The Witch of Warfel Avenue

It has been a good many years since I remembered the witch.  It's funny, isn't it, how memories are triggered?  I started writing this a couple of days ago, actually on a completely different subject.  I was remembering the kids in the neighborhood, and one stuck in my mind.  I could see his face and his house, but his name wouldn't come to mind.  As I opened a forward from a friend, there it was!  Synchronicity?

Anyway, back to the witch.  When we were kids, we spent lots of time going 'round and 'round the block.  After all, Jane and Judy and our common crush, Alex,  lived on the other side.  My dad's garage was still there, even though Dad had sold it.  The new owner, a family friend, pumped up our bike tires. White's Market and McCrillis' Red and White were there, too, and we made regular stops for penny candy and Popsicles.

Rarely--very rarely--did we venture around the corner from White's Market onto Warfel Avenue.  Warfel wasn't a bad street.  Max's junkyard was on one side, and the Star Club where my mom and dad met.  The other side had a row of pretty WWII houses with petunias in their porch boxes and neat shrubbery in their yards.  There was nothing to fear, except that one house.

The house itself was not intimidating.  It was bigger than Jane's, but with the same grey siding.  It didn't have a porch like Linda's or mine, nor did it have the bright white trim of Michael's.  The front lawn was small and weedy, poorly manicured but not a jungle, either.  No, the house was like a hundred others.   It was the crone inside whom we feared.  She was reputed to be a witch.

Never having met her, I can't say this for sure.  All I know is that word got around.  I heard rumors of the spells she cast on those who trespassed, and about the evil glares she gave the neighbors.  I wasn't afraid of her, not me.  My grandmother (the truth hurts, Grandma) could fell any mere mortal with a glare of her own.  Nope, I wasn't scared of a witch, not me.  But just to be safe, I went the other way to Dolores' house or to the Perry Plaza.  No sense asking for trouble.

I never found out if the witch used lizard tongues or spider eggs to make her potions.  I don't know if it is true that the boy who peed on her shrubs disappeared.  I heard she turned boys into toads and girls into cats.  It did seem that there was an overabundance of strays some summers, and I never did hear from Valerie or Debbie...I thought they had moved...

As I grew, I realized she was just a woman in her dotage.  Perhaps the fear she instilled  was a hobby to keep her privacy intact.  The glare might have been a glass eye (Grandma's wasn't).  She might have been lonely.  I wish I had been the brave kid, taken her a rosebud and said hello.

The witch of Warfel Avenue popped into my head for no good reason.  It made me wonder what else is hiding in the recesses of my mind.  I expect to open Facebook someday and find a long-buried image of an old friend, or maybe I will run into someone at one of the places I work.  I hope they will recognize me and say hello without fear.  Tiny things can trigger remembrances.

Don't be afraid to speak!  I'm not the witch of Warfel Avenue, just Marilyn.