Sally Cantor interview, 20 July 2021

Abstract

Sally Cantor is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, and a member of the Village Garden Club in Shaker Heights. She discusses growing up in Georgia, her research and career in social work, time spent living in Wilmington, Delaware, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, before turning to her experience in the garden club. She shares stories about her night-blooming cereus parties, the garden club's Cherry Tree Grove, how the club continued to meet virtually during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Horseshoe Lake dam controversy.

Interviewee

Cantor, Sally (interviewee)

Interviewer

Cameron, Caitlen (interviewer)

Project

Shaker Heights Historical Society

Date

7-20-2021

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

70 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Sally Cantor interview, 20 July 2021" (2021). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 918003.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1234

Related Resources

Shaker Historical Society @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Caitlen Cameron [00:00:01] Hello, my name is Caitlen Cameron. It is Wednesday, July 20, about 3:00 p.m. It is a beautiful day outside, a little toasty. We are in... Cleveland Heights now?

Sally Cantor [00:00:15] No, Shaker.

Caitlen Cameron [00:00:15] Shaker Heights. Okay, everybody has been in Shaker Heights so far. Or in Cleveland Heights. But I'm with...

Sally Cantor [00:00:23] Sally Cantor. [Spells name]

Caitlen Cameron [00:00:31] And she is one of the members of the Village Garden Club, and I am excited to hear your story today. Sally, do you consent to be recorded right now?

Sally Cantor [00:00:41] Yes, I do.

Caitlen Cameron [00:00:42] Alright, then let's get started. I guess I just kind of want to start out with where you were born.

Sally Cantor [00:00:49] Okay. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and my family had been in Georgia, I think about three generations and were... And I often wish I had asked more questions because they were Jewish, they came over after the Civil War, my great—what was it, my great or my great-great— are buried in the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, which is a real old historic cemetery, and [I] would've liked to have heard more about their experiences as Jews there, because I know my mother was born in 1920 and I think it was in 1920 [sic—1913] that a Jewish man [Leo Frank] was accused of raping a woman [Mary Phagan] he worked with, was convicted on very false information, was jailed in the jail and then taken out and lynched by a mob. And I think that had a pretty profound effect on my mother's generation growing up.

Caitlen Cameron [00:02:24] That's kind of crazy how things were back then and how we really treated people that we saw as different even though it was just a religion, you know.

Sally Cantor [00:02:34] Mhm.

Caitlen Cameron [00:02:35] So do you still practice a lot of Jewish traditions today?

Sally Cantor [00:02:40] Yes. I'm not a member of a synagogue, but we observe the the major Jewish holidays and try to be ethical and treat people ethically.

Caitlen Cameron [00:02:57] Mhm. So, okay, so growing up, so your mom was Jewish too, right?

Sally Cantor [00:03:01] Yes, both of my parents were.

Caitlen Cameron [00:03:03] Okay. So, what was it like growing up at home in Atlanta?

Sally Cantor [00:03:06] It was... I'm trying... What I'm laying out is what do I want to share and what to...

Caitlen Cameron [00:03:20] It's okay.

Sally Cantor [00:03:20] We were, you know, I think we were a family that became very close-knit because of traumas that happened. I think my parents were happily married. And when I was four, my father, who was a pharmacist, was locking up his store, and someone came by and asked for, I think, wanted to buy cigarettes and shot him in the head. And my sister was under ten days old, I don't remember right now. And my mother had not left the house and my father was not expected to live, but he did live and was extremely mentally impaired as a result. Initially, he was highly suicidal. And I think it really had to do with where the bullets lodged in his brain. And then he had periods where he had extreme mania and other periods of depression and he had horrible judgment. And I think we sort of became more isolated because you didn't... The message we got growing up, you don't talk about this and you never knew, like if you were somewhere and you ran into one of my parents' friends and they say, oh, how's your family doing? And you'd give the "Oh, they're doing fine." And it's "Oh, well I thought your father was still in the psych hospital." You know, and so you never knew who knew what.

Caitlen Cameron [00:05:23] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:05:23] And, and it... And I think my mother made some really bad mistakes in terms of her children by staying with him. And she finally divorced him. I was in graduate school and that was... [laughs] That was a little late for it to have really helped us. And she cared for him his whole life. And he died about thirty-four years ago.

Caitlen Cameron [00:06:00] Wow.

