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arber shop is gone, and the Cities Service station where I once bought gas for my Sunliner is now a 7-
Eleven. There’s a Subway where Al Stevens once sold Prongburgers and Mesquite Fries.
The speeches commemorating Jodie’s centennial are over. The one given by the woman chosen by
the Historical Society and Town Council as the Citizen of the Century was charmingly brief, that of
the mayor longwinded but informative. I learned that Sadie had served one term as mayor herself and
four terms in the Texas State Legislature, but that was the least of it. There was her charitable work,
her ceaseless efforts to improve the quality of education at DCHS, and her year’s sabbatical to do
volunteer work in post-Katrina New Orleans. There was the Texas State Library program for blind
students, an initiative to improve hospital services for veterans, and her ceaseless (and continuing,
even at eighty) efforts to provide better state services to the indigent mentally ill. In 1996 she had
been offered a chance to run for the U.S. Congress but declined, saying she had plenty to do at the
grassroots.
She never remarried. She never left Jodie. She’s still tall, her body unbent by osteoporosis. And
she’s still beautiful, her long white hair flowing down her back almost to her waist.
Now the speeches are over, and Main Street has been closed off. A banner at each end of the twoblock
business section proclaims
STREET DANCE, 7PM–MIDNITE!
Y’ALL COME!
Sadie is surrounded by well-wishers—some of whom I think I still recognize—so I take a walk
down to the DJ’s platform in front of what used to be the Western Auto and is now a Walgreens. The
guy fussing with the records and CDs is a sixty-something with thinning gray hair and a considerable
paunch, but I’d know those square-bear pink-rimmed specs anywhere.
“Hello, Donald,” I say. “See you’ve still got the round mound of sound.”
Donald Bellingham looks up and smiles. “Never leave for the gig without it. Do I know you?”
“No,” I say, “my mom. She was at a dance you DJ’d way back in the early sixties. She said you
snuck in your father’s big band records.”
He grins. “Yeah, I caught hell for that. Who was your mother?”
“Andrea Robertson,” I say, picking the name at random. Andrea was my best pupil in period two
American Lit.
“Sure, I remember her.” His vague smile says he doesn’t.
“I don’t suppose you still have any of those old records, do you?”
“God, no. Long gone. But I’ve got all kinds of big band stuff on CD. Do I feel a request coming
on?”
“Actually, you do. But it’s kind of special.”
He laughs. “Ain’t they all.”
I tell him what I want, and Donald—as eager to please as ever—agrees. As I start back toward the
end of the block, where the woman I came to see is now being helped to punch by the mayor, Donald
calls after me. “I never caught your name.”
“Amberson,” I tell him over my shoulder. “George Amberson.”
“And you want it at eight-fifteen?”
“On the dot. Time is of the essence, Donald. Let’s hope it cooperates.”
Five minutes later, Donald Bellingham nukes Jodie with “At the Hop” and dancers fill the street
under the Texas sunset.