Lucinda – Chapter 13

My senior year of high school was more interesting from a historical perspective then from a personal. Nothing much happened to me. I dated several guys but all of them were frustrated with my virginity or with my lack of commitment. I know, go figure, but guys back then wanted a sure thing to come home to and our future was right around the corner. I wasn’t ready to settle down though and none of them were the type of guy I wanted to settle down with. I mean I dated every type of guy: smart, funny, rebellious and I just couldn’t say what I was looking for. Maybe it was a little of everything that I wanted. I just knew that I hadn’t found it yet. I saw Joe a lot that year, but for all his promises to be there for me if things went bad, he was barely civil to me. I guess he felt that I had hurt him too badly, but I did miss his friendship.

Stevie was still flourishing in school. He was getting straight A’s every quarter. I can’t say I was surprised though. He took like a duck to water to all of Grammy’s love and care. God, I loved that woman.

Grammy said there were so many things going on in the world that a radio was just not giving us all the information that we needed. She went out and bought a TV, which was pretty cool because our little town had its very own television station that year, WTVC, channel 9. It was an ABC affiliate. We would gather around that TV sometimes and watch sitcoms like “I Love Lucy” or “Father Knows Best.” We would laugh along with the laugh tracks because it didn’t take much to entertain us.

Some nights we would shut it off. It brought everything a little too close to home. There were race riots going on in different parts of the country. These riots were news to us. Sure, we knew about the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, but we didn’t know about the race riots and the sit-ins that were happening all over.  When you live in a small town, I guess you get so secluded from the outside world that things surprise you now and again. We clung to the news every time there was a mention of Cuba. Jessie shared all the news he could in his letters, but we were always looking for more.

As we danced across the floor that year to hits such as “Venus” and “Mack the Knife,” there were events going on all over the country that would change the course of history. The United States actually had a successful rocket orbit the earth that year, called the Explorer.  As if that wasn’t enough, they had selected seven men to travel into space on a rocket ship. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to go into orbit. NASA had dreams of landing on the moon, but no one thought that was possible at that time.

Politically, there was some noise about a young man named John F. Kennedy running for president of the United States. He had Grammy’s support because he was both Irish and Catholic. Most women liked him because he was both young and cute. I kind of liked his brother Bobby more. The man had a lot of potential and a lot of kids. In the movies, Walt Disney released “Sleeping Beauty” into theaters, and two of the most popular movies were “Pillow Talk,” which starred Rock Hudson and Doris Day, and “Some Like It Hot,” starring, of course, the beautiful and voluptuous Marilyn Monroe. I wonder if we’d known then that Rock was a homosexual or that Marilyn would nearly destroy the Kennedy’s that we would like those movies as well as we did. Hindsight is twenty-twenty sometimes.

It went on like that; things happening all around us. It was an exciting time to be alive. The world was changing right before our eyes in ways that we never thought possible.

The smaller, more immediate world that we live in did not seem to be changing at all. We were entertaining ourselves the same way we always did, though music was becoming more of a statement then just fun to listen to. Some of the singers were really starting to say something in their songs, not just boy meet girl lyrics. I was starting to love Rock ‘N’ roll. It was an expression of who we were at the time. Elvis came home from the army and continued to belt out hits. I went to my very first concert that year when Cleo came home for winter break. We went to see a concert where four well-known musicians were playing together. It was called the “Winter Dance Party Tour.” The show was fantastic. We joined the throbbing and pulsating crowd of teenage girls who screamed from the audience, hoping that one of those singers would turn their heads toward them. It was particularly remarkable because it was one of the last few shows they did before that fateful day.

On   February 3, 1959, three very talented musicians boarded a plane that led to their deaths. The three men were Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. They were trying to get to their next city a little early to catch some rest. They took off in a plane during a thunderstorm and when the plane went down, all were killed. It was a very sad day for music. We even took a moment of silence at school when we learned of the fateful crash. One newspaper reported that a musician named Waylon Jennings was supposed to be on the plane but gave up his seat to JP Richardson, The Big Bopper. When Holly learned that piece of news, he told Jennings, “Well, I hope your old bus freezes up.” Jennings responded, “Well. I hope your plane crashes.” If the story was true, I imagine the man is still haunted by those words.

Jessie wrote to me often to keep me updated on the happenings in Cuba. So much was going on that it didn’t seem like he was going on his European tour after all. Instead, they were going to station him in Guantanamo Bay. What a frightfully important place that was to be at that time.

Dear Sissy:

How are things going up there in the real world? Things are sort of surreal down here. Fidel Castro is making a mess of my European tour. It seems that Uncle Sam requires me to be stationed down here at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, in case things start to go bad down here. The relations between US and Cuba are not exactly running smoothly with this nitwit as leader.

The man is a liar and very powerful. Fidel Castro led his revolution into Havana and declared himself “Maximum Leader” of Cuba. The previous leader, Batista, fled the country. Mass trials and executions followed. Although Castro had propagandized his revolution as wanting to restore constitutional procedures, this was false. He pursued a radical Marxist policy. He has become vehemently anti-American and has nationalized all US businesses in Cuba. I can only hope that my tour has ended when all of this comes to a head down here. I know it will. It’s just a matter of time.