Sally Cantor [00:06:00] Yeah. But I, at my healthiest, realized if I wanted a healthier life, I couldn't... I couldn't stay in Atlanta. I needed to get away. And so I went to college outside of Chicago and then graduate school in New York.

Caitlen Cameron [00:06:25] What schools did you go to?

Sally Cantor [00:06:27] Well, I graduated from high school. I haven't thought much about high school till recently, but I graduated from Henry Grady High School and I thought of Henry Grady... I was the editor of the paper, which was called the Southerner, and as someone who really supported a more civilized Reconstruction and got newspapers going, the journalism school at University of Georgia is named after him. But he was also a well-known racist.

Caitlen Cameron [00:07:10] Oh!

Sally Cantor [00:07:10] And the sheer... The school name was changed from Henry Grady to I think it's Boulevard High School. I think that's right. I could be wrong, but something that, you know, just sort of a neutral street.

Caitlen Cameron [00:07:28] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:07:29] And I just don't keep up with many kids from high school. But there seemed to be a lot of real mixed feelings about it. But it's certainly the way things are going right now.

Caitlen Cameron [00:07:44] Yeah, oh my goodness. Well at least that's something historic. You were part of that, even though it was something partially negative, it was...

Sally Cantor [00:07:54] Well, we also... And I went to segregated schools, although this was after Brown v. Board of Education and Martin Luther King [Jr.]'s older two children went to my high school.

Caitlen Cameron [00:08:13] Really?

Sally Cantor [00:08:14] Yes.

Caitlen Cameron [00:08:16] Wow.

Sally Cantor [00:08:16] And one of my... I think when, and I may... When he was assassinated and, you know, the whole country was shutting down, the high school had some dance that evening and here it has... They're students. His children go there. The whole country is shutting down to honor him. And my mother called the principal and said, you've got to shut the school. You've got to cancel the dance. And I can't remember if it was prom or homecoming. And he did. And he left. He later thanked her profusely for telling him to do that, because I think you... I don't think he realized the magnitude of this.

Caitlen Cameron [00:09:13] Yeah, that really shook the nation.

Sally Cantor [00:09:15] Yes. Yes.

Caitlen Cameron [00:09:19] Wow.

Sally Cantor [00:09:20] Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:09:20] So you after you... So, you left high school and you went to college, you said in Chicago?

Sally Cantor [00:09:26] In Chicago.

Caitlen Cameron [00:09:26] What college did you go o?

Sally Cantor [00:09:27] Lake Forest College.

Caitlen Cameron [00:09:28] Lake Forest?

Sally Cantor [00:09:28] It's a small, coed, liberal arts school. And I had never really dealt with snow. [laughs] And it was overwhelming at times. And, you know, I felt like I got... I majored in American Studies and I thought I got a really good education there and then... But knew I was I wanted to get to a place with less wind and less snow and for graduate school went to Columbia in New York City, and my brother was finishing up his senior year of college there. So it was fun being, you know, in the same city.

Caitlen Cameron [00:10:23] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:10:24] Yeah. And then after graduate school, I got my first apartment. I lived in, you know, graduate student housing and got my first apartment and lived in New York, really enjoyed being single there and knew if I wanted any money [laughs]...

Caitlen Cameron [00:10:51] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:10:51] That I think it was like I got paid twice a month. I was working as a social worker and I remember my first salary. Master's level, it was ten thousand four hundred dollars.

Caitlen Cameron [00:11:08] Oh my goodness.

Sally Cantor [00:11:08] And we went on strike and it went up to ten eight. [laughs] But it was enough. My I think I was paid twice a month. The first check was rent and the check, second check was everything else. And I managed fine, but there was not much left over, you know, like if you wanted to save for any sort of future.

Caitlen Cameron [00:11:33] So what do you get your... What was your master's in?

Sally Cantor [00:11:37] In social work.

Caitlen Cameron [00:11:38] In social work?

Sally Cantor [00:11:38] Yes, and I worked at a child welfare agency. Very well thought of agency, agency that's gotten just horrible press over the year. When I started there, they were still doing some baby adoptions. But as became acceptable, people were kee[ping]... young women were keeping their babies. They also had a maternity shelter for young women and were doing a lot of adoptions of older children, children who were in foster homes and, you know, freed for adoption. They were very good at trying to help someone who had lost their children to foster care to rehabilitate and be able to make a home. But if it didn't work, they were very good in terminating the rights so the children could be placed for adoption. And I did some of placing older children for adoption... And also working with some young women giving up babies. And, but one of the things they had done before I was there was their policy was if you... If someone was giving birth to twins or triplets, they split them up.

