In my memories she was always an old lady....Mrs Brown was a wild woman, a tarot reader, an astrologer, and a woman who went in and out of trances. She had curly red hair, which was always in need of a dye job. Sometimes, she wore hats or bandanas, but they never seemed to confine those stray hairs, which poked out in the front and the back.
She was a little bitty woman, and she always drove a big car. Maybe it was the same car, all the years, I knew her. She laughed loud, and talked a lot, unless she was doing a reading. She did readings for all the local celebrities....Waylon, Willie, and Charlie Pride, everyone loved Mrs Brown. She was accurate in her forecasts, and she never spared anyone's feelings.
My parents sold her their first rental house, and that's how they met...I think she ran kinda a cash business, because she put a lot of cash down on the house. It would have been around 1973.
Mrs Brown was married a lot....The husbands became younger, but none of them were good looking or even presentable. Apparently, with each break up Mrs Brown would lose her nest egg and start again. The last 2 husbands appeared to be drunks. I remember one reading I had Mrs Brown's husband was passed out on the couch in the other room.
She and my Mom were very good friends. Eventually, (in the early 80's) my Mom became her protector. Mrs Brown was through with marriage and her only child lived far away. The police would call my Mom when Mrs Brown was out at the truck stop reading tarot cards and perhaps harassing the customers. My Mom would either follow her home or pick her up and bring her to their house to spend the night.
My Mom had another friend that owned a string of cafes and both of them were in awe of Mrs Browns abilities, They sent her a lot of business in the late 70's. But Mrs Brown always had round the clock traffic at her house and people waiting in line at the truck stop. She was a reader and people knew it or heard it or saw it. She never hid her light or anything else under a basket.
The last time I saw Mrs Brown was shortly before she died. I think it was the week before my Mom moved her into an assisted living apartment. Anyway, I was already sober. I was in love...I was in my early twenties and was on top of the world. I stopped by my parents to pick up a box I left in their closet. As I moved down the hallway my Mom called out..."Try to be quiet Mrs Brown is asleep." I assumed she was in the large guest room and walked into the other bedroom and flipped on the light.
Mrs Brown sat straight up in bed. She looked right at me in some sort of a trance and proceeded to tell me my life. I don't remember all of it. But she did mention that I shouldn't be dating a married man. That he was not for me. And my Mother would not approve. She also told me I would have 2 children and they would be healers. She said I would find a great love late in life....And oh yeah...that I would live to the same age as my grandmothers...92. "Take care of yourself," she said."That's too long if you can't enjoy it" When Mrs Brown told me that both my grandmothers were still living. They both died at the age of 92.....
Colo
