When I was 10 my father’s secretary Helen asked him if she could hire one of his boys to mow her lawn and do yard work. My three older brothers already had side hustles that kept them quite busy so they were not options. My father told Helen that he had a” younger one” who might be able to do the work. The old man stressed the word “younger” when he spoke with his secretary. Helen agreed to give me a try and picked me up the following Saturday morning for a day of yard work.

I had never met Helen before. My dad said she was a spinster and rather particular. He told me to be polite, no matter what she said and to work hard and do as I was told. That first Saturday morning that Helen picked me up she had her dog Penny in the car. Penny went with her everywhere. Penny and Helen looked me up and down in a strange quizzical fashion as I got into Helen’s car. I looked them over too.

Helen was a short, stout woman with very short reddish brown hair. She had a rather shrill voice and she was wearing what could only be described as a muumuu. I saw right away what my father had tried to prepare me for. Penny was just your average short haired friendly brown mutt with floppy ears who licked my face and sat on me in the front seat of the car. I love dogs and I liked Penny the mutt right away, I wasn’t so sure about Helen.

After the short drive to her house I got to work. She had a garden tilled and Helen wanted me to plant green beans, yellow beans, peas, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes. It was a piece of cake for me. I had done all that and more for my father. He kept a garden the size of a football field and my siblings and I weren’t ever allowed to play until the work was done.

As I worked in the garden, Helen talked and talked. She kept complimenting me on my efforts. She said something to the effect of I could work just as hard as an older boy. Then she said something about a boy named Tom. I just kept working until she said something about a young girl. I stopped working. I looked at Helen and thought to myself, does this old woman think I’m a girl? Finally I broke the silence. I said loudly, “Lady, I’m not a girl!” Helen got quite red in the face and apologized profusely. She said she wasn’t sure but me wearing my hair as long as it was and her wearing her’s as short as she did….. and she thought my father had said he had a “young girl” who might be able to do the work. Helen thought Andy was short for Andrea.

Once we got that settled it was back to work. I was still a little pissed but I put that into my work efforts. At noon Helen said it’s lunch time. I thought she was gonna bring out a drink and a sandwich but to my surprise she called for Penny and told me to get in the car. Helen drove us to the Red Barn for burgers. It was there that I discovered that Helen loved to eat. She bought me two burgers, french fries and a chocolate shake. She ordered the same for herself and a burger for the dog.

We pigged out for almost an hour before returning to Helen’s house where I finished the garden and cut her lawn. Helen was quite pleased with my work. She said I worked from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m and she was paying me for lunch. She gave me $10 for less than six hours of actual work. A seemingly astronomical sum for a boy my age in 1973.

Helen told me that if I came back in a week to cut the grass she would pay me $3. The lawn was small and it barely took an hour to cut. I accepted immediately. She also said that she would call me as needed to tend the garden and do other yard work. I felt like I had hit the jackpot. The work was easy, the pay was good and listening to this woman was no worse than having my old man bark orders at me.

Spring turned to summer. I cut grass and tended the garden. The veggies thrived. Helen had so much produce that she took some to work and gave it away while telling everyone that it came from her garden and that professor Ludwig’s son was helping her farm it. My old man never told his kids he was proud of us. We were supposed to just know it. But he had a smirk on his face when he recounted this story to me at the dinner table.

Summer turned to fall. I closed the garden and raked leaves. There was no winter work for me so my labor was put on hold until the following spring. And so it began. Year after year. I grew up and Helen grew older. The work continued through my high school years and even into my college years. The grass cutting was easy but there were times when I was working my way through college that it was hard to fit in other chores.

Helen would hire people to do work for her but invariably those efforts never measured up. She was often overcharged for inferior work. It became a burden at times but I always did what I could rather than see my friend get ripped off. Once I began teaching I told Helen that I knew several fine young boys who could use the work and who could easily take over my duties. I could tell by her response that I was never getting out of this job or this friendship. “Why would I want some kid to work for me when I have you?” she barked.

Once Helen retired she became quite reclusive. She kept to herself and stayed with her second dog and then her cat. I saw her almost weekly in the spring, summer and fall and periodically in the winter if she needed snow shoveled or inside work done in her house. Helen came out of seclusion for my wedding and for my old man’s funeral. I could tell she was way out of her comfort zone at both ceremonies.

In April of 2005, I told Helen that I would be out of the country for a bit. My wife and I were traveling to Russia to adopt our children. My buddy would be cutting her grass for at least a couple of weeks. Before I finished working for her that day, Helen called me into her house and stuffed a check into my hand while she said, ” Adopting children must be expensive. Take this. And you better bring those kids round to see me.”

Helen hired women to clean her house for her as she was a bit too rotund to do some of the bending necessary for thorough cleaning. She went through quite a few housecleaners before settling on a wonderful woman named Angie, who was of a temperament that could handle Helen’s. Angie didn’t like me at first. She didn’t understand the sometimes gruff banter that Helen and I had developed over the years. Once she realized our history and saw the genuine affection between Helen and me, Angie and I became great friends.

Angie went from Helen’s housekeeper to her friend, to a sister and then to a caregiver. One of the saddest days of my life was helping Angie put Helen into a nursing home. I didn’t think Helen would live long in the county home but she lasted more than five years. I visited and brought my kids to see her as I had promised. Helen and the other patients at the home especially liked our visits on Halloween. In spite of my son’s protests that the home smelled like pee, pooh and old people, once he and his sister were running through the halls in their Halloween costumes, they had a grand time. And the bounty they received at the home rivaled what they took in later while Trick or Treating.

Helen died on Feb. 12, 2014. Angie had called me to the county home that afternoon but by the time I got there Helen had already passed. I was sad but we had said our goodbyes in the days prior. There was no viewing and no funeral. In the obit that Helen had penned for herself she wrote that she was survived by a nephew who lived in Wyoming and her friends Angie and Andy.

Helen’s ashes were interred in the cemetery off of Route 60 in Cassadaga on a chilly but sunny day in the spring of 2014. My friend Dr. Don Howard knew Helen as he was pastor of the church she attended for a bit. Don said a few words and led us in prayer. Just Don, Angie and I were in attendance. After the prayer both Don and Angie commented about how I had made such a difference in Helen’s life.

I didn’t cry until I got to my truck. The tears flowed freely while I was driving home from the cemetery. That old spinster, who mistook me for a girl when I was 10, had made a difference in my life too.

Andrew Ludwig is a retired math teacher and a retired public school and Catholic school administrator. He currently works as a substitute teacher in Chautauqua County.