E is for Excentric

When I lived in Pheonixville, Pennsylvania, there was this lady who would walk around town wearing the same blue coat, head wrap, sunglasses, and one glove. It didn't matter if it was 100 degrees or 0. She would always be wearing the same thing. Everyone referred to her as "The Blue Coat Lady", and everyone swore that she had lived there for as long as they could remember. From time to time we would see her shopping at the grocery store or walking along the side of the road, going nowhere, in particular it would seem. I would have guessed her to be in her 60's or 70's if it weren't for that one gloveless hand. It looked like the hand of a teenaged girl.

She lived in a house, two houses down from me, right next to the railroad tracks. Her house was slightly further back from the street and surrounded by tall weeds and small trees. I had no idea it was there for months, until one day I brought up the subject of the blue coat lady with my landlord during an innocent chat. He told me about when he had bought the house we were living in and the one next door. How he was cleaning up the yards and getting rid of all the weeds and extra growth. He actually walked up to the house to see what it was, and found lights on inside.

There were no walkways leading out onto our street or the main road that backed up to our house. Which meant she must have walked out along the railraod tracks. I used to take walks along the tracks with my neighbors and their kids and we would see her walking away from her house from time to time.

Rumor, also had it that she lived with her two brothers. Nobody ever saw either of them out around town. I would have never believed any of it if I hadn't seen it for myself. I don't know whether the brothers are real or just rumor. But, she would come and go along the tracks and the house was there. Every once in a while, lit up at night. I always wondered what would lead someone to live like that.