Suzy in her sun bonnet talked to pansies
Published 8:39 am Tuesday, August 30, 2005
By Staff
Way back in the 1930s on the corner of Orchard and Wayne streets there lived in the big old house on the northeast corner an old lady by the name of Suzy Armstrong.
She had to be close to 90 years old or maybe a bit over when we were little kids.
I can remember how she was always out in the yard tending her flower gardens.
She always wore a long dress and always had a big, old-fashioned sun bonnet on her head.
She loved her flowers and I guess the ones she favored the most were her pansies.
She would bend down and talk to them as if they were faces of little children.
She had a brother Ike and his wife who lived next door to her on Wayne Street.
Ike owned Armstrong Hardware in downtown Dowagiac.
I can barely recall this store in my childhood days.
Ike and his wife - I've forgotten her name - used to have a little short-haired dog named Pete.
After his weekly Saturday ritual of a doggy bath he was taken downtown for an ice cream cone treat, probably at the Caruso Candy Kitchen.
I can remember Ike's big old car sitting in his garage with its wooden spoke wheels and very large tires.
I don't recall the make of the (big buggy!) but my boyhood friend John Luthringer, who lived across the street from Ike, used to say, "Boy, I'd sure like to own that baby."
A lady once told me Ike had given her one of the dolls his sister Suzy played with as a young girl.
She said it was a small doll with a china head, arms and legs and probably like the ones little girls had in the 1850s.
I would have liked to have seen the doll and recall my old memories of Suzy and her sun bonnet.