRIFTED OFF, THE loud beeping of a garbage truck backing up in the alley woke her. As she lay there in the dark, looking up at the moon outside her window, for some reason, she began to think about the Whirling Dervishes again. Where was Turkey anyway? And why did the word “Ottoman” come to mind? Was she thinking about the country or the footstool? Oh Lord, just another regret. She should have gone to college instead of charm school. She had learned how to gracefully enter and exit a car and how to hold a teacup correctly, but not much about world geography. Charm used to be so important that they taught it, but now Maggie, who had made all A’s in the subject, found that even she was beginning to run out of charm. Real estate, as it was today, could kick the charm out of anybody.

She had personally been bitten by several mean cats, numerous dogs, a hamster, two parrots, and a ferret. She had opened attic doors and had bats fly up her dress and get caught in her hair, fallen down slippery basement stairs, and dropped Open House signs on her foot. And she had almost been terrified to death when a seller had failed to mention the eighteen-foot pet boa constrictor left in the upstairs bathroom tub. That, plus having to deal with lookie-loos, real estate hustlers, and hysterical clients all day, could go a long way toward helping you forget your manners.