Every small town in a America has one; someone full of enough piss and vinegar and mean spiritedness to make the sun start coughing when it casts its first light on their eyeballs. Crabby was so mean dogs would howl when they saw her shadow, and cats would start spraying each other trying to figure out a way to confuse her before she laid in to them. They say she was mean before mean was invented but there are pictures out there of Harriet Snodgrass as a young girl and she looked like any other young girl.

What happened to her? Well, Aunt Bernie who knew her as a girl said she was a tomboy who could whip the cuss out of any boy or girl in the county. One night after a high school dance the football team ganged up on her tore her clothes off, had their way with her and tossed her into the Sixkiller's hog pen. The ole sow hog tore into her and she lost all the feeling in both legs and I suspect her heart. The sheriff investigated but said there wasn't enough evidence to prove anything; of course his son was all-state defensive back and one of the main culprits, so that might of slowed things down a bit.

Her family moved off a couple of months later and left her to rot in a big old run down house on the north side of the town square. As time went by she started looking more and more like the Wicked Witch of the West, and folks started calling her Crabby and then Crabby Appleton because of all the apple trees in her yard. She just let them fall to the ground and stay there stinking to high heaven. Any one who would try to pick those apples would get a butt full of buckshot and an earful of Crabby's curses; not many tried.

    Crabby    Appleton

Private Collection

23" High x 8" Wide x 4" Deep