It was some years ago, but I believe it was on my 11th birthday that I told my parents that I wished to give a dozen red roses to Draper Tappermann's wife.
Ever since we were both quite small, my parents had my younger brother and I, on our respective birthdays, select a "poor old person" for whom we would present a gift marking the day.
As soon as we were old enough to absorb the concept, we learned it was not a lesson in pity or charity, but rather something to be given in respect and gratitude for those who had helped make the world in which we lived.
The parents had done with with our older brothers and sisters too, but our older brothers and sisters were much older than my younger brother and myself, and so I have no idea how that went with them.
My request that I give a dozen red roses to Draper Tappermann's wife arched the parental eyebrows, and they gently suggested I select another recipient.
I protested, "But she's poor and ugly and doesn't have anything beautiful."
My father reminded me that people are rarely, if ever, what they appear to be.
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I touched, briefly, upon Draper Tappermann in the story "Portrait of a Gentleman as a Cook;" the last Wild West shoot-out in America. Draper Tappermann during my adolescence was a little short old guy, perhaps five and a half feet tall, with bottle-bottomed eyeglasses and a black handlebar mustache so large it was more of a comic caricature than something stylish.
His wife on the other hand was about six feet tall, perhaps 180 pounds; a stately large woman, but formidable, not fat, with the bearing of a large battleship slipping down into sea after christening.
As far as I ever knew, both Draper Tappermann and his wife were natives of the Sandhills of Nebraska, descendants of Old Money (such as what was "old;" the area was not settled until the 1890s) and Much Money. How they happened to become married is perhaps now known only to God.
Draper Tappermann, through the vicissitudes of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s, and the resultant alcoholism, had dissipated much of his own wealth; by the time I knew him, nearly his entire "wealth" consisted of an impressive collection of firearms, all of them used by his ancestors beginning with the Mexican War of 1846-1848.
Once every five years or so, he was compelled to sell one of these antiquities, much to his great sorrow, and after only much reluctance and hesitation.
I never paid much attention to Draper Tappermann, as he was most of the time seen only in the local pool-hall.
But I used to see his wife, whenever she came into town driving (what one of my older brothers identified as) a 1937 Ford pick-up truck, considerably rusted and beat up and held together with baling-wire.
Upon parking it, she would then disembark, a formidably large woman in the winter wearing a great-coat from, ostensibly, one of the wars, and in the summer sporting a leather-like "Mother Hubbard" apron in front. She wore long white socks, and in the winter rubber boots; in the summer, what were obviously men's work-shoes.
There was nothing menacing about her face; nothing suggestive of terror or putting one off, being simply the face of a Stoic who had endured much, and was destined to endure much more without complaint.
At times, I tried being friendly with the five dogs who rode in the bed of the ancient truck, and much to my confusion, the dogs ignored me. They had ridden into town in a royal coach driven by a queen, and did not mix with commoners.
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One of the most irksome things about being deaf is that one is denied the news, the information, the facts, the rumors, the gossip, that teem all over in the air, which hearing people pick up with no effort at all.
Everybody seemed to know all about Draper Tappermann's wife, excepting myself, and expressed wonder that I would be curious about such a mundane ordinary thing.
There were "dots" all over, which could have been connected, arriving at reasonable and accurate conclusions, but I was somewhat young yet, to know about connecting dots.
For example, even though she seemed incredibly poor, when walking along the sidewalk and encountering one of the various local bankers, the banker stopped and oftentimes held long conversations with her; something considerably more than just pleasant courteous formalities.
And the county extension agent would listen carefully to her.
But as already mentioned, I was too young to connect the dots.
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We had moved to this town when I was 10 years old, and over time I noticed Draper Tappermann's wife less and less.
But then when I was 15 years old and learning how to drive, one summer day my "instructor," a 16-year-old friend, guided me out into a part of the county I had never seen before. (The county was rather, uh, large.) It was a very hot day, summers in the Sandhills oftentimes reaching in excess of 100 degrees, everything brown and dry under the searing sun.
We were on a gravel road, and I started to skid while going around a corner.
I slammed on the brakes, coming to a stop in a shallow ditch.
And stared in astonishment at what lay before me.
"That's just Draper Tappermann's place," my friend said; "everybody knows it's Draper Tappermann's place."
Well, I didn't know.
The place was in sort of an enormous "basin," but I paid no attention to the house or outbuildings, which included a greenhouse.
Look at the photograph above, from the Sandhills of Nebraska (but not of the Draper Tappermann homestead); take out the windmill and cattle, and try to imagine an entire half of a quarter section of it (i.e., about 80 acres) filled, cluttered, congested, with flowers. Flowers of all varieties, flowers of every color under the sun, flowers all over the place.
So many flowers; more flowers than tulips in Holland.
And despite the heat and dryness, flowers flourishing.
At the four corners of this vast acreage were miniature (if things 12-15' high can be called "miniature") Dutch windmills, their blades slowly rotating in the wind, bringing up water from under the ground.
Just so many flowers, so many colors, so much life and vibrancy.
Draper Tappermann's wife could be seen in the distance, walking among them, while the dogs romped and played and scrambled outside of the rectangle of flowered ground.
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I started drinking at the precocious age of 16 years (but fortunately quit about 10 years later, after college), and one of my last nights in the Sandhills about a year later, I expressed a desire to see all those flowers again, before I left forever.
The friends with whom I was drinking thought it odd--after all, "everybody" had seen Draper Tappermann's place; in fact, whole families used to drive out to see it on Sunday afternoons year after year, and so what was the big deal.
But I wanted to see it again, and so we went out.
It was, of course, late at night, and the dark of the Sandhills can be impenetrable, the Sandhills being far removed from the artificial light of nearby big cities (or even small ones), the only light being millions and millions of stars.
But even in this utter blackness, one could still see color, and if one was a hearing person, one could probably hear the miniature windmills turn and churn.
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Well, I went away. When I was in college, Draper Tappermann died. Then the five dogs died, and Draper Tappermann's wife left town.
It was not until later I learned what "everybody" knew; that during their 40+ years of marriage, Draper Tappermann's wife and Draper Tappermann had kept their money and property apart. He kept (and lost) his, and she kept (and kept) hers.
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One time when I was sitting in the waiting room of an attorneys' office, having come back to town to dispense of the estate of a sibling, across from me sat an elderly woman, perhaps six feet tall, circa 180 pounds.
She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her.
She was dressed stylishly, a little bit but not too much color in her hair, and looked soft and warm. There seemed a touch of grace and elegance about her. After she was summoned into an office, I inquired of the receptionist; she looked familiar, as if I should know who she was.
"Oh, that's Draper Tappermann's wife," the receptionist illuminated me; "she sold all the property and is here to settle up, after which she's going permanently back to Arizona.
"She had a hard life, you know, being married to a drunk, a wastrel, and after he died, she went to the Betty Ford clinic in California--not because she had any particular problem herself, but she just wanted to go someplace to be pampered for a while.
"And then she bought a place in one of those affluent retirement communities down there, and now she plays golf six days a week, and bridge five evenings a week and Sunday afternoons....."
