PICARD:  The first ship I ever served aboard as Captain was called the Stargazer. It was an overworked, underpowered vessel, always on the verge of flying apart at the seams. In every measurable sense, my Enterprise is far superior. But there are times when I would give almost anything to command the Stargazer again.

SCOTTY: It’s like the first time you fall in love. You don’t ever love a woman quite like that again. Well, here’s to the Enterprise and the Stargazer. Old girlfriends we’ll never meet again. 

 

Youth dwells in day-dreams that manhood does not forget…

                                                                                                              Andrew Lang 

 n.b.  This is historical fiction.  The events happened pretty much as described.  All the people are/were real.  Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. 

 

The Junior High School Band Concert

It was a spring evening in 1964, and I was working the huge Ward-Leonard lighting panel at the high school auditorium.  For outside events, the school paid me $1.00 an hour; for school district events, I had to rely on donations.  It was the night of the junior high band concert.  Not much to do but turn down the auditorium lights and turn up the x-rays over the stage.  I usually sat on a high stool with a back rest and read a book.  This night, the book was as boring as the bad music.  My eyes wandered to the stage, the view mostly blocked by teasers angled to reflect as much sound as possible forward into the audience.  I looked through a narrow slot and suddenly froze.  There in the flute section all the way across the stage was the most beautiful female I had ever seen.  I absolutely knew that there was no one else on the planet that drop-dead gorgeous.  It didn’t matter that as seventeen-year-old senior I had never dated, had never gone to dances except for one utter disaster in junior high, had never kissed a girl, had never even held a girl’s hand.  I knew she was it:  the female from whom I was separated before birth, just as the ancient Greeks believed happened to all of us and for whom we spend our entire wretched lives trying to find.  But I didn’t have to search my entire wretched life.  There she was, almost right in front of me.

Through female friends I learned that her name was Jill Reaser and that she was in eighth grade.  Had I really fallen madly and catatonically in love with a child, a girl who was what, thirteen or fourteen years old?  Apparently so.  Her mother worked in the high school principal’s office and knew me.  That could be really good or really bad, depending.  I was the consummate nerd who actually carried a slide rule around all day at school.  I was in something called “Advanced College Preparatory,” which supposedly carried a large amount of caché but was actually a sad joke designed to placate hopeful parents while not creating extra work for the teachers.  My father forced me to wear a flat top and lace shoes (I supplied the white socks), and for some reason lost to time, I had decided to wear white dress shirts my entire senior year.  And to make me an impossible prospect, I wore black, Buddy Holly horn rims.  All of these insurmountable handicaps weighed on me like a death sentence. On the very weak positive side, some parents saw the nerd contingent of the senior class as having the highest potential of eventually wearing long white coats, pocket protectors, and being intimately involved with whatever NASA was planning next.  In the world of asking out the most beautiful girl ever, this positive side counted for nothing, especially if, like me, you hadn’t lettered in at least four varsity sports.

The Ward-Leonard lighting panel backstage in the high school auditorium.  I first saw Jill Reaser from the exact spot where the teacher is standing.  Picture from the 1959 dedication booklet for the opening of the new high school.

So, what’s a hot-blooded, totally out of it geekus to do?  Actually, not much except for licentious daydreaming.  Because she was so young, our paths never crossed at Rea & Derrick’s uptown drugstore where EVERYBODY hung out, staying glued to the booth seats the entire evening while inhaling the carbon dioxide from the slowly degassing ten-cent Cokes.  I went to the library every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings, but Jill obviously stayed busy those nights doing things that were actually interesting.  I went to church because I learned from someone that she occasionally stopped at the uptown “Rea’s” after Sunday school.  Not on my watch.  She and her mother came into The Bon Ton, Sunbury’s upscale women’s dress shop, once on a Tuesday morning after school had let out.  I had been working for the owner, Stacy Brager, for almost two years, including nine ‘til nine on Saturdays, a particularly evil torture for any young kid.  There I was, a bottle of Windex in one hand and a wad of paper towels in the other, cleaning one of the three-way, step-in mirrors.  I saw her in one of the mirrors and froze.  I turned around and managed a stiff, awkward smile.  She gave me the most sincere, genuine smile I had ever experienced, and that includes my mother, bless her sainted soul.  I desperately wanted to say something.  My mouth, tongue, esophagus, lungs, central nervous system, had all somehow stopped working.  I absolutely knew she wanted me to say something, anything:  how you doing?  how do you like school? how’s the weather?  My creepy smile was frozen in place.  I finally managed a weak “Hi” and then stood mute.  She replied and then was whisked out the front door by her mother.  Mrs. Brager gave me a serious look, “Are you all right?  Here, go get me an iced coffee.”

I numbly took the dollar bill and ran across the street to Keithan’s, Sunbury’s only upscale lunch counter.  Slowly, my system came back to life.  I brought back the coffee and change, mumbled something, and disappeared out the back door and stood under the old, gigantic cherry tree and decompressed.  I looked up into the branches that hadn’t born a cherry in living memory and decided that I was like the tree:  full grown and impotent, incapable of fulfilling the mating rituals required of every male in the homo sapiens branch of the evolutionary tree.  I was so despondent, I had to call in reinforcements.

That evening, Les Briscoe and John Saylor tried their best to coach me on how to handle the situation.  We were sitting on the front porch of my house, dodging mosquitoes and putting up with the occasional whiffs of acrid, rancid smoke that blew up the hill from the town dump on the other side of Coal Creek.  Les was a classmate, and John was two years younger, both well-versed in asking out and dating girls.

Everything I could think of pointed to certain doom:  “How am I ever going to actually meet her?  I’m going to college in the fall.  I’ll be old and decrepit by the time I graduate, and she’ll be married to some doofless moron who just graduated from med school somewhere.”

“Come on, right out of high school?  Call her up tonight and ask her out to a movie,” said Les.  “It’s not like that’s something unusual.  They’re showing Beach Party at the Rialto.”