Caitlen Cameron [00:13:23] What?!

Sally Cantor [00:13:24] And I'm reacting... And the theory was—and this was an agency that seemed to carefully research things—that it was so overwhelming to mothers who could not have their own children to adopt that this was best to do. And I see your reactions. And there's been a film made—and I don't remember the name of it—about three brothers who discovered each other. You know, they were... It started happening where one was aware. Well, everybody calls me about another, by another name. Why is that? And when I was there, that was certainly not going on. And they were sharing extensively with parents and adoptive parents about children. For example, I placed an infant for adoption whose parents were a 14-year-old girl and her 15-year-old brother. So, you know, this was a baby as a result of incest who appeared to be very healthy. But we shared this totally with the adoptive family. And I know probably that was new for them to do, you know, and shared extensive medical and, you know, made provisions that if a birth parent wanted to connect with their child and the adoptive parents and the adoptee was interested, we would facilitate that.

Caitlen Cameron [00:15:11] Wow. That's... See, I can't believe that type of stuff happened and still happens, you know, like...

Sally Cantor [00:15:19] Well, and then from... I mean, it is shocking. And I felt... But I felt, you know, their motivations were very, very positive. You know, they thought they were doing, following science. They also... My work there, I was part of a research project through the Child Welfare League of America to study whether at the time of the major crisis in a family where children were unsafe at home and where the normal... The standard was you would remove them into foster care if you poured in services, would that make... Could you keep them out of foster care? And I worked... You know, we care... There was a control group who got the traditional treatment and then our... And then we got the cases of this very small caseload. And you had tremendous resources to offer a family, including a residence where a young mother could live with her child and the child would be cared for during the day while she went to school. And there'd be people there to help her learn to better care for her child and help with bonding. And it was sort of very exciting to see some of these young parents move out—and, you know, where they had almost no parental support themselves—but move out and be able to get apartments, get them furnished, and have a way of, you know, raising their children.

Caitlen Cameron [00:17:16] Did all those... The experiments you did and the tests, did they succeed?

Sally Cantor [00:17:21] It was shown to be very effective. And it's why most... You know, today in child welfare, there's tremendous effort in keeping the children in their own home by putting in more services there. And then when you talk... And then I moved to Delaware, and—you were reacting to, you know, children, twins being separated—well, I worked, went to work with another very good agency who the practice at the time had been if for children who were severely cognitively impaired that the female children were sterilized because if it made it possible for them to be adopted. You know, that was one worry parents didn't have. And I remember sitting in a meeting and hearing that and being totally stunned. And this, I think every case where there was sterilization was approved by a family court judge. And I think around the time I was there, they stopped doing this. This was probably thirty-eight years ago, something like that.

Caitlen Cameron [00:19:02] Wow.

Sally Cantor [00:19:03] So, I mean, that's not that long ago.

Caitlen Cameron [00:19:05] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:19:06] Right. Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:19:07] Oh, my gosh.

Sally Cantor [00:19:08] Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:19:08] I can't even imagine if that... Like you say, like you say, if that were a thing today, like if they were like, Oh, sorry, we don't want you to bring on this bloodline or anything, so we're going to ster[ilize you].

Sally Cantor [00:19:22] Well, I think some of it is these were children who it was felt would never be able to raise a child.

Caitlen Cameron [00:19:32] Mhm.

Sally Cantor [00:19:33] And so it... You know, this was a way, you know, if doing this ensured that they had loving parents who would raise them, that was seen as the lesser evil. And then I think it stopped.

Caitlen Cameron [00:19:55] Oh, that's crazy.

Sally Cantor [00:19:57] Mhm.

Caitlen Cameron [00:19:58] So, okay, so you were in Delaware.

Sally Cantor [00:20:00] Yes.

Caitlen Cameron [00:20:01] So how did you finally get to the Cleveland area? Because you've been everywhere!

Sally Cantor [00:20:06] Well, I've lived... Well, from Delaware, I got to Delaware with my first husband, who was a psychologist, took a position down there and we decided we were going to make the relationship permanent. And I moved down there and we married. And the relationship was not permanent. [laughs].

