The sign in the window says “Open,” but on this cold, rainy Thursday the dusty interior of A. Wall Florist at 3115 N. Greenview gives little clue as to what’s happening in back. There, the old greenhouse is bright and cozy, and the air smells of coffee. Chairs, stools, and benches are scattered around the large table once used to prepare corsages and bouquets. In a seat next to the phone, Pearl Wall, the shop’s spry 95-year-old owner, sips coffee and shoots the breeze with the parade of neighbors, friends, police officers, crossing guards, and shopowners who come to visit each day.
Bill took Pearl out to places like the Music Box, the Granada Theater, and the old Lincoln Hippodrome, where they’d see vaudeville acts such as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Or they’d go for chop suey at the Orange Garden on Irving Park, which is still in operation. In her wallet, Pearl carries a picture of the couple in Antonia’s Model T. “They snuck it out of the garage, and came over in the alley,” she says. “John [Bill’s brother] would feel the radiator and say, ‘Mom, Bill had the car out.’ That was when no one had a car in the family, and when if you had one you were really something.”
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Wall Florist supplied the flowers for all of the neighborhood churches. Pearl’s specialty was corsages, which she sprinkled with glitter. “The undertakers disliked her,” says Dorothy. “She made beautiful arrangements, but she used glitter, which used to get on the carpet. ‘Here comes Glitter Pearl,’ they’d say. ‘Get the vacuum.’”
As the day goes on and new guests come, this story will be told again and again, getting richer each time. Dorothy and Pearl say it points to the general state of the neighborhood, which they say is in decline despite its outward prosperity. “People don’t have any pride,” says Dorothy, who’d had the police tow a derelict car the week before. “They came back and parked it in the same place. To show me. I hate to call again. I wish I knew where they lived.”
At 8:20 Pat the crossing guard arrives, wearing a bright orange raincoat. “There’s a song going through my head,” she says, and starts to hum “You Belong to Me.” Pearl, Dorothy, and Judy join in. “Get the bubble machine going,” says Pearl when they finish.
Bill died of a heart attack on June 28, 1958. After the burial, says Pearl, “I came down here and looked up at God and said, ‘I’m going to make it or break it.’” She started doing all of her deliveries herself and kept the business going.