“The old man won’t let me have the car,” I complained.  “She lives on the other side of town.  We’d have to walk all that way twice.  And there’d be no time to go to Rea’s after the movie.  She’d think it was really dumb.  Plus, her mother knows me and knows I just graduated.  She just finished eighth grade, for God’s sake.  Her old man will think I’m a child molester.  Is dating an eighth grader grounds for a charge of child molestation?  I’ve never seen her at the library, and I’m sick to death of going to church just so I can stop at Rea’s afterwards to see if she’s there.”

“Why not call her up and say you’ll kill yourself if she doesn’t go out with you?” offered John.  “Say you’ll set yourself on fire outside her house.  Boy, would she be sorry then.  Or write her a poem and pay to put in on the front page of the paper?  I’ll help you write it.  ‘How many ways do I love thee?’ No, wait, that’s already been done.  How about ‘Your eyes are like water?’”

“The Susquehanna is a running sewer,” said Les.

“I vote to let that one go.”  I was getting more dejected.  I took my feet down off the East Malta Dairy milk box and put my head in my hands.  “Nothing’s going to work.  I’ll be alone my entire adult life.  She walked right into The Bon Ton, and I couldn’t even move, let alone say something coherent,”

“Maybe you could make up cue cards and hold them up.  Let’s see. How about: ‘I Love You’ or ‘Will You Have My Baby’ or “Do You Want To See My Etchings…”

“I’ve got a good one, said Les.  “How about ‘Can I Have Your Baby?’  Hmmm.  Too subtle?”

And so it went until Les remembered that the very first Splash Hop of the season was going to be Wednesday night at the community pool with a very cheap cover of fifty cents.  He was positive she’d show, and I could make my move then, he and John providing moral support from the wings.  That was only four days away.  It sounded exciting and horribly frightening at the same time.  What to wear?  My Perry Como sweater?  My Thom McCann Snap Jack shoes?  My madras Bermuda shorts?  Would she like English Leather or Jade East or Canoe?  John broke the silence: “Solve the problem, wear a jock strap and a tie.”

I just lowered my head and let out a despondent sigh.  None of this was helping.  It was actually destroying what little self-esteem I had left.  I was hopeless.  I would live out my days as a celibate hermit somewhere back beyond Shade Gap.  Les took John home in his mother’s 1953 Rambler Air-Flyte Six, and I was left to my self-induced misery and the mosquitoes.  Later in bed, I tried to lighten the mood by listening to Tommy Shannon on ‘KBW.  It didn’t work.  The skip got better, so I dialed WLS and caught Dick Biondi singing On Top Of A Pizza.  In the dark, I barely cracked a smile.  I turned the timer knob but was asleep long before it wound down.

 

The Bon Ton

Images and fantasies of Jill Reaser consumed me.  I built scenarios that started out with me sweeping her off her feet:  during a date at the Rialto, in a booth at the uptown Rea’s, even at the library for God’s sake.  I would inherit millions, and we’d live out our lives in conjugal bliss with at least twenty kids.  They got even more fantastic, but I kept coming back to one in which I would be out mopping the lobby, as Mrs. Brager called it, at the Bon Ton and Jill would come by on purpose because she had smiled at me in the store and had fallen madly in love with me.  She would ask me out, and the old man would give me the car, and we’d go to the Nu-Way drive-in, and she’d pay for it, and we’d make out, and she’d tell me she wanted to go steady.  I had unconsciously written myself out of any active role in this one, which made sense because there was no way I could ever imagine getting up the nerve to ask her out.  In 1964, girls didn’t ask guys out.  So I was dead on arrival.  Maybe I should just walk out to the middle of the Reading Railroad bridge and jump into the Susquehanna.  No, wait.  The water’s too low and full of mine acid waste.  I’d mangle myself on the rocks and become a cripple and end up begging for change down at Cameron Park, my broken body half-eaten away by the mine acid while waiting to be rescued from the river.  My despondency had turned macabre.  I went with the flow and got out my paperback Cry Horror of H.P. Lovecraft stories and stayed out on the front porch until supper time.

Monday and Tuesday, I had to work at The Bon Ton from 9 AM until eleven.  All of the locally-owned stores on Market Street closed at noon on Wednesdays because of having to stay open until 9 PM on Saturdays.  Who’s to say how these things became written into the canon of the Sunbury mercantile trade?  It just was:  open twelve hours on Saturday, closed on Wednesday afternoons.  Break that code and I’m sure evil things were in your future.  And everybody closed up shop on Fridays at 5:30 PM, sharp.  At least that was easy to understand:  the farmers would NOT come into town Friday evenings.  They were busy preparing for “market” Saturday morning, May through October.  They’d show up around 7 AM and park backwards in the angled spaces with their pickups and set up tables on the sidewalk and sell truck patch vegetables and everything else they could haul into town.  Again, the unwritten rule was to be gone by 10 AM to free up the metered spaces.  Shoppers who showed up after ten had to go to the Market House, which opened early and closed late but which somehow didn’t have the caché of buying off tables that stretched from the Iron Grill at Fifth Street and ran west down past Penny’s almost to the square, and for some bizarre reason only on the north side of the street.  But why only on that side?  When I asked the Old Man, he looked at me like I was asking why there was air.

I was finishing my shift on Monday when Les came in the front door.  None of my friends ever came into The Bon Ton.  For God’s sake, Mrs. Brager sold women’s clothes.  But there he was.  Something important must’ve gone down.  I was hustled out, shoved into his 1952 Ford Mainliner, obtained free from a cousin for VERY specific reasons.  He drove to the north edge of town to The Eat-a-Bite, a drive-up diner with huge wooden panels with windows that could be lifted up and slid back along the overhanging ceiling.  It had pinball, lots of stools, yellow hanging light bulbs at night, my Aunt Myra’s “Secret Sauce,” and during the day Aunt Myra herself, a large woman with a Gravel Gertie voice who smoked Camels and didn’t take crap from anybody.  Of course, I had no money.  Larry ordered Cokes and in a low, conspiratorial voice, announced that Jill Reaser knew I had the hots for her.  Between that fateful night at the junior high band concert and now, I must’ve told ten dozen people that I was madly in love with her.  How is it possible that somebody would’ve spilled the beans?  Les gave me the look he usually reserved for his youngest sister:  “Do you really have to ask?”