Caitlen Cameron [00:20:29] Really? Oh.

Sally Cantor [00:20:30] Yes.

Caitlen Cameron [00:20:30] How long did it [inaudible; crosstalk].

Sally Cantor [00:20:32] We were... If we hadn't had a child, I think it would have lasted. But he was... He could not handle being a parent. And so I think we were together—it's funny, it doesn't stick in my mind—under ten years.

Caitlen Cameron [00:20:54] Okay.

Sally Cantor [00:20:54] And then I met my second husband there, and he... I met him when my daughter was 17 months old, and it was just sort of a chance meeting and we hit it off and, you know, it was not to be anything serious, but pretty early on, we knew it was. But we didn't get married. We dated for over two years before we married. And I think part of that was just I didn't want to make another mistake.

Caitlen Cameron [00:21:34] Yeah, I can understand. But I mean, that's part of your life that you want to have... But you had a child with your first one, right? So.

Sally Cantor [00:21:41] Mhm.

Caitlen Cameron [00:21:41] So, I mean, if that didn't happen, you wouldn't have one of your kids, so...

Sally Cantor [00:21:44] Yes. Yes. Well, and they are... My older daughter, Becky, and my husband are devoted to each other and have a very solid, close, close relationship. And then we had one child... We have one child together, Liz, who lives here. I mean, not in this house, but she lives in Shaker in an apartment.

Caitlen Cameron [00:22:14] Oh wow.

Sally Cantor [00:22:14] And we lived... We went from Delaware—we had two homes in Delaware that were both older—and then we moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He had been... He was with Merck, the pharmaceutical company, and with Merck in Delaware he ran their holding company. Don't ask me to explain that one.

Caitlen Cameron [00:22:41] That's okay. No worries!

Sally Cantor [00:22:42] And then was transferred to their corporate headquarters. And it was a major move in terms of financial rewards for us and promotion for him. And, when we moved, our oldest daughter was in fourth grade. We were going to move after she finished fourth grade. The younger one was, I guess, in preschool. And when we told Becky, you know, she told us we'd ruined her life forever and she would never forgive us. But we moved anyway. And our joke about that is she's now married, has two children and has chosen to live in Bethlehem, which is where we moved to. She lives within maybe at most two miles from where she grew up. And we laugh about that. You know, she returned to the place that we've ruined her life.

Caitlen Cameron [00:23:51] Yeah. Oh my gosh. Do you still see her sometimes?

Sally Cantor [00:23:56] Who, Becky? Oh, we see a great deal of them. Unless there's Covid.

Caitlen Cameron [00:24:01] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:24:02] Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:24:02] I know that puts a burden on you.

Sally Cantor [00:24:03] No, but we do see them... When it's not Covid, it's 400 miles away and not any way you can fly. But we see them very regularly and...

Caitlen Cameron [00:24:18] That's nice.

Sally Cantor [00:24:19] Very close to our grandchildren.

Caitlen Cameron [00:24:22] So, okay, so now to Bethlehem and then to Cleveland?

Sally Cantor [00:24:27] And then he... Yes, and then from there to Cleveland.

Caitlen Cameron [00:24:32] Oh my goodness!

Sally Cantor [00:24:33] But I have one Delaware story that should be preserved.

Caitlen Cameron [00:24:38] Okay, go ahead.

Sally Cantor [00:24:38] So we were we were moving. Merck was, you know, it was the good old days of working for corporations where they handled everything. So they were packing up the house, paying for the move, all of that. And Roger was already started his job and was living in corporate housing in New Jersey. And all I had to do was supervise two nervous children, two dogs, a turtle and a fish and get them ready. And the last night, my best friend, who was the mother of Becky's best friend, took us to dinner at a little neighborhood Italian place. We were... Lived near Little Italy in Wilmington, Delaware. And we're eating and we're reminiscing and we're, you know, a lot of different emotions, and Liz was tired of sitting, and there was very little activity in the restaurant, and I let her get up and walk around. And then I realized I couldn't see her and I didn't know where she was. So I get up to look, and in a corner distance from us, there was, there were two men sitting there eating. And as I'm approaching, I realized one of them had his arm around her. She's sitting in his lap and he's feeding her pasta.

Caitlen Cameron [00:26:20] What?!

Sally Cantor [00:26:21] Yes, that! What is... And as I approached, I realized it was Joe Biden.

