Pinky received this question from a Knoxville fan:On a lighter note, I recently met the grandson of the man who originally built the house we are in now. Naturally the grandson is in his 80’s, but a hoot and sharp as a tack. In the course of “interviewing” him about life back then, he mentioned that one of his aunts was hooked on an elixir called “Lady Love” that was manufactured in
Pinky responds: Funny you should ask. "Lady Love" oddly has nothing to do with Miss Love's side of the family. In 1923, Pinky's Aunts Cleavie, Possie, and Tizby concocted a snake oil elixir that they secretly marketed first to fellow Eastern Star sisters, then later to a wider audience. They claimed the active ingredient was Aloe Vera (all the Diablo ladies swore by aloe vera for a cure all for everything from warts to a bad marriage ). However "aloe vera don't do shit," Aunt Possie (who was only a Diablo by marriage) stated loudly and often. The real secret was white shoe polish which they filtered through loaves of white bread in the kitchen on baking day to cover the smell. Generations of South Texas women spent their afternoons calmed by "Lady Love." By the 1960's these three Aunts had amassed a huge fortune purportedly worth millions. Pinky personally knew that Aunt Cleavie was the personal backer for Harry Helmsley, owner of the Empire State Building. She had a collection of 7,543 miniature reproductions of that famous building. Possie was the last of the three business women/drug lords to pass. Pinky has heard rumors of her vast fortune buried under a Chinaberry tree in Corpus Christi.