“Well, no.  Yes!  Have my friends no honor?  Who out there would sabotage pure love?”

Again, the look, “You’re kidding me, right?  Are you just pretending to be seventeen but are really eight years old?”

Aunt Myra butted-in, “Hey kid, I hear you like Jill Reaser.  Do you want me to put in a word?”

Arghh!  Even Aunt Myra knew the score.  Am I ever going to be able to show my face in town again?  In the county?  In the entire state?  I gave my aunt a very weak smile, “How did you find out?”

“Hell, kid, it’s all over town.  I heard it from Jill’s mother, who said she saw you in at The Bon Ton last week.  Said you didn’t look well.  You got the flu or something?”

I was speechless and instantly suicidal.  My face must’ve said it all because Aunt Myra gave me a once over and said, “The Cokes are on me.”  I gave her the weakest smile humanly possible.  She turned and walked down the counter to a state policeman who had just arrived.

“I’m dead.  I’m worse than dead.  This is like being naked in the stocks on the town square.  Everybody will know what you did and they’ll stand around in a circle and laugh their asses off.”

Les tried to be helpful, “Hmmm.  Maybe the “Eat-a-Bite” wasn’t the smart move today.  Let’s try Pop Snyder’s.”

“I have no place to hide.  Maybe I should camp out on Dead Man’s Island on Coal Creek.  Just me and Shamokin’s raw sewage floating by.  No, how about Shorty’s shack by the dike?  He’d let me stay in the old outhouse, the one with “DON’T SHOOT, TOILET” painted on the side.  No one would ever find me there.”  I was obviously delirious and in need of immediate medical attention.

“Look, I’ll pick you up Wednesday after supper, and we’ll go to the Splash Hop.  Saylor will be there.  Maybe her mother thinks she’s old enough to go on her own, and she’ll be there, too.”

“Are you kidding?  Her father will chaperone with a shotgun.  Or her mother with a machete.  Or both of them.”  The image made the hair on my neck stand out.  “No way.”

“For Christ’s sake, you won’t have to do anything.  You can just stand there and stare at her.  Or thumb your nose.  Or ask somebody else to dance.  That’ll show her.  Hell, ask ME to dance.  What a scene.  I can see it now:  ‘Scandal erupts at Splash Hop, eighth grader passes out at disgusting display.’  That’ll really impress her.  She’ll fall for you for sure.”

We were right back at the level we were at on the front porch Saturday night.  Les could see that I was rapidly sinking beyond rescue.  “Look, I’ll pay the cover.  Everything will be fine.  Just don’t wear that God-forsaken Perry Como sweater.  I gotta run, where do want me to drop you?”

I had another restless night.  The high end of the AM dial was no help.  WKBW Buffalo, WLS Chicago, WABC New York, WBZ Boston, from Biondi to Cousin Brucie, everybody was boring.  They were all playing crap like the Beach Boys or the Righteous Brothers.  I finally fell into a troubled sleep sometime after 2 AM.

Extremely rare pix of the Eat-A-Bite courtesy of Charles Bruce Bostian as posted on his Facebook page “Sunbury Pennsylvania.”

 

The Perfect Solution

Tuesday I got a call from Les.  “I have the perfect idea.  I’ll score some beer, we’ll go out somewhere and drink, then go to the splash hop.  You’ll be just drunk enough to ask her to dance.”

“Hang on a minute,” I put down the phone and went into the kitchen and asked my mother if Les could come for supper on Wednesday.  She was making spaghetti, and Dad was working swing shift and wouldn’t be home.  We’d eat at 5 PM so we would have plenty of time to go to the dance.  I went back to the phone, “It’s on.  Get here no later than 4:30.  We’ll eat here, score the beer, go drinking, then hit the dance.”

“You’re a prince, Larson.  My mother will more than happy to not have to feed me.”

I hung up and just sat there at the old library table that we had inherited from my grandmother.  My mind raced through all the horrible possibilities I could think of.  She wouldn’t dance with me.  Okay, that was easy:  I’d kill myself.  She’d dance with someone else.  That was easy, too:  I’d kill him.  She’d start dancing with me, suddenly stop and say, “I can’t do this” and rapidly walk away.  I’d step on her foot and cripple her for life.  I’d get sick from all the beer and throw up on her.  I’d drop dead from the excitement.  Maybe she wouldn’t show.  Okay, I could deal with that.  Better nothing than rejection.

It was early afternoon, and there were at least twenty nine hours before the dance started.  A lot could happen in that time, anything from Jill’s family suddenly moving out of town to nuclear war.  I was torn:  did I really NOT want to meet her, dance with her, ask her out?  I finally decided that I had to go through with it or I’d hate myself forever.  I’d have to put everything on 24 ounces of beer to carry the day for me.  By the time I was in bed waiting for the AM skip, I was more of a nervous wreck than on Monday.

Les showed up on time and ate all the spaghetti my mother could pile on his plate and in record time.  We were gone inside of 45 minutes, off to Northumberland and the Kapp Heights Tavern just up the slope from the old highway that ran along the Pennsy railroad yards.  Les’ 1953 Ford Mainliner two-door should have been sent to the crusher ages before.  The passenger door didn’t latch.  A rope ran from the door handle to the steering column.  The rope had been known to give way on hard left turns.  There was a hole in the floor slightly smaller than a six-pack of beer.  The six-pack would be wedged in place, the idea being whoever was riding shotgun would ram down his foot and jettison the beer if the cops pulled over the car.  Like nobody would notice the beer suddenly appearing out from under the back bumper.  The car also had no starter, so you either had to push or Les had to park on a slope, preferably facing downhill.  At the Kapp Heights, he kept the motor running, and I slid down so no one could see me.