Caitlen Cameron [00:26:28] What?!

Sally Cantor [00:26:29] Yes, it was Joe Biden. Senator Biden then. And he just... He just had this warmth about him and this love of children. And he was feeding her. And, you know, I said hello and she was covered... It's summer. It's June. She's a four year old. She's sweating. She's covered with pasta sauce. And he was fine with it.

Caitlen Cameron [00:26:57] [Laughs]

Sally Cantor [00:26:58] And if only there were cell phones and there was pre-cell phone.

Caitlen Cameron [00:27:02] Wow.

Sally Cantor [00:27:03] And...

Caitlen Cameron [00:27:04] So what did you say?

Sally Cantor [00:27:05] Well, you know... And he said... I think I was a little in shock. And, you know, I said, you know, Oh, Senator Biden, and my friend knew him. And we talked for a minute. He wished me well with our move. And that was that. And if, you know, you said identify smells. Well, I wish I could tell you over the years, my young... Liz claims at various times she knows it was ravioli and she'll describe the smell or pasta, and I have... All I know was it was red and it coated her face. [laughs]

Caitlen Cameron [00:27:42] Oh my gosh, that's insane!

Sally Cantor [00:27:45] Yes.

Caitlen Cameron [00:27:46] But also an amazing story.

Sally Cantor [00:27:48] It is. And I keep saying and maybe I'll do it now that I was going to write him a letter and remind him of our favorite last memory of living in Delaware.

Caitlen Cameron [00:27:59] Yeah. I'm sure he would love that.

Sally Cantor [00:28:01] Yes. If it would get to him.

Caitlen Cameron [00:28:04] Yeah that's true.

Sally Cantor [00:28:04] Yeah, but Delaware was so small. You did run into your political leaders.

Caitlen Cameron [00:28:11] Mhm.

Sally Cantor [00:28:13] Like my husband recently—and we've been together, it'll be thirty-six years and I think we've known each other about thirty-eight—but he recently pulled out an autographed playbill that he got Biden to sign for him when he was 16, and Biden wrote on it, "Thanks for asking." And then signed his name! [laughs].

Caitlen Cameron [00:28:41] [crosstalk] Aw! Oh my gosh.

Sally Cantor [00:28:44] I said where have... I feel like I've gone... I've... There is nothing that I don't know where it is in this house. Never seen it before. Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:28:55] Urban legend, but also probably real.

Sally Cantor [00:28:57] Yes. Right. And so we moved here. Roger took an early retirement from Merck, which was the type of offer you'd be a fool not to take. And that was he retired twelve, thirteen years ago, the Friday before Memorial Day and was retired, I guess Saturday and Sunday. And then Monday was Memorial Day, and Tuesday he started his session with another company here, and that's how we got out here.

Caitlen Cameron [00:29:33] Okay.

Sally Cantor [00:29:34] And we looked for... he had been here a year before our home moved... Before I moved because our home was not selling. It was in '09. If we put it on the market a month earlier, it would have sold very quickly. And we were determined to make sure that we got a good price for the house. And it took a year to do that. But he was... His housing was being paid for here. And in those days you could fly from Bethlehem here. So we saw a lot of each other. Now it can take as long to fly—you'd fly to Philadelphia, change planes or rent a car, and it's crazy.

Caitlen Cameron [00:30:27] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:30:28] Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:30:29] Things are so, like the amount of layovers and changes...

Sally Cantor [00:30:33] It's horrible. Yeah. So, came here and I did... And one of the... We really felt very comfortable with the people we bought from. He was a partner in one of the major law firms here, and they were just very friendly. And she left us... She left me a list of people to use for different services and said, I've given your name to this very lovely woman who's very involved with the Welcome Wagon and she'll call you and it'll help you to make friends. And I realized that I knew no one here. If I waited for Roger to introduce me to people, it would be never.

Caitlen Cameron [00:31:28] Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:31:28] And, you know, it took me a month or so. You know, you've line up the dry cleaner. You realize standing in the middle of the yard that you have a sprinkler system when it goes on and you... And you think, oh, that's what the irrigation system is.

Caitlen Cameron [00:31:46] Oh my goodness.

