vacation

My high school years are filled with memories, some good and some not so good. This is one of those memories that was not so good.

I was 15 years old and working for the family that owned the bowling alley in our small town of Lebanon, PA. I babysat their children and my brothers, Michael and Patrick, worked as pin boys in the bowling alley, which was next door to their home so we three would go to work together after school from 5 – 10 PM. In those days we didn’t have automated bowling alleys, pin boys like my brothers gathered the fallen bowling pins and re-stacked them. It was hard worked but my brothers enjoyed it.

One of the other pin boys was a handsome young man named Ammon Peffley. I found out later that the word Ammon meant Greek God, which made sense because he was so good-looking. Ammon was also 15 and in my class in high school and we met at the bowling alley. I had a mad crush on Ammon and my brothers somehow sensed this. They were typical brothers, always pestering me about Ammon.

The man who owned the bowling alley would take each of us home in his big old Chevy at the end of the day. The boys would sit in the back and I would sit in front. One night we were all in the car waiting for the owner, my brothers in the back seat (no sign of Ammon) and they asked me what I thought of Ammon Peffley. I didn’t want them to know how I really felt, so I replied something like “I can’t stand him!” and other descriptive words to make sure no one knew the truth. What they never told me was that they had silently put Ammon in the back seat and he was listening to everything I was saying.

For the rest of my high school years Ammon Peffley ignored me and never spoke to me. I was the President of one class and he was the President of another. He would speak to everyone at lunch except me. He never asked me to dance at the sock up, and when I was a Junior and tasked with putting the sock hop together I eagerly waited for him to ask me to dance – I was very popular then – but he wouldn’t ask me. He was a quiet boy, stoic in fact, but likable nonetheless. He was Captain of the football team with my good friend Pat Anderson. Pat asked me once why Ammon didn’t like me and I said “I have no idea”.

Still, I would still be faced with Ammon Peffley. I knew that I wanted to be a nurse, and heard about this elderly couple that needed some help on the weekends so I volunteered to care for them. As it turned out, it was Ammon Peffley’s grandparents. Every Saturday that I would be working with them at their home Ammon would visit them. He would see me and mumble something inaudible.

When the senior dance came around I was still holding out hope that Ammon would ask me, and everyone was waiting and wondering who Ammon would be taking to the dance. All the pretty girls were spoken for and I was one of the few left – it should to be me. I had set things up so that I could bring someone in my neighborhood, you know, just in case, but never really asked him because I wanted Ammon to ask me. He didn’t. After class one day we (the “in” crowd) were all at the malt shop, and Ammon walks in and everyone asks him who he is taking to the prom and he replied “Susan Hill” – a person I was not fond of. He later told the boys that the nuns sat him down and told him that he had to ask Susan Hill to the prom. Out of spite, I did not go to my senior prom.

Several years after high school when I was in nursing college, my brothers and I were home sharing stories from our days in high school. We spoke about the fun we had at the bowling alley and they told me what happened that day in the car, how they questioned me about Ammon and that he was hidden in the back seat. I have cried many times since learning this.

Michael is now dead and Patrick is too old to care, but I never got over it. I understand that Ammon married and had children and died in his 50’s.

This is one of those wounds that just never closed.

Vegetables, Fruit Trees and Hobos

My parents inherited a parcel of land in the suburb of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. To a Texan, this ⅓ of an acre was a smidgen of earth, but in this part of the world, a parcel of land this size would house eight double homes with eight backyards and eight outhouses.

In the summer, Dad decided to increase our food income by planting all sorts of vegetables: beans, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn. He did the planting, convincing my mother that he needed a full sized tractor to assist this modern day farmer. My brother said it was more like a planter of yesteryear without the horse.

Of course, there were four of us kids to do the hard work-planting potatoes, sowing seeds, keeping the rows free from weeds, and harvesting the veggies.