Getting served was the biggest deal of all in high school, even bigger than getting laid.  Kids would recite all the places where they had gotten beer.  I never recognized the names of most of the bars and often wondered if they even existed.  John Saylor always claimed that he had gotten served at Shea Stadium.  Who could argue?  Les always got served.  He worked for his father during the summer and always went with the crew to taverns for lunch.  No one questioned him because they had seen him so often.  His mother spent a fortune on his clothes, and on occasions such as this he always looked like Joe College or at least just home from some prep school in the Philadelphia suburbs.  Whatever he did, it worked.  All I had to do was lay low, head on the torn upholstery, staring sideways at the ancient, rusty dashboard with the clock and radio that hadn’t worked in years.  Les was back in record time.  “Move over, will ya?”  He put the paper bag next to me.  “The bartender was new, and he didn’t recognize me.  The guys on the stools were surly and looked like they wanted to pick a fight.  It was nip and tuck, but I balls it out.”

I looked into the bag.  “Iron City?  For God’s sake, do you want to poison us to death?”

Les gave me a look.  “It’s the Kapp Heights.  Working man’s bar.  You go with the flow.  Otherwise, you attract attention.  Ordering Piels, F&S, or Steigmeier could’ve been a death sentence.  The alcohol content is the same.  Besides, I didn’t hear you offer to help pay.”

He didn’t wait for an answer.  We took off and drove all the way to Snydertown.  At the crossroads, Les turned up Grainger’s Hollow and then pulled off onto an ancient, overgrown dirt track that headed up a narrow ravine into the woods.  I knew the place.  Long ago, our family had walked up the road, such as it was, to an ancient, stone cabin that the locals called “The Buffalo Farm.”  (My father had grown up in Snydertown.)  The foundation was still there.  We went on a short way and stopped in a large abandoned field surrounded by hardwood forest.  We got out and sat on the hood, opened our quarts, and started guzzling away.

Our “secret” beer drinking spot:  the Berger or “Buffalo” farm high up at the end of the torturous quasi dirt track off Grainger’s Hollow Road just up from Snydertown.  By the time we were there before the Splash Hop in 1964, the walls had collapsed.

It can be really hard to gulp beer out of a quart bottle and maintain your cool.  First, it was Iron City.  Second, there’s too much carbonation.  Third, if you’re not used to it, ANY beer tastes weird.  Fourth, you really can’t just gulp it down, your stomach would blow out with gas.  My eyes were starting to water.  “A glass!  My kingdom for a glass!”

“This is gonna be a rough night, Larson.  You go out drinking free beer in preparation for the chance to meet the love of your life, and you’re bitching about not having a glass?  Good God.  Man up, drink up, and enjoy the view.”

My nose started running, and I was belching like never before in my life.  I was feeling a little bilious.  I still had a third of a quart to go.  Plus, I was starting to feel tipsy.  Hard to say if it was alcohol or the power of suggestion.  By the time I emptied the bottle, it was real.  My head was spinning and I felt oddly euphoric.  I was actually drunk.  It was quite simple:  because I only weighed 80 pounds, it only took one quart of beer to drive my alcohol-to-weight ratio into full-bore inebriation.   Bring on Jill Reaser, I was ready.

It was my luck that my first Splash Hop was a mob scene.  Jill Reaser had to be in there somewhere.

 

At The Hop

By the time we arrived, there were kids everywhere.  Somebody had strung bare yellow light bulbs all around the cement patio.  The local band, “The Toad Tones,” was already lurching through their mastication of a Beach Boys song.  The mass of gyrating bodies gave me a touch of vertigo.  Who were all these people?  The Splash Hop was obviously the hit of the season.  Actually, it was the only event of the season.  Kids from all over were desperate for anything besides sitting in a smelly theater watching “Mary Poppins” or sitting across from one another at the uptown Rea’s trying to think of something to say.  Even Les was taken aback, “My God, the entire valley is here.  I see girls from Selinsgrove, and there are two from Coal Township.  Hey, isn’t that Stephanie Yost?”

“Who’s Stephanie Yost?”

“I met her at the winter dance at Rolling Green Park.  I think she said she was from Nescopeck.”  I believed him. Les would date or dance with any female.  No matter that she could peel wallpaper with a single glance, they were all fair game.  “You’re outta luck, I don’t see her.  I told you she’s too young.  Her parents probably locked her up for the night.”

There was no way we could mingle until the band stopped.  When they finally crashed to a halt, the mob on the patio thinned out.  There she was, way over on the other side standing with two girls.  It looked like they were all talking in sotto voce.  I knew it, she had spotted the two of us, and they were plotting their escape.  “Oh, God.  She’s seen me.”  I shrank back a step.  My entire wretched life passed before me.  I was frozen.  I could feel my heart pounding in my ears, which were oddly prickly.  “What should I do?”

“Well, you could try asking her to dance.”

“But there’s three of them.  I have to ask her in front of them?”

“You could push them away, or tell them to get lost.  Yes, you have to ask her in front of them.  They’ll think it’s really cool.  Or, they could think you’re a total asshole.  Hard to say.”  Les just couldn’t help cracking wise.  Then, a miracle occurred:  the band crashed its way into Wipe Out.

“I can’t dance to that!”

Les looked out over the crowd.  “Neither can anybody else.  Who could call that dancing?  You just go out and wave your arms around while jumping up and down.  Do anything, but for God’s sake don’t do the Twist.  Very passé.”  The drummer was doing the famous “Wipe Out Riff” over and over again.  The two guitarists and bassist were just standing there, gawking at the guy.  The drummer had gone off his rocker.  Even the dancers stopped, not to watch but to catch their breath.  Finally, he shattered both sticks, and the aural assault stopped, faintly echoing off the hillside behind the pool.  The crowd was too stunned to applaud.  Some wise-ass way in back yelled “Yea!”  The bassist started shouting, “Pick it up, pick it up!”  The band started up, out of sync and out of key.  They wheezed along for about ten bars before they were back together.  “At least they’re all playing the same song,” said Les.  “I think so.  Are they?”

