Yet, as Oscar learned the first
night he walked her home, Anna Jane did not reside at the family farm. She lived in a Greeley hotel room a block
down and on the opposite side of the street.
This revelation answered for him one of the initial curiosities nagging
at him since the first coffee break he and his partner took in her café.
Anna Jane always engaged in small
talk with customers – especially brand new customers stepping through the door
for the first time. She was a young
woman absent any fear. She would ask
them all the standard questions, plus some originals of her own – anything to
get them talking. She believed a talking
customer was often a happy customer; and a happy customer was clearly a repeat
customer.
The day Oscar and his partner
walked in for the first time, she greeted them with her usual friendly
charm. Seeing they were new to the café,
she asked them what their names were, where they were from, what they were
doing in Greeley, etc. etc. Oscar’s
partner explained they were the two guys opening the garage next door. If the food was as good as the help, she
would clearly be seeing a lot of them from now on. She answered by confessing her total
ignorance on these automobiles covering the Greeley roads. She was a horse girl. She rode her horse wherever she needed to get. When she and her family crossed the Kansas
plains to reach Colorado from her home state of Missouri, it was by covered
wagon all the way.
Oscar chimed in at this point,
telling about his grandfather, a man who was known as one of the best horsemen
in all the state of Kansas. He passed
away some two and a half decades prior to Oscar being born; but his father, and
all the family who knew him, often regaled the young kids with stories of the
family patriarch’s exploits. Along with
knowing good horse flesh, with the good horse sense the man apparently had, he
was also acquainted with Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody. He also was known for standing fast and
fighting strong against the Texas Cowboys treading their beef across farmers’
land, destroying their crops. James
Sexton the elder was certainly no man with whom to trifle.
Such inbred familiarity with horses
must have made the absence of any horse about Anna Jane a glaring void Oscar
could not help but notice. There were no signs of horses anywhere near the café
that first day. When she explained to
him she lived at the hotel, it made a bit more sense. When she told him she lived at the hotel
because her father kicked her out of the family house, there was no sense
whatsoever. Why would a father force his
own teenage daughter leave?
Anna Jane explained to him it all
revolved around a dress. The wife of the
owner of the café, a most pleasant woman who also was a true lady in all
regards, asked Anna Jane one day as to the condition of her dress. She always showed up for work wearing the
exact, same, tired dress as the previous day.
Why was that?
Anna Jane explained she had one dress
for through the week and one dress for Sunday.
Her father would not permit any of his children to wear their Sunday
things on any day but the Lord’s holy day.
She apologized if the dress was looking a bit ragged. She cleaned it as often as she could; but
with work there at the café, and then work at home, sometimes she wasn’t able
to get to keeping it clean as often as she would have liked.
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