John Barleycorn

from As It Were: The Long-Lost Blue-Noted Romance Yarn by Amos Bankhead

She’d been the prettiest girl at Blue Oak Intermediate School, a doe-eyed and button-nosed beauty with a singularly wicked sense of humor and a most tender heart. Now we were grown, so to speak, and Imogene Moretto was coming into her own as a talented painter in the pink. If Calli was gentry with the common touch, Imogene was her antipode, déclassé wit…