I hadn’t taken my eyes of Jill Reaser.  I was mesmerized, in a trance, paralyzed with adolescent longing.  In one of those rare instances of psychic communication that knows no limits of space or time, she turned in our direction and looked right at me.  “She’s seen me, I know it.  She must’ve subconsciously heard my innermost thoughts.  See?  She’s looking right at me.”

“Is it love or is she scared out of her wits?  She could be peeing her pants in fright.”

This time, Les went too far.  “You have the balls to mock the true love of my life?  After the sorry-ass girls you’ve picked up the last couple of years?  Stephanie Yost?  Her face is scarred from being touched by ten-foot poles.  Or Melanie Slither?  She had bad breath and terminal acne.  And you make fun of Jill Reaser?”  By now, I was so wound up I was stuttering.

“Easy, tiger.  There’s only one solution.  If the next song is a slow one, make your move.”  The band had mercifully gone off the low stage.  Somebody was announcing the next song.  It was Theme from a Summer Place.  “That’s your cue.  Go!”

I pushed my way through the crowd like a robot delivering a summons.  Without any preliminaries, I came up to within a half-foot and blurted out, “Would you like to dance?”  The other two girls vanished past my peripheral vision.  Jill looked at me with her drop-dead gorgeous brown eyes and said……….”Yes.”

My brain went close to the speed of light:  ‘Now what?  Dance.  How?  I had taken group dance lessons in the junior high gym the fall of my seventh grade year.  No one would be my partner.  The instructor finally paired me with Dorothy Hanson, who went to our church and whose father sold insurance.  She was friendly, talkative, and an Amazon.  She pushed and pulled me all over the gym floor.  I was trying to remember the box step, but it was all I could do to keep myself from being trampled to death.  I had blotted all of that out of my memory and had NEVER gone to a single dance since then, six long years ago.’  In less than a second, I was back in the present.  I forgot that I probably smelled like a brewery.  I forgot that I was supposed to “lead” in slow dances.  I forgot all the steps.

She looked past me over my right shoulder.  I had my right arm around her but couldn’t bring myself to press my open hand anywhere on her back.  Gallons of sweat were pouring out of my palms.  We slowly moved around while I tried to say something.  I couldn’t talk.  I could barely swallow.  To this very day I can remember the erotic smell of her beautiful, long, cordovan-brown hair.  I was so transported by the totally unexpected sensory overload, I forgot I really WAS supposed to talk while dancing.  If I ever did say anything, its memory is lost to the decades.  One thing I do remember is that Theme from a Summer Place is one of the shortest AM hits ever recorded, something like two minutes and twenty-five seconds.  I was just starting to screw up my courage, when the record ended.  We stepped slightly apart.  I managed a very weak “thanks,” and she drifted away.

I numbly walked back to where Les was waiting.  I went right up in front of him.  He put both hands on my shoulders, “When’s the wedding?”

I was visibly shaking.  Les kept on talking, “Now, it’s time for stage two.  The next slow dance, you gotta go up and say something first. Remember, she’s really young, so you don’t want to overwhelm her with polysyllabic words.  How about, ‘It was really fun dancing with you.  Can we do it again?  And again?  And again?’  Hmmm.  How about just, ‘Would you like to dance again?’  Simple.  Direct.  No nonsense.  I’m sure she’ll be impressed.”

We turned back to the mob scene on the floor.  The next record was Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying.

“You’re on, Larson.  Move!”

I frantically scanned the crowd, but she was gone.  “I can’t find her.  Help me out, quick.”  No way, we would’ve seen her leave.  We circled all the way around.  No Jill Reaser.

“Uh oh, curfew,” said Les.  I knew better.  I had totally grossed her out by stinking of beer, by my inability to dance, by my inability to talk, by me – period.  My heart sank to depths unknown since Dr. Bergstresser told me, as he pulled my two front teeth, that he wouldn’t waste anesthetic on baby teeth.

 

The Infallible Plan 

The following six days were consumed with working at The Bon Ton, trips to the library, and erotic day dreams.  I was out and about as much as possible.  I looked at all the plastic models in Newberry’s and Woolworth’s.  I prowled Market Street.  I went to church and hustled to Rea’s afterwards.  In all my caroming around downtown, I never saw Jill.  I practiced routines in case I ran into her, special ones if she was alone, several if she was with girlfriends, even one or two if she was with her mother.  They all sounded really suave to me.  Les and John finally stopped by the house on Tuesday evening.  Les had it all worked out.  “I’ve come up with the perfect plan.”  He was obviously onto something.  “You won’t have to lift a finger.  I guarantee it will work.  I can hardly wait.”

John and I waited.  “Well?” said John.

“We’ll go together, and I’ll ask Jill to dance.”

“Uh, I’m in favor of dropping this for something else,” I said.

“No, no.  Listen.  You’ll fake getting really angry.  When were done, you’ll be furious and challenge me to a fight.  Look.”  He rolled up an empty match pack and stuck it under his upper lip.  “Instant fat lip.  Totally believable.  Then we run out into the parking lot with you yelling obscenities at me.”

“Then what?”

“I haven’t gotten that far.  We’ll think of something into the moment.  The point is, you’ll be stepping in to save Jill’s honor.”

“And her honor’s been damaged by one dance with you?”  Hmmm.  Maybe it would work.  Les’ seedy reputation with girls with less than upright morals was legendary.  It was a stretch, but he had my attention.  “We have to come up with a Wow Finish.”

“Why don’t you figure out that part?  We could improvise.  You’ll be her hero.  She’ll fall madly in love with you.  Simple.  Direct.  Visceral.  Right to the gut.  She’ll be teary-eyed with hero-worshiping admiration.”

John turned to me.  “Does he get this way very often?”  He turned to Les, “Have you seen your doctor lately?”

“I get the option to veto the whole thing if the vibes aren’t right,” I said.