On the upside, I’ve met someone.  You are gonna love her Cinder. Her name is Willa. She is a true Texas beauty with long black hair and snapping blue eyes. She’s on her own down here. Her parents were killed five years ago in a freak car accident. She has no problem relocating so I think we will be heading home after my tour. That is, if she says yes when I ask her to marry me.

Now don’t go getting all excited, I am not asking just yet. I want to get to know her some more first. She’s a teacher of all things, and great with kids of course. She’s the complete opposite of Cindy Lou and maybe that is why I love her so much. She’s a gentle church-going woman, but she knows how to have a good time. Heck, she even taught me how to dance of all things. And Lucy, you know I’ve always had two left feet. I just can’t wait for you to meet her. You’ve always wanted a sister and maybe I can make that dream come true for you. If I get a picture of her, I will send it soon.

I gotta go now. Maneuvers are calling.

I love you Sissy.

Jessie

The letter from Jessie brought the Cuba incidents a little too close to home for my liking. I began to worry about him and to watch with interest what was happening with the presidential race. I began to believe that maybe John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the man for the job. Perhaps he would keep things safe for my brother. I got many letters from Cleo that year too. She was attending the University of California.

Dear Lucy,

Hi. How go things back home? I’m really enjoying things here, a lot more then I thought I would. You wouldn’t believe the changes in me. Out here I fit in. There is nothing different about me being a rich, blonde girl spending daddy’s money. HA HA! Well, nothing except that I actually intend to get an education.

My campus is about five miles away from the beach, so I still go every day. You should see the guys out here. They love to surf and the music that they listen to is awesome. There is this up-and-coming band called The Beach Boys that you would absolutely love.

In school, I spend my days in shorts and t-shirts and the rest of the day in a bikini. Somehow, I don’t feel the need to hide behind clothes this year. I am free to be me. And you know what else? Other people accept me the way you do. They don’t demand perfection from me. I love that.

My roommate’s name is Gennifer, with a G obviously. Ha ha. She says her parents wanted her name to be unique, but it drives her crazy. Everyone constantly misspells it. She reminds me of you in some ways, like she’s extremely smart for instance. She’s real shy too. Gennifer comes from Iowa. Yes, people really do live in Iowa. I know you always wondered about that too.

Oh, and you will never guess what I decided to major in…I’ll give you three guesses. Boys? No, that’s not it though I think they might be my minor. Partying? Well maybe, but I am studying and getting good grades. What’s that? You have no third guess? Giving up already? All right, I’ll tell you then. Psychology! I want to be a counselor for kids like us that come from screwy backgrounds. Think I’ll be any good at it? Oh never mind, I know what you’ll say, that I would be good at anything I set my mind to. Well thanks for the vote of confidence.

 I have a test to study for. I’ll write to you soon and I’ll be home for the summer before you know it.

Love you kiddo,

Cleo

So that was how Cleo did her first year of college. I was proud, as was Grammy. She always said that Cleo spent so much time at our house, she had a vested interest in her future. I kind of agreed with her.

Like I said, historically speaking, the year was full of surprises but romantically speaking, it was a dud. I did polish my artistic skills. Because I had a little more free time that year, I found, much to my surprise, that I was really good at painting. I mean really good, enough that I was commissioned to do a few portraits for local parents, and it was pretty good pay. Not enough to support myself when I got out of school perhaps, but a very lucrative side business until I decided what my future would be, and I knew I had a home with Grammy for as long as I wanted it.

As the year wore on, Joe came back into my life little by little. We started by eating together occasionally. He knew that I would never love him the way he wanted me to, but he also missed the friendship that we had. It would never be the same easy, carefree relationship that we had in the beginning, but it was there just the same.

Joe and I had gone out to the diner to eat one day in late April of 1959. Our waitress looked oddly familiar to me. It was obvious that she was very pregnant and when I put two and two together, they finally made four. I realized that she was the girl that Donny had left behind, a little older and wiser perhaps, and a lot more tired, but it was her just the same.

When she got a break, I begged her to sit with us. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do for her. I felt bad. I had seen it coming and done nothing to warn her, not that she would have listened anyway. Her name was Pam. Her parents, it turned out, were distraught with what had happened. Her father threw her out of the house, and she agreed to work at the diner in exchange for free room and board at the apartment above it. She liked it she said, it was normally quiet. Her mother had arranged it. The people that owned it were old friends of hers.

I was really surprised though that Joe had monopolized most of the conversation. He was falling head over heels with this girl, and I was in the process of hoping she would let him down easy when I realized she was just as starry-eyed for him. Perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Joe and I went to prom together. Pam had to work and anyway she was too big to go out dancing just then. We danced the night as friends, kind of the culmination of our relationship. We graduated two weeks after that. A week later, Pam and Joe were married the day before she had her baby. It was a little girl, and they named her Hope. She was a beautiful baby. Joe went to work in his father’s construction business, and I can honestly say they did live happily ever after.