In my generation, when you went out on a date, it was not necessarily consistent that you went for a drink or a beer or whatever. There was one exception to this rule, and that was the frat rats, which couldn’t wait to get smashed out of their gourds. Although I was over 21, I really didn’t drink. Maybe the occasional beer, but one brew was usually accompanied by a headache. Being realistic, I thought why should I pay $.50 to get a headache? Blue-eyes was underage, so that eliminated the “going out for a beer” question. Her being from Wisconsin, I should’ve known that she likely knew more about beer than I did, but she never made mention of it. Mix that with the bowling alley her family owned, and she was probably weaned on Miller High Life. Not knowing that fact probably saved me a lot of money, not to mention a few headaches.
Naturally, by this time I had given up the Friday night poker-pizza party. I was still working at the gas station and likely smelled like an oil rig, despite numerous showers. I think the petroleum products had permeated my body. On one occasion, as we were driving to get coffee or whatever, she stated “Gee, I smell gasoline!” I explained what the problem was and her question was “How much money did they pay you for this?” I told her what I got an hour, and that the only side benefit was I was able to get all the gas I could drink for free, but not for my little TR-3. In reality, the guy I work for was so cheap he wouldn’t even give his employees a discount, but of course, at that point gas cost about $.60 a gallon. Her only comment was “that sure isn’t much money.” I said something about the intelligence level required being close to zero, and I got the impression that she felt I fit right in. No big deal. She offered to pay for the coffee. I let her!
After coffee, she commented “The place I work for is looking for a couple of guys to come in and help out – especially on Friday nights with their teen dance.” Naturally, I asked her what it paid and was rather chagrin to find out that it was three times my current hourly wage. Without showing too much excitement, I gushed “I’ll take the job!” After the fact, I discovered that she was also involved in the Friday night teen dance debacle. Had I known that, I would’ve done it for free. Anyway, I got the job.
That evening ended my career in the petroleum industry, and so began my career in monitoring the conduct of the leaders of the next generation. This job was so great, I kept it through the balance of my university experience. I knew I was destined for management when the next year I was named Director of Teen Activities. No raise, just the title. Chauvinism personified! This really impressed Blue-eyes, or so I thought. I think in reality, it kind of pissed her off because she was more qualified. Ms. California wasn’t happy either, both because she had been there for approximately 2 years and was a Recreation Major. I always wondered about the curriculum for that major, and had a number of rather malicious thoughts.
Prior to my involvement with the teen dance (which I referred to as the local bomb throwers weekly organizational meeting), I had paid little attention to that generations rather raucous music. I wondered how you could possibly dance to this “noise.” We didn’t have to tell these kids not dance so close because they never touched each other while they were working up this huge sweat. I had always thought the Mashed Potato was something you ate, the Twist had to do with pretzels and the Monkey Jump with something associated with the zoo or possibly Tarzan. This was a whole new world, filled with early-stage teenie-boppers gyrating to music that hurt my ears and gave me a headache worse than beer. I was tempted to ask for hazardous duty pay, but then realized as a member of management, it was part of my job responsibility.
Naturally, on Fridays since we were both going to work at the same place and time, we had to ride together and sometimes were accompanied by the soon-to-be Miss California. When Ms. California was not going, we took my car, but often Blue-eyes would insist on driving her 1951 Chevy, which frankly scared the living hell out of me because her idea of 25 miles/hour was really 40 miles/hour and for me, excruciatingly fearful. She was a good driver, but had a lead foot, and the yellow light meant “let’s go faster.” She likely had to have a new clutch put in the Chevy every 5,000 miles. This need for speed was true her entire life, but the only tickets I know of that she ever got were for parking. All of our daughters have inherited this particular speed gene.
As a something of a side note, “Ms. California” dated my roommate for a while and some years back I ran into him on an airplane and asked whatever happened to so-and-so, as well as “Ms. California?” I knew that she went to the finals and came in third or fourth. I mentioned that I had seen her on TV doing an ad for toothpaste or some such thing. He said that he understood she married a dentist and had 24 kids or some number like that. I’m sure he was exaggerating.
