Hallie

1975

I was new in town, and all of five years old. I met Kimmy first; her big, brown eyes and long, dark pigtails reminded me of one of the girls from the Mickey Mouse  Club reruns I liked to watch. We shared popsicles from a cart at Murphy’s grocery store while Kimmy’s mom did her weekly shopping. I felt safe, I had made a friend, and I was home. 

Just a few days later, I met Hallie in the alley behind my house. She had been riding a bicycle on “The Circle” at a neighbor’s house, an older gentleman who lived there with his sister, who handed out candy to any child who wanted to ride around his circular driveway. 

This girl I saw was riding around and around, as fast as I’d ever seen anyone ride a bike; her short, blond pigtails, lopsided on her head, flew out behind her as she peddled into the wind. She noticed me watching her, and she stopped. She came over, across the alley, and stood on the other side of our fence. She wore a t-shirt, shorts, and white sandals. Her hair was a mess, and she had the cutest,t chubby cheeks that had been turned pink by the sun. 

“I’m Hallie. Did you just move here?” She squinted as the sunlight shone in her brown eyes. 

“I’m Tammi. Yeah, we just moved here. I’m five. How old are you?” I asked, amazed that this tiny kid was riding a bike without training wheels. 

“I’m four. Do you have a bike?” She asked. 

I did have a bike, but I did not care to ride it. I had tried to learn to ride the bike, with my mom and dad cheering me on and encouraging me, but I fell off and declared the bike faulty, telling my parents to “sell it.” I wasn’t sure how this girl would react if I told her I couldn’t ride the stupid bike, but I couldn’t lie to her. She’d find out soon enough that I couldn’t ride a bike, so being honest was my only choice. 

“Yes, I have one, but I can’t ride it.” I looked at the ground. 

“Well, that’s okay. I can teach you to ride it. If you are going to live here, you are gonna have to ride a bike.” This child, who was reminding me more and more of a little feral kitten, tough as nails on the outside, but sweet on the inside, informed me. 

I didn’t want to humiliate myself again on the bike, but what was I to do? If I were going to live in Kentland, Indiana, I would apparently have to learn to ride the stupid bike. 

“Okay.” I agreed with great reluctance. 

“My brother and I will teach you. We can start tomorrow.”  She put her hands on her hips, “Do you want to see my dolls?”

I did want to see her dolls. I loved dolls. 

And so it began. The three of us, Kimmy, Hallie, and I, spent our summers eating popsicles, the neighbor’s candies, mustard sandwiches, and mangly cheese. Hallie had weird names for certain foods, and Kimmy and I thought it was ridiculously hilarious. Hallie and I spent time wading in the Kent Ditch looking for fish or any aquatic species we found interesting, and Kimmy and Hallie made pistachio pudding cake and brought it to my house so I could try it. I hated it, but they loved it. 

Hallie and her brother, Darren, taught me to ride my bike, and it became our only way to get around our tiny town. Now, my parents were a lot more strict than Hallie’s were, so as the sun began to set in the sky, I had to go home, but I could always bring Hallie along. There were many nights when she ate lunch or dinner with us, or ate at home, then immediately came over and sometimes spent the night. And those were the best nights. 

My dad wore black ankle socks, and when he came home from work every night, he’d put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, but he’d keep the socks on. If Hallie and Kimmy were over, Dad would chase us all around the house as we tried to hide. Hallie nicknamed him “Black Stinky,” and we would squeal with delight as my dad, wearing the black socks, would tickle us until Hallie’s face was wet with tears. 

Hallie was tough and strong, and if there was something she wanted to do, she figured out how to make it happen. Kimmy, Hallie, and I played in an old Karmann Ghia (that she called a ‘Ker Magee’, and so for my entire life I thought there was an actual car called a “Ker Magee”), that was always parked in Hallie’s driveway, pretending we were adults with boyfriends, hoarding candy cigarettes, with sticky lip gloss on our mouths, and freshly made mustard sandwiches in baggies sitting next to us in the car seats. I didn’t like the mustard sandwiches much, but they weren’t as bad as they sounded, and since Hallie made them for the three of us, Kimmy and I ate them without complaining. 

Hallie could find humor in any situation, and her smile was never forced. She had gorgeous, straight, white teeth, and her giggles were infectious. There could be a tornado heading straight for our homes, and she would find a way to make us laugh and forget about the impending disaster. She gave everyone a chance to be her friend, but the minute you broke her trust, the door was shut, locked, and you were not allowed ever to enter again. 

She wasn’t interested in boys (until she met Jamie, who later became her husband), and if boys showed interest in her, it literally made her sick to her stomach; she did everything she could to avoid anyone rumored to be interested in dating her. She had no patience for the nonsense, and she made that clear. 






She sang in the choir because back then, you either had to sing or play an instrument. She had a lovely voice, but she wouldn’t let anyone know. My sister sat near Hallie the year the choir director assigned a solo for Hallie to sing at the Spring Concert. My sister, Jan, said Hallie told her there was no way Hallie was going to get up in front of anyone and sing. On the night of the concert, Hallie didn’t show up. Nobody could make her do something she really did not want to do. You could try, but you wouldn’t win. Jan said, “I think Hallie failed choir that semester, but she didn’t care!” 