There was always something to harvest throughout the season. Early on it was stripping the snap bean plants, then after the beans, tomatoes were pulled from their plants to ripen from the vines to line up on our backyard fence. Later is the summer, our father, after a hard days work, would come home and with a giant metal tub, go out to our ”farm” and snap off dozens of corn cobs, and bring them into the house. Mom would boil them up and with a pound of butter on the table, always a steak or prime rib, several other veggies, and often an apple pie for dessert. We would sit down to, a royal feast you could say.

Also around our land he planted fruit trees, including apples, pears and peaches. Each year the fruit trees grew taller and more abundant as my father would nurse them with his green thumb, and each year people in the neighborhood would help themselves to the fruit, which was fine by him. My father so enjoyed sharing our bounty with the neighborhood that he never minded cleaning up the spoils on the ground.

I also remember that, in summer, hobos would come to the house. The word was out that Mom was a soft touch. My mother always gave them a sandwich and a soda, and in those days the sandwich slides were big, thick slices of freshly baked bread, stuffed with either thick slices of ham, a sirloin steak, or maybe miles of Lebanon bologna and cheese with lots of mustard. The hobos would sit on our porch and chat with us kids, and in those days no one ever thought of anyone stealing from us – what was there to steal?

These are the things I remember.

August 7, 2018 0

Gordon Getty and My Red Skirt

To this very day I have no idea who the first Getty was, how many male Gettys there are in the world, how much money they have, etc… and I really don’t care. But once, a Getty wanted to meet me, all because of a red linen skirt with pretty musical notes.

Several summers ago, my husband and I lived in Newport, Rhode Island, the site of the annual Newport Music Festival. This particular festival was, at that time, held in several of the Newport mansions every summer, which attracted famous persons who enjoyed classical music.

Most of these visiting celebrities stayed for the duration of the festival at the homes of the more illustrious Newporters who occupied the many large mansions that dotted the Newport landscape.

We happened to have a friend, Carolyn Skelly, the mysteriously disfigured, often-robbed Skelly oil heiress who was wildly social and owned one of the smaller mansions.

Carolyn invited Don and me to a dinner following a night of classical music where Carolyn was entertaining many of her society friends, one who was a man called Gordon Getty.

Since we were not rich or famous (except my husband was more talented than anybody) to me, meeting a Getty sounded so exciting. The problem was, I had nothing to wear! Plus, it was a last minute invitation, which was normal for summertime dinners back then.

After searching the few fashion stores in Newport, I hightailed it to Boston and to my favorite department store, Saks.

It was an exhaustive search, and I could not find a thing. On my way out I spotted some summer long skirts in the lingerie dept. One was a ruby red linen, with white music notes all over it-beautiful..Next to the skirts were these filmy white peasant blouses-a perfect combination for a summer evening.

70_s_red_linen_alfred_shaheen_maxi_full_length_flower_skirt_8_1024x1024 — My red skirt with musical notes looked almost exactly like this, except for the fact that it had musical notes on it.

Don and I joined the musical lovers at Carolyn’s house. We are talking immense-including a gorgeous ballroom, complete with a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox and a diaz where all the important people sat.

Our seats were right after the receiving line, far, far away from the VIPs.

When we were introduced to Carolyn’s guest, Mr. Getty, the gentleman made it a point to comment favorably on my ensemble, especially my skirt.

We went to our seats in the nosebleed section. After dinner, the jukebox was charged up, and everybody started to dance. I noticed how intently Mr. Getty kept staring at our table. Slowly, Carolyn’s special friend inched his way toward us, moving slowly upward to the top of the ballroom. He ended up at our table and sat across from us in one of the empty seats vacated by dancers. Then, little by little he started walking around the table toward me, until he was there, on my left asking me to dance.

My husband did not dance. He liked to play jazz piano-he did not dance. However, for the first time and almost last time, Don stood up on my right and announced that we would be dancing. Getty leaning over my left, Don pulling me up on the right, and I was shocked. My husband gave Getty such an impressive dismissal that Getty slunk back to his diaz seat, and I never saw him again.

July 16, 2018 0

Mary To The Contrary

Tag

A Wound That Never Closed

Vegetables, Fruit Trees and Hobos