It wasn’t always just a cup of coffee or lousy pizza, although every once in a while I would spring for a pitcher of beer as we got to know the little Italian couple that owned a really great pizza restaurant. Friday work responsibilities usually ended at 8:30 when the teenyboppers had to go home. We would often go out to get a pizza, and every once in a while I would spring for a steak dinner at a place that can only be classified as a real dump. But the facts are, they had extremely good steak dinners for $2.95, which was called a club steak, and you got a baked potato and a nice salad. The food was actually very good, and again we got to know the people who owned the place and became somewhat regulars. If Ms. California was with us, my roomie would come and we would spring for dinner. Last of the big spenders! This lasted for about two years, but unfortunately this little dive was right in the way of a freeway project, and it disappeared from the face the earth.
As a side note, many years later we went to a concert, and lo and behold there was another dive with the same name. So we stopped in and discovered that it had been the same owners, and they had relocated in this really raunchy area near the auditorium. The original lady owner had just recently passed away, and I mentioned to the waiter that I used to work for them as a bouncer back in the late 50s. We got a free drink and talked a lot about some of the characters that used to hang around the old location. It was something like a forerunner to that TV show called “Cheers,” but without a real fat accountant or a psychotic Postal Service employee. Fortunately, I never had to bounce anybody, because I was a pretty big guy and usually people would behave once we had a little talk.
The more we dated, the more intimidating Blue-eyes became. I discovered that she had been the head majorette while attending UCLA, and she demonstrated her skills at baton twirling. I guess that’s where the great legs came from – all that marching around. She had also been in three or four Rose Bowl parades and had basically given lessons to young would-be majorettes. One time we were talking about music and I disclosed that I could play a horn, trumpet and trombone, but had given it up because I split my lip and could never get the muscle to perform as it should. The end of my great musical career. Ha! After I told her this, she got up from her couch went into the bedroom and came out playing a really fantastic clarinet. She said she’d been taking lessons for about 10 years, and frankly she was very good.
Blue-eyes was a hell of an athlete when she was younger. As a high school kid she had played girls’ softball and had played women’s softball for her two years at UCLA. She was a shortstop, had a great arm and hit the ball a ton. During this semi-beginning of our relationship, I began to wonder if there was anything that she couldn’t do, when I discovered inadvertently that she had been a bathing suit model for a company called Rosemary Reed down in Southern California. Later, we took up tennis and she was an excellent player, albeit noncompetitive. To her, tennis was a social game and she didn’t really care if she won or lost, except when she played singles with me – which of course took on aspects of World War II. She regularly beat me because she had a wicked slice curve serve and I couldn’t hit it. It’s a good thing we didn’t play for money, because if we had, I’d have been totally broke. Having my ego shattered was pricey enough!
I began to spend more time at her apartment than I did in my luxurious dwellings in the old Victorian tear-down that I lived in – likely to the chagrin of her two roommates. Their dog’s name was Kim, and unfortunately he got out once too often. Being the good scout, I cruised the campus neighborhood for the next two or three days trying to find the dog, but no luck. It wasn’t tagged, so I assume it either got picked up by some other students or the pound, although I did leave a description of the dog. The only picture they had of this little beast was with a cast on its leg while it was still a puppy. Blue-eyes and her roommates were devastated. At least I endeared myself to her roommates and they were willing to put up with my constant visiting. Little did I know that runaway dogs would play a role throughout our relationship. Naturally, this was when I was doing anything I could to ingratiate myself with this Blue-eyed beauty. As it turned out, I didn’t really have to do this Sir Lancelot bit. It turned out old Blue-eyes really liked me. That’s when she first started calling me “weird.”
After well over two years of doing our Friday stuff with the teenyboppers, me hanging around her apartment, cheap dinners and a lot of conversations, we got engaged. I don’t remember who proposed to whom – right! But in the final analysis, I gave her an engagement ring and life began from that point forward. That summer, when she returned to Southern California, I went down there, got an apartment and was working two jobs to try to make enough money to support myself for the next school year, which was my last year.
She still needed to finish another semester to get her State Certificate for working with the handicapped. Every so often she would comment that dating me made her “more than qualified for anything that the state could throw at her regarding handling the handicapped.” I think she was being a little negative. I would see her on most weekends and we would spend time at the beach, swimming or just bagging rays, wandering around Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland, to which she had free passes – however, I avoided any attempts on her part to get me to go bowling. We went together for almost 2 years, and in June of 1960, when I allegedly graduated, we got married. I was almost 25 and she was 22, older than most single persons of our generation.
Moral of the story – Sometimes things that look too good to be true, really are.
J.J. Addingnuttin 