Sally Cantor [00:31:47] And so I met Pat Pogue, who's this lovely woman now in her 80s, who's married to Dick Pogue. And they're both very active in the community. And through her, I connected with the East Side Welcome Club, which is a club for new newcomers, newcomers, but no one ever leaves it. And from there, I met Dozie Herbruck and Pat Agatisa. Pat was probably one of the first people I met here. And they have now moved on to the Village Garden Club. Dozie's the one who suggested I join by not telling me how hard I would have to work. And... But that's how I ended up in the garden club. And I initially was not sure if I was going to work or not, but I did work and I've stopped work about a year ago and I'm licensed till February and I'm trying to decide if I'm going [crosstalk] back to work or not.

Caitlen Cameron [00:33:09] Wow. So when you came here, did you still do social work?

Sally Cantor [00:33:15] What I've been doing starting in the late '80s was really working with incest, and in Delaware really help being very involved in setting up incest treatment families. And sort of prior to that, nothing was really done. You know, there was just real inconsistent... There was no treatment. I know I saw cases of sexual abuse in New York and also in... And then in Delaware. But there was just no one... There was not any sort of approach. In New York I remember someone giving me an article from New York Magazine about incest. And there was not a lot in the literature. And, but we worked and came up with a really good approach involving law enforcement, the courts, therapists, and have continued to specialize in sexual trauma treatment and treatment of perpetrators. And so that's what I did here till I stopped.

Caitlen Cameron [00:34:43] Really?

Sally Cantor [00:34:44] And I'm still doing some consulting, mainly on perpetrators.

Caitlen Cameron [00:34:50] That's powerful stuff, Sally. Very, very amazing because that's a huge thing that needs to be addressed, and a lot of people dismiss it like it's...

Sally Cantor [00:35:01] Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:35:01] Nothing, you know? I watched twelve seasons of SVU [Law & Order: Special Victims Unit]...

Sally Cantor [00:35:06] [Laughs]

Caitlen Cameron [00:35:06] So everything is like, no, you did not do that!

Sally Cantor [00:35:10] Yes. Right. No, and when we started in Delaware, there were areas of the state where sort of the philosophy is that a man's home is his castle. You don't interfere with anything going on there.

Caitlen Cameron [00:35:30] Mhm.

Sally Cantor [00:35:30] And yeah, [crosstalk] and then here working in a county that we do sexual aggression assessments on offenders. I mean, and this was these were not people who were going to be locked up forever. So really what you're faced with is if you don't try to help them to rehabilitate, then they're going to serve prison sentences or jail sentences and be right back out there and not have resources to stop doing it. So I felt it was really important work, but it was not... I was not gratified, by the way, working with survivors and seeing them change and, you know, adults becoming protective parents or having safe relationships. That was much more powerful. And I also, for a number of years, ran a group that was made up of women who were sexually abused as children, who had children who were perpetrators. You know, not a coincidence that if, you know, that their children were perpetrators.

Caitlen Cameron [00:37:03] Wow.

Sally Cantor [00:37:03] And then when Dozie asked me to join the Garden Club, I thought, oh, it'll be a meeting, sit around, talk about flowers, nothing to do with abuse. And [crosstalk] ... lighter side, and there is some of that. But, you know, and I always... I had noticed the cherry grove and read the plaque there about these, the Village Garden Club and how they fought this freeway, and I thought that was remarkable. So it became something that I really admired. And I think Dozie knew we had this plant, which I'll show you before you leave, called a night blooming cereus that only blooms at night. And I realized one of the good things for me is I can have night blooming cereus parties. They don't start till like 9:00 at night. And so no one can see what my garden looks like! [laughs]

Caitlen Cameron [00:38:06] Oh, there you go!

Sally Cantor [00:38:07] Yes.

Caitlen Cameron [00:38:07] Yeah, that's when you can have midnight margaritas, right?

Sally Cantor [00:38:13] Yes.

Caitlen Cameron [00:38:14] Once it blooms?

Sally Cantor [00:38:14] Yeah. Well, it starts blooming between eight, eight and nine. And then it's usually at its full bloom around 11 or 12. And initially we would stay up and watch it. And there are a lot of times I'll leave people in the yard and go to bed because it doesn't... I mean, it can bloom a workday night where you might not want to stay up, you know, drinking margaritas...

Caitlen Cameron [00:38:38] That's true. Yeah.

Sally Cantor [00:38:40] Yeah.

Caitlen Cameron [00:38:42] That's amazing. So I kind of wanted to... So you joined this garden club. So prior to this, did you

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