It Happened This Week in 1964 -
An Extract from
"A Million Tomorrows...
Memories of the Class of '64"
(Editor's Note: This week I shall share with you an extract from my first book. The italic text is my journal entry back in 1964 and the observations were made in 1989 when I wrote the book. I'll be posting more info on the book next week. I hope you enjoy.)
Friday, February 14, 1964
45th Day 321 days to follow
Clear
Went back to school today with a 1X excuse. Worked on my letter project during study hall. I don't have but about twenty letters to do now. Rode to Mullin's with Paul then missed the bus so I started walking to town. Ronald H. came back and gave me a lift.
Ate supper and watched T.V. Took a ten minute cat nap at 6:00 P.M. At 7:30 P.M. I "hoofed it" to the dance at Bradley's where the "Continentals" played. It was more crowded tonight than it's been in ages.
After the dance Bob and I went riding around. I drug in at 1:00 A.M. Had a piece of cake and at 1:30 A.M. checked into bed.
Holidays come and go and some have no meaning at all if you can't relate to them. For the longest time, the only meaning I gave to Valentine's Day was that it was my father's mother's birthday. I always gave her a combination Valentine and birthday present. She was 65 on that birthday.
In 1964, that was about the only way I could relate to Valentine's Day. It was just another day to someone who didn't have anyone special to share it with. Such a holiday was probably the reason for the large crowd at the dance at Bradley's that night. It's on nights like that when young lovers want to be out dancing together. Perhaps if I had paid any attention I would have noticed a lot of red outfits, flowers, and hearts decorating the place. I didn't have anyone to take to the dance with me so the decorations meant nothing special.
Even at the young age of seventeen, I already had old memories of that holiday. My first real date was on Valentine's Day, a few years earlier, in 1961. It was through one of those twisted webs of relationships that I was invited to go to a dance on Valentine's Day. The web was a long and complicated one. Joyce Ann was the daughter of the lady from whom my Valentine grandmother rented an apartment.
Joyce Ann was seventeen and was going steady with a boy who was taking her to a dance at Huntsville High School. She invited her younger cousin, Connie, to go along. Why she wanted to do that is unknown, but Connie didn't have anyone to go with. Through some scheme, known only to Venus or Cupid, I was the one invited to go to the dance with Connie.
That was my first real date, and I didn't even initiate it. I was the one who was asked for the date, and even then I wasn't asked by the girl. It was through an arrangement made by the cousins, and parents, and aunts and uncles, and grandmothers and who knows who else. Maybe the milkman was in on it for all I knew. If I hadn't known better I would have thought that it was an old-world arrangement. How such a date was settled is beyond belief, but it was and I was invited to go to the Valentine's Dance with Connie.
It was 1961. I was fifteen at the time; she was twelve, almost thirteen. I bought flowers and everything and even wore a suit and tie. I lived across the street from the cousin, so when the time came, I took the flowers out of the refrigerator, tried to get the butterflies out of my stomach, and walked across the street to meet my date. It looked like the Academy Awards show when I arrived at the door. There were people and cameras and flowers and me. There, behind the crowd, was Connie in her nice party dress.
When I gave her the flowers she opened them and handed the corsage back for me to pin on her.
That posed the first problem of the night. Just how do you go about pinning a flower on a girl's shoulder, or lower, without touching something you were not supposed to touch? The older cousin, her date, the aunt and uncle and her parents got quite a giggle out of watching me struggle with embarrassment. The obvious way to do it was to scoop your hand down inside the front of the dress to hold it steady while you pinned it on her. Obviously what was practical was not the proper way to do it. After a few seconds, which seemed like hours, of fidgeting and trying to pin it on without touching anything, and after the adults had all the giggles they could get out of watching me, I was rescued by the cousin who completed the task. A smart fellow would have taken that as a hint and left and waited until he could date a girl without an audience. That was not to be on that night. I was committed to the date.
We rode in the cousin's date's car to the dance, hardly speaking on the way. I just barely knew the girl sitting beside me in the back seat of the car. We had met once before when she was eight and it never entered my mind that someday I would be sitting in the back of a car on the way to a dance with her. We sat in silence, glancing ever so often at one another and then out of the windows to watch the street lights go by. The dance went rather well, except that at the time, neither I nor Connie knew how to dance, and we spent most of the time sitting and making busy talk or not talking at all. When we did try to dance, all that I knew how to do was the two step, and I spent most of the time on the floor saying "one two one, one two one" to myself as I counted the steps needed for the dance. When the dance was over we all went to Jerry's. It was my first time to visit that establishment with a girl. We had Cokes and then went riding in the country.
The older cousin and her escort knew what you were supposed to do on a date when you go riding around on dark country roads. I didn't. If Connie did, she didn't tell me. For almost an hour, we rode around in the dark countryside, with me sitting straight-backed, with my arm and her's just barely touching. I couldn't have gotten any closer to the door if they had added me to the plans at Detroit. About ten minutes before we got back to the house, my or her hand moved enough that they touched, and we held hands for the rest of the trip. That was the whole extent of affection for the evening.
Thus ended my first date. Scared to death of the girl and not knowing what to do, I decided that I needed to understand the male-female relationship a lot more before I ever went on another one. Later, Connie and I would discover what dating was all about, but it would take time, and it would be another year or so before I ever went out with her again.
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