We had lemonade stands and baked cakes (we had no recipes; they were terrible), and tried to charge inflated prices for our creations. One neighbor called us out on our price gouging, and thus we were forced to accept 50 cents per bar for some sort of cookie bar we’d invented, instead of the $5.00 per bar we had originally agreed on. I can’t even remember what we wanted the money for, but we had big dreams of becoming rich, baking awful cakes, and charging high prices. 

We shopped at local garage sales and came home with other people’s junk, but our prized possessions. We ran from boys who liked us, and picked mulberries from Hallie’s parents’ trees. We ran into Boots and Satchmo, Halllie’s dogs, while riding our bikes uptown, and we’d try to guide them back home so they wouldn’t get hit by a car.

We swam in Hallie’s above-ground pool until our skin was pruned and pink from the sun, my freckles coming out all over my face, Hallie’s chlorine-infused hair turning green and brassy. Darren was always trying to drown us. We huddled together in the attic of Hallie’s house whenever Darren and his friend, David Gross, locked us inside. I was terrified, but Hallie was never scared, or if she was, she certainly never let us know. 

We ate sno-cones at the park, watched baseball, ate Jumbo Burgers and fries at Don’s Drive-In, and sometimes swam in the Kentland Pool. Sometimes, my parents would take us to the Nu-Joy for a Sunday lunch. If there was a very fancy occasion, we spent it at the Colonial Inn, where Kimmy and Hallie later worked, earning minimum wage, and stealing spoonfuls of peppermint ice cream when the owners weren’t looking. 

When my parents were out of town one weekend, which rarely happened, I had Kimmy, Hallie, and K.C. spend the night. We, along with Jan, slept in our basement because that’s where our television was. In the summer, the basement was the coolest place to be. After a long game of “Dorms” (a game we made up in which we would pretend to be college girls who lived in dorms and had boyfriends who were handsome and wealthy), and after we had performed the entire movie of Grease (where I played Sandy, of course, and the rest of the squad played the Pink Ladies, except for Jan. Jan had to be Danny), it began to rain. It rained for hours, and we all fell asleep. We awoke to at least two feet of water everywhere. Everything was wet. I’d never seen our basement flood like that before, and I had no idea what to do.

K.C. and Hallie ran up the stairs to find buckets to remove the water, both slipping, falling, and scraping their legs along the way. K.C.’s wounds were bloody, and a very large portion of her leg skin had been torn off. Hallie came up with the idea that we would wrap K.C.’s leg in gauze, then put plastic bread bags around the leg. I think we used duct tape to secure the bread bags. For a couple of hours, the bread bags kept K.C.'s leg dry, and we were able to get a lot of our toys, some furniture, sleeping bags, blankets, and Barbie Dolls out of the water to dry. Throughout the ordeal, Hallie kept us laughing; even K.C., with her skinless leg, laughed that day.

We grew up together. We shared secrets, and we knew both the good and the not-so-good things about our family situations. We had an unshakable bond as very young children, and although we didn’t realize it or say it aloud, we truly loved one another. 

In middle school, we all loved Duran Duran, and each of us had our favorite band member. Hallie loved Nick Rhodes, and we spent many hours watching MTV just waiting for our favorite band’s videos to air. We performed concerts in my basement and dressed up as our favorite Duran Duran band member, carefully applying eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick. At the same time, we ratted our hair and used tennis rackets as guitars. We did allow Jan to join us, but she had to be Andy, the band member we all thought was the ugliest. Poor Jan.

Hallie never called Jan “Jan.” She called her “Jannie,’ and she called me “Tam.” Only the closest of my friends ever called me “Tam” instead of “Tammi,” and Hallie established right away that she was one of the closest. And she was. She was a treasured and integral part of my childhood. She helped me to learn to be brave and to try new things. And there were a lot of things that frightened Hallie, but just like the little feral kitten I thought about the first time I met her, she just kept clawing her way back to life, finding her way through the hardest and darkest of times. She just never gave up, and it was an inspiring thing to watch. 

As time moved on, we grew older, we dated boys, and Kimmy and I went off to college. Hallie stayed in our little town, and as friends do sometimes, we grew apart from Hallie, although Kimmy and I stayed in touch and remained very close. Every so often, Kimmy and Hallie would talk, and Kimmy would let me know how Hallie was doing. We’d sometimes send messages back and forth on Facebook, and I enjoyed seeing the pictures Hallie shared of her beautiful family.

At one point, during the Covid outbreak, Hallie contracted the virus, and it nearly killed her. Kimmy and I sent cards and hoped Hallie knew that we were thinking of her and praying for her recovery. Being the fighter she was, Hallie survived Covid. 

I never thought, after her battle with Covid, I’d get an early morning call several years later, from Kimmy letting me know that our little, beloved, street-fighter, Hallie, had died. The memories came flooding back.

I know this much is true: I was blessed to know her. We were lucky to have her. I’ll never forget her.

Rest in peace, my dear friend.

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