Last week I had trouble getting my thoughts together on the summer after my junior year in high school. Not that I forgot any of the events but more from how to start the story. It was easier to write about current events when you have a "brain cloud" on how to tell those teenage events that seemed so important at the time.
Of all of the silly ways to begin the story I read some thoughts of Willie Nelson's on his 83rd birthday. There were lots of really good ones but the one that helped to unlock the writer's block was "Ninety per cent of the worlds lovers are not with their first love. That's what makes the jukebox play." First, think about the subject that a lot, if not most, of the popular songs were about lost loves. It seems like the baby boomer generation grew up listening and dancing to far too many of those. In the growing up process we all went thru those times when we thought we were in love even though we were just learning about it. Even now you can here a certain song and it will remind you of some special person. At sixteen or seventeen you knew you were really in love regardless of how bad the relationship was.
So began my summer of 1963. Sometime back in the spring I had begun dating a fellow classmate. Now I dated a lot of really nice boys. My only bad experiences were the couple of times I went out with my brother's friends. This boy was not that popular, perhaps one of the worst academically in the class and my Mother could not stand the sight of him. Maybe at that particular time the fact that my Mother hated him made him seem more attractive. When she forbid me to see him it only made matters worse.
This is beginning to sound like one of those love songs. I went out and played lots of golf every morning and spent the rest of the day thinking of ways to sneak around and see him. There was even talk between us about running off and getting married. After all lots of kids did that, even my brother Paul. Did it really seem so romantic to get married and live in some cute garage apartment? Just how intelligent was it to throw away your dreams of going to college? Funny how stupid it sounds now.
Fellow classmate, Pat Mackey lived next door to me. That summer she was going to spend a month with her brother who was stationed at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Our Mothers got their heads together and the first thing I knew I was put on a bus with Pat the last week in June and shipped off to New Mexico. It was a long bus trip through the barren land of west Texas and more than a little scary for two seventeen year old girls. I had only been on one terrible vacation with my family so travelling and the thought of going somewhere for a month with people I didn't know except for Pat was also a little scary.
It was well after dark before Pat's brother Bill picked us up in El Paso and we drove to White Sands. Bill was an officer so he, his wife and their child had a nice house with a spare room for Pat and I. Even with all the uncertainty of being in a new place it did not take long to drift off to sleep after the five hundred mile trip on the bus. Any dread over what was to take place in the course of the next month was quickly forgotten that night.
The next morning Bill announced that he had made arrangements for us to be Junior Lifeguards at the Officer's Club Swimming Pool. That way we would have something to do and have the chance to meet some of the other kids on the base. Wow! Is that right up a teenagers alley or what? Within a week's time a group of about eighteen kids from age sixteen to twenty-one who were all pretty bored with one another gathered around us and the fun began.
The base Commander's son, 21, and daughter, Boo, 17, became the leaders of the pack. They had access to two Volkswagen busses which we filled to go on picnics at White Sands National Park, there were trips to Juarez, Mexico for the bull fights and exploring the town on Sundays and off to Los Cruses for dinner. The base had a teen club that had not been used in years. A little cleaning and a record player gave us a place to hang out together after going to the base theater in the evenings.
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| THE BULLFIGHTS |
It was fascinating to meet army kids that had lived all over the world. They in return enjoyed having two new kids arrive that gave them the spark they needed to get together and show us a good time while having fun themselves. It seemed that every day they thought of something new to do like hiking up to an old mine in the mountains or how easy it was to get arrested by the MP's by roller skating around the missile silos. Perhaps their parents were quite happy when it was time for us to leave since they were never sure what we were up to.
Movies in 1963
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| Hanging out at the Teen club |
Pat's parents came to pick us up at the end of July. Arriving there a month before I had no idea how hard it was going to be to leave. What turned out to be a summer of fun with new interesting friends was also a summer of some important lessons. My world suddenly expanded beyond the city limits of Muskogee, Oklahoma. I listened to stories from the other kids on how hard it was to move from base to base and how they envied me being able to stay in one place growing up. Because these were kids I had not grown up with and would probably never see again it was easy to talk about feelings I didn't share with my friends at home. Besides all the fun and laughter of that summer I learned an awful lot about myself.
By the time I arrived at home I had come to the conclusion of just how stupid it was to think getting married at seventeen would be so great. There were so many people I would disappoint. There was so much more I wanted to do.
It was not easy to end the relationship that had seemed so important the month before. In truth there was no way to tell him I didn't love him. I look back now and realize that you can love a lot of people in your lifetime for a lot of different reasons. The first real love of your life never really goes away no matter what circumstances ended the romantic relationship. We went our separate ways but remained great friends until he passed away. There are still those times when I hear some song that reminds me of those days and I have to smile.
Of course their had to be a summer beau just like in all the teen movies.
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