The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert Page A

plant a bog garden in the wet area at the back of the Dahlia House garden. Some of the plants we are looking for include the wild blue flag, cardinal flower, great blue lobelia, false dragon-head, and golden-eyed grass. Miss Rogers will be glad to supply the Latin names (if you need them). If you’ve got any of these plants to share, stop by the library (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, noon to three p.m.) and let Miss Rogers know. She’ll be glad to send somebody to dig them up. Dahlias: please contact Bessie Bloodworth and let her know when you’re available for garden cleanup at the new clubhouse. That boggy area is going to be a challenge! (Wear old shoes. Or boots.)
     
    ❧ One last thing. These are tough times for everybody. The Dahlias are compiling a list of handy tips for what you can do to stretch what you have. We’re calling it our “Making Do” list, and plan to publish it in a pamphlet. Your contributions are welcome. Just write them down and leave them for Elizabeth Lacy at the Dispatch office.

SIX
    The Dahlias Gather at Beulah’s Beauty Bower
    Monday, May 19,1930
     
     
     
     
     
    Beulah Trivette discovered her talent for hair as a teenager, when she bobbed her own hair. Her friends loved it and begged her to bob theirs, which she did, to the horror of many of the mothers in Darling, who were convinced that bobbed hair was the first step on the road to perdition.
    Beulah herself thought that her ability to do hair might be the first step on the road to a career. Right after high school, she took the Greyhound bus to Montgomery, where she got a job at a diner and worked her way through the Montgomery College of Cosmetology. She majored in hair and learned how to do a shampoo and head massage, cut a smooth Castle Bob (named for Mrs. Castle, the ballroom dancer who made it popular), manage a marcel iron, make pin curls and finger waves, and color hair. There was also skin care (facials), nails (manicure and pedicure), and makeup—all you needed to know, as the MCC advertised, “to make the ordinary woman pretty and the pretty woman beautiful.” Beulah (who was already pretty and aspired to being beautiful) graduated at the top of her class in cutting and styling and then came back to Darling, fired with the ambition to introduce every woman in town to the fine art of beauty.
    And so she did—in part because Beulah herself was a generous soul and genuinely wanted to help women make the most of whatever the good Lord had given them, whether it was a little or a lot. She was a perky, pretty blonde with a passion for all things artistic—not just hair, but drawing, painting, sewing, and flower arranging. She loved flowers with big, floppy blooms, especially cabbage roses and dahlias and sunflowers, and crowded as many as possible into her backyard.
    After a couple of years of being eagerly courted by a great many Darling males (during which time she was thought pretty “fast”), Beulah married Hank Trivette. Most people were surprised, since they’d expected her to fall for one of the rowdy crowd that hung out at the Watering Hole, going out to the parking lot every now and then to pass their bootleg bottles around. Hank was a settled young fellow without much in the way of looks or gumption and he didn’t spend much time at the Watering Hole. He couldn’t dance, either, and pretty much steered clear of the Dance Barn.
    But Hank (who had a few hitherto undemonstrated sterling qualities) endowed Beulah with something she wasn’t likely to get from her other suitors: respectability and a marketing opportunity. Hank was the youngest son of the pastor at the Four Corners Methodist Church, where Beulah confessed her sins and joined on the Sunday before the wedding, wiping the slate clean and getting the marriage off to a good start. Before long, all the respectable Methodist women were coming to Beulah to get their hair shampooed and set, and then the Pentecostals joined the beauty parade, and finally even