Lustfully Yearning for Something Illicit

I warned my husband Walter time and again about this one neighbor of ours Sally Sipples when I was pregnant with Walter Jr back in 1957, 15 years before the flood. I knew for sure Sally was trouble.  A sly young mother with a husband named Richie, they lived next door to Gert Whipple in the other side of her double block.  Why did Sally only come out of doors when my Walter was mowing the lawn?

My Walter, with his jet black hair and broad shoulders was the envy of most on our block, and sometimes when it was hot out, he would take his shirt off while working in the yard. That’s when she’d come out in a tight blouse to hang dry her laundry on the clothesline in her adjacent backyard. I was scandalized, because this laundry was far from clean, if you catch my drift!  Her girly foundations flirted with the  summer breezes like flimsy pieces of lace at an orgy--all Brazen and immodest--the sight of which made me blush.   In due time,  I'd catch my Walter’s manly eyes roving towards Sally Sipple's frills blowing in Penna's gentle summertime breeze.  That’s when I had to act.

Goodness gracious, the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways, so what I did was to watch her. I watched her and kept tabs on her comings and goings and got to know her daily routine. I documented everything, and sometimes I would quiz Sally’s husband Richie Sipples on her whereabouts whenever I saw him out sitting on their front porch.

Because I was watching Sally’s every move, I noticed that the tags on her Buick had expired, and so placed an anonymous call to PennDOT (Department of Transportation) which resulted in a very heavy fine for the Sipples.  The Holy Lord in Heaven Above Will Uncover and Punish You For your flaws when you do slutty things of ill repute.   Take heed.   In Sally's case, it was a literal coveting of thy neighbor’s spouse!  My spouse.  My beloved Walter.

For reinforcement, I taught her a face to face lesson that summer while making Potato Pancakes at the Church Bazzaar.  While we were peeling potatoes and it was just us girls, I told her that I heard about her alleged affair with the Boy’s Swim Coach, a taut and appealing black man named Mortimer Nagle from South Africa. Then I put my potato peeler down on the counter and slapped her hard across the face in retaliation for the overuse of her feminine wiles in her summertime backyard. I slapped her hard enough to leave behind my fingerprints, and the kitchen door that had been left open to allow a breeze caused the ladies in the Bingo tent clear across the church parking lot to hear my crack, and Sally’s gasp.  But you see, the Holy Spirit intended for her to learn a lesson, and that night, appointed me as her teacher. 

After that, she stopped prancing around in tawdry outfits and dried all laundry in a new Kenmore I had convinced Richie to buy as a birthday gift from Sears’s.  What a nice husband that Richie was, but like I says, not too much going on upstairs.  Eventually,  he got a job with the textile mill out in Dallas, and they moved out to swanky Harvey's Lake, so I never saw them again except once in 1986 when I ran into Sally at Boscov’s and got an update.

Despite Sally's lack of couth, it turns out her son Dickie Jr. grew up to be Mayor of Larksville for one term back in the 1980’s. Dickie Sipples was quite a popular chap, and when I think back to when we were neighbors, and all of the sass and plunging necklines, I never dreamed she had the guts to raise a successful local politician.  I suspect it was some of the early mentoring I gave to Ms. Sipples that night over Holy Potato Pancakes which had a lasting effect on the boy, residually speaking.

Yours in the Love of Christ,

Mrs. Walter J. Katsellas, Jr.