Actual factual pic of the kitchen at my grandma's house, and there's the kitchen window...
By Grant McGee
The Lady of the House is enjoying the window in her
kitchen. It’s right over the room’s
double sink. She didn’t have that in our
old house but she does now. She can see
people walking down the street, cars going too fast, the squirrels playing in
the giant oak across the road or cardinals flitting about in the bushes just
under her gaze.
One morning I walked into the kitchen to find The Lady of
the House looking out her window.
“I love my kitchen window,” she said.
“My grandma liked her kitchen window too,” I said.
That’s where my grandma would be every morning. She’d stand at her double sink, cup of coffee
in one hand and a piece of peanut butter toast in the other. She’d dip her toast in her coffee and have a
bite while she gazed out her kitchen window to start her day.
Blue jays were the birds that hung around the bushes outside
my grandma’s kitchen window. She’d see a
strange face walk down the street and loudly proclaim, “Now I wonder who THAT
is and what they’re doing in this neighborhood.”
One summer morning I walked in the kitchen because I heard
her laughing so hard she seemed to be choking.
She was pointing at the window.
“Look,” she said coughing and laughing.
I had a gander out the window to see an itty-bitty boy, he
couldn’t have been more than 5 years old, he had his wickerbill out, was doing
a kind of jumping dance and was peeing all over the telephone pole across the
street in total glee.
Grandma saw a murder while looking out her kitchen window.
It was while I was away at college so I wasn’t there, but
she told me all about it.
“I saw Mrs. Johnson kill Mr. Johnson a couple of weeks ago,”
she said very matter of factly as she sat in her easy chair, smoke wafting up
from her filterless Raleigh cigarette.
I turned and looked at my grandma.
The Johnsons lived two houses down from my grandma. I didn’t know much about them except they had
some little kids, he sold insurance and had an office on one of the town’s main
streets and his bride was from South Korea.
I was too young to understand that there was trouble brewing
at the Johnson house. I could remember
on some late nights I would hear a woman’s voice in the dark crying, “Help,
help.” It came from the direction of the
Johnson house.
No, I didn’t know what kind of problems the Johnson’s had
but it all came to a head one early fall morning.
“I was standing at my window like I always do,” said my
grandma, “When I heard something like a firecracker. Then I saw Mr. Johnson.
He was running from the front of his house, running across the
street. He had a briefcase but he
dropped it and put his hands behind his head and was running and then I saw
Mrs. Johnson running right behind him.
“I heard another firecracker sound and another and I
realized she had a pistol in her hand.
She was chasing Mr. Johnson and was shooting him in the head.
“He made it across the street then fell down. Then Mrs. Johnson went and stood over him and
fired three more shots at him while he laid there. He was sure-enough dead, and she didn’t have
anymore bullets but she stood over him and just pulled that trigger over and
over and over again.
“Then Mr. Stimpson over there across the street came out of
his house and slowly walks over to Mrs. Johnson real slow, walks right up to
her and puts his hand easy on that hand she was holding the pistol in and takes
it from her then she just falls down in a heap on the sidewalk.
“The rescue squad came, the police, it was something, boy.”
My grandma saw it all looking out her kitchen window.
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