Thursday, April 16, 2009

Lee N' Ethel

Lee and Ethel were staples in the Woodward landscape for many years. I never knew their last name, but they were both kind of slow and shared a love for junk food.
Lee was elderly, rather slight, had white hair and also a whopping case of diabetes, which caused him to shake uncontrollably. This didn't stop him from eating a lot of candy and soda. Ethel was a very zaftig woman, with stringy hair pulled back, and she usually perched right next to Lee on the steps in front of Motz's Store (long since closed, in fact I never remembered it even open), wolfing down barrels of Middleswarth Potato Chips and swigging down liters of soda. I don't remember either of them ever talking, but I'm sure they did.
The only other place I ever saw Lee n' Ethel (try as I might, I can't separate their names) was at the Woodward Festival, where they would eat massive amounts of French fries. I never saw them without massive amounts of food.
I did hear one story where Ethel kept calling someone to fix her TV, and when he went out there to help he'd discover, on multiple occasions, that she had put all her houseplants on the TV and shorted out the set when she watered them.
Lee N' Ethel are no longer with us (it was a miracle that Lee lasted as long as he did with his diet and condition), but their ghosts still haunt the steps of Motz's Store...and if you listen in the wind, you can probably hear crunching.

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