Ethyl and Santa

When everything came to light Ethyl was old and retired. She was secretary to the owner of the meatpacking plant in Beaver Gorge, but she was more than that. The owner, Jacob Steever, was a widower and from all accounts had spent a lonely ten years since his wife died. Ethyl came to work when she was in her twenties and a good looking woman. It all started with little things like making sure his coffee was hot and fixed just the way he liked it. At the end she was often caught sitting on his knee and running her hand through what hair he had left. When he died he left a big part of the company, controlling interest, to Ethyl and left his three children a little money. Of course, this led to a lot of friction but our Ethyl was up to the task. Dorothy talked to Ethyl at the reunion about all this. Ethyl said, "It wasn't too bad sitting on that old fellow's knee. I just pretended he was Santa Claus and I was telling him what I wanted for Christmas." But I digress. My main purpose was to tell how Ethyl saved Uncle from getting fired from his job as salesman. Tomorrow I'll do just that.

Tales of Harper, short stories and poems about the fictional town of Harper, Mississippi is available on Amazon Kindle