Ruby Dillon

Ruby Dillon

Noel Laflin

9-5-18

Ruby Dillon could pack away a fifth of bourbon every night.

My father and I both knew this as we took her trash cans out to the curb every Thursday. One can was filled with grass clippings – the heavy damp canister I created every Saturday afternoon. The other can clanged with empty bottles – the ones Ruby created every evening after work and throughout the weekend.

Despite her being a drunk for much of her time living next door to us, we loved and cared for her nonetheless. We had become her adopted family – my folks were like younger siblings. My brother, sister, and I were the children she’d never had.

She was a tough broad (she would have approved of the description) having grown up during the heyday of the Roaring Twenties and then Chicago’s tough Depression era of the 1930’s. She barely stood five foot tall – in heels - and smoked a couple of packs of Viceroys every day – up until a lung had to removed somewhere in the mid 1960’s.

Ruby would get to drinking and wander over to our house much of the time. My mother had the patience of a saint, listening to Ruby’s rambling reminisces of two dead husbands, a house once filled with roses, the deplorable state of the country. When mom would leave the family room to start another pot of coffee – being that she had traded in Ruby’s highball glass for a mug, my sister and I might accidentally wander into the room and be corralled into keeping Ruby company – so that she did not wander back home to refill her glass.

Sometimes she would get away and one of us would eventually head on over, and put her to bed.

Other times we mistakenly thought her safely tucked away for the night, such as one memorable New Year’s Eve when she awoke, shambled over to our house and showed up in our living room in nothing but a raincoat. She dropped the coat and proclaimed to one and all, ‘I’m naked as a jay-bird!’ And she was. My mother, true to form, quickly bundled Ruby up, took her into the kitchen and replaced the highball glass with a steaming cup of coffee.

And the party resumed.

Amazingly enough, come seven each weekday morning, there was Ruby heading to her car looking like a million bucks. She was a top notch secretary and never missed a day of work.

But there came a point where the drinking finally caught up to her.

Out of the blue one day, she asked my father to take her to an Al Anon meeting, which he was happy to do. While there, she had a fit and collapsed, an ambulance was summoned and Ruby was admitted to the hospital.

My parents recounted visits there as she went through alcohol withdraw – the restrains on the bed. the wild talk, the pantomiming of taking a drink or smoking an imaginary Viceroy. She fought a tough battle – but eventually won.

She remained our sober neighbor before moving to Long Beach where she remained sober. My mother and father still looked in on her every week.

Eventually there came a time when time itself caught up with Ruby and she moved into a senior center. Shortly thereafter she took a fall, broke her shoulder and died two days later.

My parents saw to all of the arrangements as she had named them executors of her will and estate. It was just our small family at her funeral, as we were all that was of her family.

She left everything to my folks and I inherited her cat, along with the memories of that tough gal.

My sister sent me an email this morning reminding me it was Ruby’s birthday today, September 5th.

That got me to reminiscing – minus the highball.