“There will be cosmic vibes.  She’s anticipating the meeting as we speak.  Call her at home right now.  I bet she’s sitting there, pining away to hear from you.”

It was all too much.  I couldn’t think straight.  John steered the conversation yet again to a list of all the places he’d been served.  The wind had changed, and the acrid smoke from the perpetually burning town dump was drifting up over the railroad tracks.  Soon after, they left.  That night, I had arabesque dreams that made me toss and turn until morning.

 

At The Hop…Again

On Wednesdays, all the locally owned stores on Market Street closed at noon in revenge for having to stay open for twelve hours on Saturday.  After helping Miss Marx, the seamstress, close up the front doors of the Bon Ton, I hustled home.  Mom had prepared the usual Campbell’s Alphabet Soup and was listening to Don McNeal’s Breakfast Club on WKOK.  She had no idea that I was torturing myself to death.  This horrible image of Thumper the Rabbit being “twitterpated” in Bambi popped into my head.  Was I really that far gone?  Did my mother somehow know what was going on?  Had Aunt Myra spilled the beans?  I had six hours before Les was to pick me up.  Could I survive?

I walked down to Shipe’s Corner Book Store and looked at science fiction magazines and paperbacks.  I couldn’t concentrate.  I walked further to the library and listened to records from their sad lp collection.  I looked through the science fiction section.  I had already read every single book. I couldn’t concentrate there, either.  All I could think of was Jill Reaser.  My imagination went from blissful romance to horrible scenarios of doom and destruction.    I finally gave up and trudged home, lost in thoughts of the certainty of unrequited love.  We ate early because the old man would always come home from work starved.  I wolfed down my food, rushed upstairs for a bath, splashed on hands-full of English Leather, and was dressing by 6 PM.  ‘Hmmm.  Les had nixed the Perry Como sweater.  There was the Dick Van Dyke sweater.  Nah, too hot.’  I finally settled on a short sleeved white shirt and a pair of Madras Bermuda shorts:  very “now” and sure to wow any and all females.  I went out and sat on the front porch and waited.

In the car, Les was upbeat and effusive.  He claimed he was starved, so we had to stop at Marlin’s Subs on Market Street, and I had to endure watching him eat an entire foot-long with a double helping of Marlin’s secret sauce. He kept talking non-stop and continued all the way to the community pool.  I hardly said a thing.  The word must’ve really gotten out because the place was already packed.  Out on the patio, there wasn’t room to move, let alone dance.

Les spotted her right away, again standing way off at the other side of the patio with the same two girls.  A slow song was starting.  Without saying anything, Les pushed through the crowd.  I could see him talking to Jill.  They were both smiling.  She was talking to him!  Off they went, all the while talking to one another, Jill was smiling broadly and looking up into his face.  She even laughed.

My mind started spinning in the wrong direction:  ‘Wait a minute.  Wait a minute!  You weren’t supposed to be putting the make on her.’  I could feel my face flush.  ‘How could he do this to me?  Is he going to take off in his car with her and leave me stranded?  Were they going to go up on top of Mile Hill and make out?  Good God!  Was he going to cop a feel?  He’ll get her pregnant and they’ll have to get married!’  I could feel all my vital signs collapsing.  I was shaking and clasping and unclasping my fists.  ‘I’m gonna kill the bastard after this dance.  Why wait?’  I was edging out onto the patio.  Luckily, the dance ended, and the two of them walked away from me and back to the two girls, who had been standing and muttering to one another the whole time.  They were talking again.  ‘Go ahead Briscoe, talk it up. It’ll be your last conversation on earth.’

Before I could advance, Les turned around and walked back to me.  The band was taking five, and there was hardly anybody on the dance floor.  Before I could get in a word, Les started talking loudly:  “Hey, I didn’t do anything!”  I still didn’t say anything.  Les’ voice got louder:  “What’s your problem, Larson?  He put his hand up to his mouth and let out with a really loud “Ow!  You bastard!”

The rolled up match book was already under his upper lip.  He faked a lisp:  “You wanna fight?  Let’s go!”  He stormed towards the door with me in pursuit.  We were almost through the lobby when somebody started yelling behind us, “Fight!  Fight!”  I turned my head.  Oh my God, a crowd of guys had started out after us.

“Oh, shit!  Run!” yelled Les.  I followed him out the door. He ran across the parking lot, opened up the back door of his old Ford, and hit the floor, dragging me down with him.  “Now what the hell do we do,” I said.

“For Christ’s sake, keep your voice down.  I don’t think they saw where we went.”  I could hear the voices of a couple of the adult chaperones:  “Okay, break it up.  Where’s the fight?  Either get back into the dance or leave!”  The deep voice sounded really pissed.  ‘Oh shit,’ I thought, ‘now we have a mob of really ticked-off guys.  We’ll be crucified.’

I could hear kid’s voices close to the car:  “Where in the hell did they go?  If they chickened out, I’m gonna kill’em.  Who were they, anyway?”

I closed my eyes and let out a silent sigh.  ‘They don’t know who we are.’

I whispered to Les, “We’re safe.  How long are we going to have to stay smashed down here?”  The back floor was filthy with things I really didn’t want to identify.  The wool broadcloth upholstery was beyond filthy, and was making my nose itch.  ‘Oh God, no.  I can’t sneeze.’  Of course, as soon as you think it, you know it’s going to happen.  I did my best to squelch it, and it came out sounding like a dog fart.

“For Christ’s sake, Larson.  Is there no end to your ability to screw up?”

“Me screw up?  It was your stupid idea to pull this stupid stunt and cause a goddamn stupid scene.”  My voice was getting louder.

“Just keep quiet.  I’ll see if the coast is clear.  If it is, I’ll get up front and drive up to Pomfret Manor cemetery, and you can get out and ride shotgun.”  Les got out, got up front, started the engine, and drove off without turning on the headlights.  After a million bumps that banged the side of my head, he stopped.

“All clear.”  I got up front, and Les eased out onto Catawissa Avenue and headed towards Market Street.

