Mary Moody Way

 TRANSCRIPT

Andreii Moody Lynch: My mother, she had knew everybody in the neighborhood. She used to do hair. She did everybody’s hair in the neighborhood—babies, whatever. She did that for many years until the arthritis hit and she couldn’t do the curling with the curling iron anymore. She always had her apron on outside sweeping, and she would clean off the street signs, and make sure all the neighbors kept their houses up, also.

Andreii Moody Lynch: Telephone was always ringing; doorbell was always ringing. It was like, she was like a person that always had people around her. Wherever she went, she had to take a whole group of people with her.

Patrick Young: Everywhere we would go, she would, she would hold court.

Andreii Moody Lynch: She was in a beauty contest and she came in first place. That was in Harlem. So she was named Miss Fine Brown Frame, in Harlem.

Patrick Young: We went to see  “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” on Broadway—us three.

Andreii Moody Lynch: We’re sitting in the audience, and it was, like, intermission. Do you know she had gravitated to all these people. The, the whole audience was sitting there listening to her conversations and her stories. 

Patrick Young: So we were going out to Junior’s to have dinner afterwards. So the street was, cars were coming down a one way street. And the lady yelled, ‘Hey, stop the traffic. This is Miss Harlem, former Miss Harlem.’ We gotta let her go through. You know what, they stopped the traffic.

Andreii Moody Lynch: Everybody stopped the traffic for her.

Patrick Young: She’s—the cops stopped the traffic. So my mother could cross that street and so we can go to Junior’s.

Andreii Moody Lynch: That’s Mary Moody. That’s Mary Moody. Yes.