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to get the focus off of me.
    “ So, I decided to change the subject and focus on her. Plus, I had never got the reason she said she was a jack of all trades and a master of absolutely nothing. I had a lot of questions about this person who was sitting across from me. So, I said, ‘What is it that you do here? It sounds like you have lots of jobs.’
    “‘ I’m the town’s fix-it, clean-it, mop-it, paint-it gal, because I don’t have one set job. I do a little of everything for a lot of local businesses. Most of the time, I work at a bridal boutique in town. I also work at the library, and sometimes I even help out at the gas station.’
    “ I was surprised. ‘That’s pretty uniquely independent,’ I said to her.
    “‘ I guess it’s nice to be trusted by so many people.’
    “‘ What do you do at the bridal shop? Are there that many weddings in a town this small?’
    “‘ Oh, you would be surprised. Mrs. Rogers, formerly Mrs. Calhoun, has been married three different times in five years.’
    “‘ And that isn’t frowned upon?’ I asked, surprised.
    “‘ Her husbands keep dying. She is a two-time widow at the age of 35. She knows how to snag a man up. To get three different men to marry you in five years…’
    “‘ Is actually pretty amazing…’ I said, finishing her sentence.
    “‘ And…especially considering the likelihood of her husband’s surviving past the age of thirty-five seems slim.’
    “‘ That sounds like that is the most dangerous job in town.’ We both laughed.
    “‘ What do you do at the bridal shop?’ I asked specifically.
    “‘ I run the cash register and help ladies fit in dresses when they are twenty pounds heavier for the dress and they all swear they will lose the weight before they pick it up before their wedding date.’
    “‘ Do they lose the weight?’
    “‘ Actually, most of them do,’ Christine laughed. ‘Don’t get between a woman and her wedding dress. I’ve seen women starve themselves into the hospital trying to fit into a dress.’
    ‘“ That sounds really unhealthy.’
    “‘ Try to convince a bride of that. It isn’t happening.’”
    “ We talked about everything from where we went to elementary school to the president of the United States being assassinated just years earlier.
    “‘ Where were you when you found out that JFK got shot?’ Christine asked.
    “‘ I was catching for my junior high school team back in California. We were playing against another junior high school. A kid yelled out from the dugout that the president had been shot. One of the parents had a transistor pocket radio and the news spread like wildfire.’
    “ She shuddered. ‘That is an awful way to find out.’
    “‘ It was just the second inning and they should have stopped the game, but didn’t. They were trying to verify that it was real and not misreported or a hoax. Nobody wanted to believe such a terrible thing had happened, so there was a lot of denial until things started coming out on more and more radio and TV stations. We had to wait almost two hours before we found out the details and we played through the game, most of us choked up and scared. What about you?’
    “‘ I was in Dallas when it happened.’
    “‘ What were you doing there?’
    “‘ My family was visiting some cousins in Dallas. I wasn’t at the location where it happened. We were about two miles away, watching it from our local television station.’
    “‘ That sounds like a great day gone really bad.’
    “‘ It was. I don’t follow politics too much. I couldn’t tell you if he was a good or bad president. All I knew was the president of the United States was shot a couple of miles from where I was staying. It was really scary.’
    “‘ That is pretty outrageous that you were so close.’ I paused and took in her statement. ‘Trust me when I tell you he will go down as one of the greatest presidents of all time. Nixon has me worried. I think he is going to win.