RIVER CITY JOURNAL: IN SMALL-TOWN SOCIETIES, LITTLE SECRETS OFTEN PLAY BIG ROLES

This is an entirely true account of a friendship maintained behind a curtain of unbreakable social rules.

At a restaurant earlier this week, my wife and I were about to start our salads. The waitress had brought a basket of salad crackers, so we were looking for our favorites.

I don't know who invented salad crackers, but whoever decided to serve them in baskets at restaurants was a genius.

When our sons were small, we considered the basket of salad crackers to be emergency rations. Many a starving (read cranky) young lad has been rescued from that excruciating wait -- the one between ordering a meal and having it served -- by a fistful of crackers.

My wife is partial to sesame breadsticks. So we always search through all the little cellophane containers, bypassing the cheese breadsticks and the garlic breadsticks and the club crackers and the Melba toast and the plain saltines.

On this particular night, I came across a package of rye crackers, which immediately brought back good memories of the years we spent in Maryville, Mo., in the far northwest corner of the state.

"Remember when Louise Stauffer used to rummage for rye crackers?" I asked my wife.

Louise was one of those women made of sterner stuff who embraced you with such genuine warmth and affection that you can't help feeling special. From time to time she would invite us to dinner at her favorite restaurant. Her late husband had, at one time, been the editor of the paper. For Louise, the best part of the evening was the salad and the arrival of the salad crackers. She would go through and pull out all the rye crackers and put them by her plate. If there were no rye crackers in the basket on our table, she would ask the waitress or waiter to go raid the baskets on other tables. It was one of the minor eccentricities that have a way of endearing some people to those who are lucky enough to be called friends.

In Maryville, there was a trio of women who gave the small town a bit of maternal backbone. Louise was one of them. The other two, Mary Jackson and Lela Bell, were equally capable of holding their own with governors, senators, philanthropists, starving artists and even newspaper editors.

All three were well-to-do, both socially and financially. Have you ever noticed how certain people of means feel free to speak their minds on politics and social issues but would be embarrassed to discuss their ability to make a million-dollar donation to the local university and get their names carved in 3-foot-high letters on granite blocks?

Mary, a spinster, and Lela, wife of a prominent lawyer, were related to competing banking families. Mary's family had founded the Citizens bank, and the family of Lela's husband had founded the Nodaway Valley bank. Both banks were prosperous, and because of the unwritten code of small towns, they did not socialize together, attend the same church or even go to the same beauty parlor. Such distinctions may be foreign in this day and age and this time and place, but take my word that there were few breaches of the rules in Maryville.

Inadvertently, I discovered that there was, indeed, a close relationship between Mary and Lela. Here's how it happened:

Mary's constant companion and dearest friend was a pug-nosed dog named Dolly. We got to know Dolly as well as we came to know Mary. And I think if we hadn't, either one of them might have called an end to our relationship. Fortunately, Dolly liked us. Occasionally, Mary would take trips. Instead of boarding Dolly, she entrusted the care of the dog to us and our household of two sons and three cats.

Mary was the consummate planner. As Dolly's age took its toll, Mary prepared for the inevitable. In the autumn, Mary had her gardener dig a suitable hole in the back yard and store the boxed dirt in her garage. This was in anticipation that Dolly might die in the dead of winter when the ground would be frozen solid. Thanks to Mary's foresight, Dolly would get a proper burial.

Indeed, Dolly died that winter. Within a couple of weeks, there was a new dog in residence, the same breed as before, this time named Molly.

It wasn't too long afterward that we were invited to Lela's home for a small social get-together. While we were munching on cheese and dainty crackers (no rye, as far as I could tell), the Bells' dog joined the gathering. This animal was the spitting image of both Dolly and Molly.

Without thinking, I mentioned to Lela that her dog looked like it could be related to Mary Jackson's dogs.

All conversation ceased. All eyes turned toward Lela and me. I quickly realized I had said a forbidden name in the presence of the Bells.

But Lela was, above all else, a woman of refined manners. She wasn't about to let this conversational faux pas mar the evening.

"Actually," she said, "this is Polly, and, yes, she is a cousin to Dolly, Mary's dog that died. I think that makes Polly a great-aunt to Molly, Mary's new dog."

A wave of relief swept over the room as grateful souls returned to their conversations, now that a social disaster had been neatly averted.

Then Lela leaned over to me and said in a conspiratorial whisper: "You know you live in a really small town when all we talk about is our dogs' relatives."

She grinned.

Over my life I've noticed that people of means and distinction rarely grin. They smile. They nod sweetly. They laugh politely. Their eyes sometimes twinkle.

But Lela was grinning a fine country girl's grin ear to ear.

I knew the secret then. Lela and Mary were the closest of friends.

But don't tell anyone I told you.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.