What's my line? I'm happy cleaning windows (thanks, Van Morrison).

All you know at this point of the woman who lived here before us was that she once made 4 loaves of banana bread for our neighbors because her oven was falling apart. Not only do I respect that she MADE four different loaves for them to be sure one was edible, but that she TOLD them she did this and presented them with ALL FOUR. I would have tasted each one and then cleverly arranged slices from the good loaf on a plate, never telling them of my baking trials and tribulations. Or I wouldn’t have baked them anything to begin with (flowers, a bottle of wine…there are other neighborly gifts). But what can I say, old Mrs. Hershey was apparently not ashamed of her baking.

Perhaps, rest her soul, she wasn’t ashamed of much as she aged. We can infer this from a number of things- from the smell that lingered in the house of her habitual chain smoking, the stains on the hardwoods in all the rooms from either plants or pets, and from the windows she had let get so dirty I was afraid to come within a foot of them.

Dead bugs, years and years of pollen, dirt and who knows what else had clouded the windows to such a point that I don’t think I noticed a difference after the painters removed the paper from the windows after they painted the trim. I couldn’t see out of them with the paper on or with it off.

I remember vividly sitting in my friend Margie’s living room one night after we bought Tara and staring at her windows, realizing that THIS is how windows should look. Yes, this was during a Bible study and no, I have no idea what was being talked about around me (Jesus?). All I remember is getting in the car with Rhett and saying, “We’ve GOT to do something about the windows at Tara!”

I got an estimate the next day from a small local window cleaner who said he’d do the whole house for a bargain. When he and another man came to clean the next day and left 9 hours later, I had a guilty feeling I should have tacked on another few hundred dollars to their fee. “Mam,” he said. “I’ve been in the business over 20 years and these are the dirtiest I’ve ever seen.”

Yep.

If Mrs. Hershey stopped by the house tomorrow, I have no doubt that she would be impressed with the new clarity of windows. I hope I’d have some banana bread to offer her as well.