The Legend of a little village called New Waverly

As a child I spent a lot of time at my grandparents. They lived in a little town called New Waverly. It was actually smaller than a town at the time. It was labeled a village. My grandma would go down to the general store every morning and drink coffee with all the other older retired folk. They would sit around and gossip about those who weren't there or brag about family members who had made it big. There was a little old woman who very rarely came into the store but when she did, the atmosphere changed a little. Everyone stopped their chatter and the whole place became quiet. She was a very frail and weathered looking woman. If there was a person who could describe how death looked it was her. She had short, thin, copper colored hair. Her eyes were small and dark. Her cheekbones were very prominent and made her face look like a skeleton with a thin layer of skin covering it. I never saw her smile. It was as though the entire village was afraid of her.

She had been a teacher at one time and I'm positive she was the reason they came up with the term "school marm". I heard stories of how she would smack kids hands with a ruler and how she would paddle kids if they looked at her wrong. It was almost as if she was a witch that would cast an evil spell on someone if they made her mad.... and that was the reason no one spoke whenever she came into the store.

She died several years ago. Some distant relatives moved into the house where she lived. When they moved in, her old "recess bell" was still sitting on the piano in the dining room, exactly where she had always kept it. The couple got rid of the piano because they didn't have enough room to store it but they kept the bell. They say that occasionally they hear the bell ring but when they go look, it is still sitting on the shelf where they put it.

The story of old Mrs. Black isn't like "The legend of Sleepy Hollow" but if you return to that town today, you could ask any youngster, who never met Mrs. Black, and they will know about her and be able to tell you something about her. She is a legend in the little town of New Waverly.