Rich’s in its heyday as the greatest department store in Atlanta was a sight to behold through the changing seasons. Its windows came alive with mechanical scenes of families enjoying winter pastimes, shopping, celebrating, and even ice skating. Of course, it was unlikely that anyone who lived in Atlanta had been ice skating within the city limits. Easter outfits bursting with lavenders and greens, as well as manikins in hats, gloriously extravagant hats in abundance behind the plate glass windows announcing the end of Atlanta’s short but sometimes freezing winters. White shoes and seersucker suits forecast the wedding season, the busiest time for Millicent the bridal consultant, and famous columnist, the original “Penelope Penn.”
Millie worked for Rich’s for thirty and more years as the ultimate authority on the rites of marriage. Her repertoire included the names of gown designers in New York and Paris, Tiffany’s finest jewelry, canapés and formulas for punch that could inspire wedding goers to reception rapture. Only the city’s best restaurants and the funeral parlors were busier on the weekends.
Millie, the socialite chicken had soared like a comet into her role as the great arbiter of wedding sheik. Few knew of her escape from a chicken truck in those tough old days when most of her contemporaries wound up as Jessie Jewel Frozen Fried Chicken.
You may recall that her first business experience came when she escaped from a truck headed for the poultry processing plant after which she wandered into a Wal-Mart by chance. There her quick wit and upbringing made her an ideal salesperson. Raised in an environment where she was maid of honor to hundreds of brides, mostly cousins, she was well equipped to adorn the crown of recognition afforded her position as Rich’s very own bridal consultant and columnist.
Millie often was invited as a status symbol to attend the wedding receptions of the Atlanta fashion set. It was just such an occasion that brought her to the door of Mr. and Mrs. Peachtree Trotter. Running fashionably late, Millie rang the doorbell of the Trotter West Paces mansion, an address not far from the prestigious ivy-draped walls of the Episcopal Mostly Day School. The wedding had been a lovely affair, an outdoor wedding in the Trotter’s flower garden. The Trotters, Millie reflected, had longed for their daughter Nina Trotter to be married and cared for and they had grown quite old in the waiting.
Nina was a fresh looking fifty, with just enough avoirdupois to lend grace and gravity to her slow movements. The groom, a banker in his very prime, was a junior clerk of 35 summers, lean, dashing and pomade-ed. He had literally appeared out of nowhere following the war, handsome in his officer’s uniform and on everyone’s list of cocktail party guests.
As Millie placed her index finger against the brass-shrouded doorbell ringer, the door suddenly opened so abruptly her feathers were blown into disarray and a procession began to exit carrying framed oil paintings, a small statue and porcelain what-nots. Pushed aside, Millie stood indignantly as the looting revelers streamed out. When she grabbed an arm belonging with the first familiar face, Millie learned that the guests were mostly disappointed potential heirs of the aging bride. When the dotting, if somewhat rumpled, newlyweds had left the house, a riot had ensued as disappointed relatives stripped what they could from one of Atlanta’s finest houses.
Such were the experiences that never made it into her newspaper columns. You ask how I knew these things? I befriended her when she moved to a retirement home for aging hens and we became friends at church. Millie preferred the Episcopal Church and socializing with people who enjoyed an afternoon cocktail, an indulgence strictly prohibited at the Methodist-run retirement home.
Very clever