June’s Jack in the Pulpit on a summer day

One hot, summer day, my neighbor June, sat alone on her front porch on Wagner Street while I pedaled my blue bike.

I braked. “Hi, June!”

“Hello, Iris! I was just thinking about popping some corn. Would you like to join me?” she asked.

Compelled by her proper invitation, I nodded.

June sure loved children. I felt sorry she didn’t have her own, but couldn’t help feeling special – like when Granny asked me to wash her canning jars.

June stood up. “It’s too hot to work or sit outside.”

Inside her house was like Paradise.

The cool air tingled my skin. Closed, fringed draperies darkened the living room, but the kitchen sparkled like her diamond.

The layout of her house was exactly the same as ours, but June and Lou’s house looked like something in Mom’s Better Homes and Gardens Magazine.

Standing by her side, June lifted a deep pot from the drawer beneath the oven and poured a bit of oil on the bottom.
She looked to me and smiled. “Stand back, please.”

June turned on the gas and removed a lid from the same drawer under the stove. When I smelled the hot oil, June poured in popcorn kernels from a bag and put the lid on the pot. June took two potholders and began shaking the pot over the flames.

When the popping started, I looked up to her wide-eyed. I’d never heard or smelled popcorn cook before and couldn’t help but look about the kitchen.

This was the first time an adult neighbor invited just me into her home, and the thought never entered my mind that I might’ve done something wrong when I accepted.

One of the first houses built on Wagner Street in Warren, June and Lou furnished their home like her flower gardens-a place for every lovely thing, and every lovely thing in its place, like the bright colored flowers in a vase on her kitchen table.

June loved her flowers so much she brought some inside.

Mom was right. Flowers were her children.

The popping stopped and June turned off the gas. Relaxed as I ever saw a woman, she asked, “Would you like some iced tea?”

Tongue-tied, I swallowed in amazement. Popcorn, flowers, and iced tea. What could be more special?

We sat at her kitchen table beneath two corner windows exactly like our kitchen windows, but with fancier curtains. We munched and sipped until kernels gathered in the bottom of our bowls.

Then, June led me outside and into her backyard to a flower garden with shrubbery so thick we couldn’t see the fence. With affection, she pointed beneath the shrubs to the strangest flower I’d ever seen. “See the Jack in the Pulpit?”

“Is that its name?”

“Yes, because it resembles a preacher in a pulpit,” she said.

Dear Reader, throughout this gardening season, I’ve recalled June’s hospitality and her Jack in the Pulpit beneath the shrubs that hot, summer day.

They’ve made all the wonderful difference in my life.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com