“Now what do I do?”  I was angry, upset, and in total despair.  “Jill Reaser now believes I’m the biggest turd floating down Coal Creek.  Hell, she doesn’t believe it, she KNOWS it.  My life is over.  I have nothing to live for.  And what in the hell were the two of you doing out there on the dance floor?  You were putting the make on her, weren’t you?  Are you trying to drive me to suicide?”  I was really getting wound up.

“Okay, the fight plan was a little off.”

“A little off?  A little off?  You just destroyed my entire life.  I’m destined to be a hermit living in the woods out past Wiekert, coming into town to buy corn flakes and beer, a booger hanging out of each nose-hole.  I’ll smell funny and shuffle and talk to myself.  And Jill Reaser will marry a doctor and have kids and live a normal, happy life and never ONCE think about me.”

Les kept staring ahead, “I’m hungry.  Want to split a sub?”

 

The Evils of Beer 

My days turned into a parade of repeating routine.  I couldn’t bring myself to do anything, even go to the library.  On the night of the next splash hop, I walked all the way to the pool from the uptown Rea’s.  Jill wasn’t there, so I walked all the way back to see who was around.  Outside, leaning against a parking meter were Ned Lenker, John Bailey, and Don Detman.  Both Ned and John were way older than I.  Don had just graduated with me.  I knew them but didn’t run around with them.  Everybody was bored.  Suddenly, Ned got the idea to go get beer, drive out of town, park, and get drunk.  I figured, ‘Sure, why not?  At least Jill Reaser won’t be around to see me make an idiot of myself.’  We all piled in Ned’s Plymouth and headed for the Good Intent, a volunteer fire company way down on south Fourth Street, that like all the other hose companies, had a members-only bar upstairs, complete with a speakeasy peephole door.  John just happened to be a member and knew the bartender.  Minutes later, we were heading south out of town with four quarts of beer in the car.

Everything was rolling along just fine.  Then when returning to town on Second Street, Ned wove across the middle line and almost hit a woman getting out of a car.  Ned turned off his lights and sped on.  Her husband called the cops.  After a ridiculous chase through the streets, we got blocked by the town’s two unmarked police cars.  The cops jumped out with drawn guns.  It was the most exciting thing that happened since “Whiskey” Wein drove up Market Street in the wrong lane and hit the town ambulance head-on twenty years ago.  Don Detman and I cowered in the back seat.  At gunpoint, we were shoved into the back seats of the patrol cars and taken down to the police station on the square and locked up.

Nobody knew what to say.  Ned just kept repeating over and over again, “Oh, shit.  Oh, shit.”  I was so nervous, I threw up.  A cop came in and grilled us about where we got the beer.  Nobody said anything.  There’d be hell to pay if John squealed on the Good Intent.  There’d be enough bad intent to last us a lifetime.  The cop finally said that, except for Ned, who was obviously in deep shit, drunken driving, flight to avoid arrest, disorderly conduct, and about twenty other felonies and misdemeanors, he was going to take us all to our houses, pound on the doors, get each one’s old man out of bed, and transfer custody after chewing out our fathers.  ‘OMG.  Please, lock me up.  Sentence me to hard labor.  Anything but that.’  John blurted out, “The Chestnut Street Inn.”  The cop broke into a broad smile, “We knew they’ve been selling booze to underage kids.  Now we got’em.”  I panicked.  I didn’t know what would be worse:  the Good Intent coming after us with pitchforks, the owner of the Chestnut Street Inn suing us all for abuse of process, or the old man coming down with horrible retribution.

Before I could decide, we were herded back into the two patrol cars and driven to Alderman Lantz, a true connoisseur of evil who worked on the side for the high school running study halls.  His office was on top of his garage hard on the alley behind his house in the Third Ward.  How could my life get any worse?  He was already behind his desk, dressed in a robe and looking like shit warmed over.  He started babbling in legalese, none of which I understood.  We sat there like dummies.  Finally, I heard one of the cops ask, “What do we do with the rest of them?”

Mr. Lanz looked up with bloodshot eyes, “No charges.”

My mind was too far gone to understand.  ‘No charges?  No charges?  Uh, what does that mean?’  With Ned stuck in the office to face God-knows what, we were shoved back into one of the patrol cars.  We were each driven home and left off.  No hammering on doors, no getting fathers out of bed in the middle of the night.  I tried my best to sneak in and up the stairs, but the old man hollered out from the bedroom, “What the hell do you mean coming in at this time of night?”

I mumbled something, went into my room, closed the door, and hid under the covers.  Then nothing.  Amazingly, he must’ve rolled over and gone back to sleep.  There was grumbling the next morning, but nothing more.  Then the evening paper came.  There it was on the front page.  The old man read it out loud:  “CITY DRIVER CHARGED WITH THREE COUNTS.”  And down at the bottom were the names of everybody else.  The old man went ballistic.  My mother came in from the kitchen and read over his shoulder.  What she read out loud stunned me:  “Mr. Lenker admitted buying a six-pack of beer and drinking five of the cans himself.”

She looked up over the top of the paper at me:  “How many times have we told you not to carouse around with boys who are older than you?  It says here he’s twenty-one years old.  And you had to go along.  At least you had enough sense to not drink any beer.”  She gave me a dirty look, said nothing more, and went back into the kitchen.  The old man was not appeased, “You’re grounded from now until you leave for college.  Only work at the Bon Ton.  That’s it.  Oh, yeah, and your dentist appointment next week.”

I tried to look chastised, but was enormously relieved.  Brought back to life from sudden death, I went upstairs and hid in my room.  I was waiting for the evening AM skip, listening to the hiss where WLS would eventually come in when it hit me:  Jill Reaser’s parents would’ve read it, too.  That meant that SHE knew.  I knew she’d conclude that I was a miscreant of the lowest order, a habitual drunk who got bombed while riding in cars, while attending Splash Hops, while sitting in Sunday school.  My life was truly over.  How could I ever approach her, let alone say something to her?  The thought of asking her out was too much, not that I had the guts to do it before.  But this sealed the deal:  I was doomed.  I really would live out my life as a hermit.  I also had to face Mrs. Brager at the Bon Ton, Miss Wolfe at the library, all the aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins, Reverend Moyer.  What was I going to tell them?  How was I ever going to live all of this down?  All of that and Jill Reaser too?  It was more than I could handle.

