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The old woman walked along one of McCamey’s unpaved streets, pulling a red Radio Flyer wagon. Occasionally she stooped to pick up a tin can or some other piece of junk as she shuffled along, checking garbage bins for food.
Her name was Pansy Carpenter. She lived in a scrap-lumber shack in an oil town that had seen its better days. But inside her home stood a piano, and on that piano sat framed photographs reminding her of what had been and what might have been, including a Mary Pickford-like portrait of a beautiful young woman.
That woman looked like a silent movie star, her blonde hair flowing like a golden waterfall, cascading in long curls down bare shoulders. Cream-faced, she had a sly smile and moist, knowing eyes. No wonder some young man fell hopelessly in love with her and asked her to marry him. No wonder she said yes to someone as handsome as she was lovely.
Though her looks could have given her a shot at Hollywood, Pansy opted for the circus world. She and her husband had a trapeze act in a traveling show. They drew big crowds and made good money.
All that changed in a moment.
Following the 1925 discovery of shallow oil in what became the Yates Field, McCamey grew from just a name printed on a plat to a town of 10,000 by September 1926. With money flowing almost as freely as gushing crude, Pansy’s circus troupe arrived and set up its big top at the edge of town.
One night, as hundreds watched, Pansy and her husband toppled from the high wire. If the circus hands had a net up, it did not work.
The fall killed her husband, and though Pansy survived, she had suffered a head injury. Either due to that or grief or both, she was never the same.
Pansy could have gone home to her family in Medina County, where she grew up and attended school, but she opted to stay in McCamey. She and her husband had driven to town in his new Model A, a vehicle she never learned to drive. But she kept the Ford as a monument to her late husband, setting its wheels in concrete so it couldn’t be stolen.
Apparently as handy with saw and hammer as she had been adroit on the ropes, Pansy built her own small house with attached garage. That’s where she kept the Model A. No longer able to make a living as a performer, she survived by throwing up and decorating shacks she rented to oil field workers. No slum lord, she sewed curtains, built trellis-shaded porches and turned flattened tin into architectural ornaments. When housing grew particularly tight, she also converted stripped-down car bodies into rental property, replacing missing doors or windows with wood.
A recycler before the word came into use, Pansy pulled her wagon all over town as she scavenged anything she felt could be repurposed – boards, boxes, corrugated metal, tin, cans, bottle caps, vehicle parts and oil field items. Someone later recalled that she once walked all the way to San Angelo, pulling her wagon, to buy a commode.
Early on she must have had to fight off amorous roughnecks and drillers, but that no longer posed a problem as her beauty faded with the passing years. Another photograph, taken when she was 40, shows that she had shortened her hair, which had long since reverted to its natural brown. Her cheeks gaunt, it looks like she didn’t get the best of dental care. The older she grew, the more reclusive she became.
Children were afraid of her, but those who knew her realized she posed no danger. In fact, while she often fished food from trash cans behind grocery stores or cafes, she frequently shared her bounty with people even worse off.
Roy's Notes: I was born in McCamey and lived there until I was 6. I remember Pansy, who usually dressed in men's work clothes as she built her shacks. She was kind of scary-looking, as I recall. A high school friend asked me to write a poem about her a couple of days ago. Here it is, along with a photo of Pansy when she was young.
A Sonnet for Pansy
A dazzler once, who danced on high trapeze...
They fall! He dies, perhaps a fate more kind.
Bereft of solace, sanity thus flees.
Life loiters on, enduring damaged mind.
Garbed in gaudy colored coats of rag,
the artist takes her wagon for a stroll.
Young children hide in horror from the hag,
unable to divine her gentle soul.
Some cans, some wood, some soda bottle caps,
the artist gleans the waste of cast-off junk,
and crafts adroit abodes from simple scraps
for men who have no other place to bunk.
For art she lived, she loved, and then was gone
but there sweet Pansy's legend lingers on.
© May 5, 2015
