Sister Simpson's Boarding House

FER fokes that can stir up more trouble than any half dozen other people you got to look up Sister Simpson, who runs our local boarding house. There probably aint anybody else in four states that's so good a hand at minding other fokes business, and how she manages to take care of her own is something we can't figger out.

Course, if you want to be real pinted, maybe she doesn't take care of her own business at all. Most general, it's her own work or her own boarders that's left to shift fer theirselves while Eller is out being busy somewhers else. Bout the only compensation her boarders get is the news she spreads, because somehow Eller always manages to hear all the gossip about five minutes before it happens. Marty Wood, who boarded at her place one summer, said he figgered hit was the news she charged him fer and not the meals nor the room, which couldn't have been worth that four dollars a week she charged no matter how you looked at it.

Hit's like finding your way through the underbrush to get around in her house. The fire is generally out and the clock stopped, and you have to watch real careful or you'll take a header over the dish pan which most often is setting right in the middle of the floor where Eller dropped it to go listen in on the party line.

According to what we've heard, she has some kind of contraption rigged up to the telephone so she can set and listen while she's shelling peas or churning, and there aint a bit of news gets loose around the whole community that Eller aint heard first. Sometimes she must jest sit and think up news, because often enough the fokes hit was supposed to have happend to are downright surprised to hear about it, theirselves.

 According to some of the fellers that has lived there at one time or another, there is something pretty permanent about Ellers cooking. Hit don't seem logical that the stuff she serves the boarders could get that way by accidents. A body'd mighty night have to cook it that bad deliberate. There are one or two fellers who have swore that Eller uses a slab of her own corn bread fer a door stop, but it don't seem quite likely.

One thing about Sister Simpson that everbody can give her credit fer is that she's about the helpfulest person in Pine Ridge when it comes to fixing up sociables or figgering out partys fer other fokes in the community. If the school house needs deecorating fer holloween or something like that, you can depend on Eller to take charge and see to it that everthing that can be done is did. She is also a great hand at playing the organ and singing. Often enough she'll bust out into song whether you want her to or not, but its one accomplishment that comes in awful handy whenever you need anybody to do any playing.

One other thing, you can always depend on Sister Simpson fer anything that has to be done about getting out the ladies vote in any local politicks. She was our original suffragets, and at the drop of a hat she'll get out and dig up signers fer any kind of petition you might have a mind to make. Any way you look at hit, she gets a powerful lot of enjoyment out of looking after other fokes business.