I stopped talking to people.  My appetite disappeared.  Even the Minnier Brother’s famous sausage with Mom’s boiled potatoes and stewed tomatos sauce was tasteless glue in my mouth.  I thought and thought about calling her, but saying anything would be impossible, let alone saying something intelligent.  I was at home after work one day the next week, when I thought of a brilliant solution:  I’d write Jill Reaser a letter.  I’d have to hone my writing to its sharpest ever.  I’d even have to surpass my best-of-the-best editorial in the high school paper, “Rock ‘n Roll Will Never Die.”  I’d apologize for bringing shame and degradation into her world.  I’d figuratively throw myself at her feet and beg forgiveness.  I’d tell her I’m reformed, on the wagon, a really a nice guy who just made a teeny-weeny mistake…or two…or three.  She’d immediately understand and forgive me.  No, wait, she’ll remember me being drunk and stupidly mute at the first Splash Hop.  Maybe she forgot all about that and she’d be overwhelmed by my prose and suggest we get together at Rea’s.  Hmmm.  Surely the old man would let up on my being grounded for a date as important as that.  He was young, once.  At least I thought so.  I had to act quickly.

I jumped up and sat down at the old library stand in the middle room.  I rummaged around for a new ball point and a clean sheet of paper.  Hmmm, how to begin?  Should I tell her that I loved her more that the double cheese bacon giant filler at Biff Burger?  How about claiming that she’s the sexiest flute player in the junior high band?  Not romantic enough.  Maybe I should start out by abjectly apologizing.  Surely groveling would win her over.  Or just flat-out tell her all that stuff is in the past and would she go to a movie with me?  Better:  bold, decisive, forward-looking…stupid.  This wasn’t working at all.  But I had to tell her I wasn’t a j.d.  I could tell her that I was a distinguished honor roll, National Honor Society, college-bound all around nice guy who just got in with the wrong crowd.  How about claiming I had to do it because I lost a bet?  I finally took the apology route and scribbled a few lines and told her that I hoped I hadn’t embarrassed her by getting my name in the paper.  I didn’t like it, but there it was.  The page looked neat and clean, and that had to count for something.  I walked up to the mail box at Market and 11^th and dropped it in.

I told NOBODY what I had done.  I missed the next two splash hops because of being grounded.  I trudged to The Bon Ton every weekday morning except Wednesday.  I was there nine until nine on Saturdays, working the infamous twelve-hour rollover, patently illegal under Pennsylvania labor laws.  But at sixty-five cents an hour, it was the only way I could make the job worthwhile.  When I had finally given up hope, her letter arrived.  I took it up to my bedroom and closed the door.  She had beautiful handwriting.  Her return address was a work of art, shear poetry.  I tore it open.

 

Dear Chris,

I didn’t know your name was in the paper, and I’m sorry that happened.  I remember you at the Splash Hops.  My mother won’t let me date, especially somebody who’s much older than I.  Don’t feel bad.

Jill

 

I read the note about five thousand times.  She wasn’t mad at me.  That was good.  But she didn’t know what I was talking about.  That was bad.  I shouldn’t have mentioned it.  And that part about not dating, did she think I wrote her a letter to ask her out?  She must think I’m a lunatic or the geekiest guy in the universe.  Now what?  There’d be no point in asking her out, so at least I didn’t have to worry about the ultimate rejection.  Why didn’t she say she’d really like to go out with me but her mother wouldn’t let her date?  She could’ve at least suggested a meeting at Rea’s or the library.  Then disaster struck.  Classmate and second-best friend Mel Rothman saw me sitting in a booth and looking depressed at the uptown Rea’s.  The first thing he said was, “Jill really liked you until that stuff you pulled at the Splash Hops.”

I stared in disbelief.  “We never even talked to one another before that dance.  How could she know enough to like me?”

“News travels fast.  Her older sister told me Jill knew you had the hots for her way back before graduation.  Somebody must’ve pointed you out because she thought you were cute.”  Mel was looking very pleased with himself.  Cute?  Cute?  That word had never been applied to me except by my mother…once, I think.

“Yeah, if you would’ve just played it straight, her mother would’ve let her date you because she knew you from all those mornings playing records for the bus kids.  Her mother thinks you’re very studious.  Well, she did before you showed up drunk and blew beer breath all over Jill.  That went over like a lead balloon.  You could’ve at least gone to the movies, the library, that kind of stuff.  Who knows, maybe the two of you would’ve gotten in on.”

We talked a bit, and I made an excuse to take off.  Walking home, I decided that the letter was totally the wrong thing to do.  Now I was stuck with no way out.  The only thing I could hope for was to run into her somewhere and explain everything.  That hope carried me through the rest of the summer.  I never did see her, and I left for college in late September long after the local schools started.  Adjusting to college overwhelmed me, but every night I’d think of Jill Reaser.  I’d get out the letter and read it and fantasize about how it would be spending my life with her.

The next four years were filled with the struggles of surviving college.  I remember seeing Jill once or twice at high school basketball games when I was home on one break or another.  She was a cheerleader and even more gorgeous than in that magic summer of 1964.  I thought of her often in college, but like all such longings, the daydreams and imaginary scenarios slowly faded away.

Looking back over all these many years, I wonder if unrequited love isn’t after all the most pure love of all:  no disappointments, no arguments, no regrets, no infidelities, no horrible revelations of a relationship gone wrong, no having to undo what at the time was one of the most exciting and fulfilling moments of your life.  A fantasy love has only the memories and the emptiness.

I wish you well, Jill Reaser:  “Here’s looking at you, kid.  Live long and prosper.”