When she was 6, she began singing in the church choir.
When she was 18, she ran away and became “the Girl On The Elephant” with the circus.
A few years later, she married the engineer who drove the train. They were married for 50 years until he died.
When I met her, she was in a nightclub where she had gone to have “a Beer and a Dance”. The Band invited her to come up and sing a couple songs. She Belted out “Bill Bailey” and “You’re Nobody Until Somebody Loves you”. Her trademark songs.
When she finished singing, it turned out she was sitting on the barstool next to mine. A guy, roughly in his 50s came over and asked her to dance. She thanked him and said not now. After he walked away, she turned to me and said: “I don’t like those OLD Men. They get you all hot, then, they don’t DO anything.”
I used to see her, off and on, around town. Once a week, she went out to a nice dinner, had a “beer and a dance” then went home. More than once, she told me: “I don’t like being around a bunch of old people, sitting around talking about their operations and waiting to Die.”
She was killed by a Hit & Run driver at age 99 when she was walking out of the club where she had been having her weekly “Beer & a Dance”.
Not if you are on the Gulf Coast.
Funny thing: Only Half of Florida’s beaches are on the East Coast.