The pick up

This is long, but it’s exactly how it happened.

When no one was waiting for me in Schroon Lake, I panicked and then remembered I was supposed to call. There wasn’t a public phone in sight. The village center was at most two blocks long. One side of the New York Route 9 had no shops at all and the other side only a few. There was a café, an ice cream shop with a window for walk up service, a t-shirt shop, the bus ticket window, and a hardware store. The other side had the church, a small town hall, a miniscule post office, and a lodge of some sort. A block to the right was a drive-in sub shop. I dragged everything across the street, and using a borrowed phone from the ice cream shop called the retreat. I told the woman who I was and where I was. I told her the woman in charge was supposed to pick me up, and she said someone would be there shortly. I got an ice cream cone and dragged everything back to the spot in front of the church. It offered a great view both to the right and left, even down to the lake and was well out of the way of pedestrians. After about fifteen minutes, a dark blue Dodge sedan came into town from the north and slowed down across from me. It unloaded three teenagers who went into the ice cream shop and pulled away. I opened my guitar case and bean to play. After playing every song I knew, I checked my watch and saw I’d been waiting an hour. I called the retreat again and was told the woman in charge was still not in. I asked that someone, anyone, come pick me up as soon as they could and was assured someone would. I went back to my spot across the street and waited. Every car’s appearance lifted my hopes, but each time they drove past. The teenagers who’d been dropped off earlier walked down to the lake. I looked at my watch again and was startled to see I’d been waiting over two hours. I didn’t want to make waves, but was considering getting on the next bus and heading back to New Haven. I was very annoyed. Before I did, I thought I should call one more time. I was told someone would be right there. The letter in Ms sounded very professional. There would be group sessions, foot massage, reflexology, counseling, and recreational opportunities. I hoped there might be other lesbians I could talk to. I’d left my husband, come out to my family, friends, and co-workers, but had never had sex with another woman. What if I was really bad at being a lesbian? I’d already flunked heterosexuality. I’d waited for over three hours and was on a first name basis with the town policeman who periodically drove to the lake on his short circle patrol. I also knew the woman at the bus ticket window, the people in the café and ice cream shop. Maybe one of them would take me in for the night. Then I heard a car. Actually, I felt the vibrations before I heard the sound. Looking up, I saw a large brown station wagon, covered in dirt, its windows smeared with dirty streaks. I was aghast. I was waiting for a professional woman, someone who might wear jeans, but would certainly wear a knit pullover, someone with clean socks and a professional manner, and a clean car. This driver could not be the psychologist I had written. Its muffler throbbing loudly, the car pulled over at the sub shop and a small woman in jeans, a denim shirt and an extraordinary amount of hair got out. Whew. Then car came unerringly towards me then went past. Before I could sigh again, it made a U-turn and pulled up next to me. This was the car. The driver’s left hand rested on the steering wheel, holding a cigarette. Her right arm casually lay across the back of the front bench seat, an open beer car in her right hand. If possible, she had more hair than the other woman. Even with her sitting, I could tell she was tall. Her breasts were visible under the blue denim shirt she wore open to her navel. I focused on her eyes. I was considering running away when she asked if I was going to the women’s retreat. With no time to fashion a lie, I heard myself say, “Yes, I am.” She told me her name and patted the front seat. Clouds of dust rose, momentarily hiding her face. “Throw your stuff in the back and sit up front with us.” I wondered how easy it would be to get out if I got in the car. What if part of women’s liberation is that women get to be serial killers and advertise for their victims in MS? I opened the back door and noted the rear window of the station wagon was gone. The woman said, “Yeah, it sucks all the dirt in the county in here.” My pack and guitar case stored, I closed the door and opened the front door. There were seven inches of dirt on the front seat. At least seven inches. She patted the seat again and more dust arose. “C’mon.” I looked at my new gold brushed velour jeans, then at the dust on the seat. I knew that by sitting and sliding I would grind dirt into my new pants that would never come out. This wasn’t New Haven dirt. This was country dirt, and it was laughing at my pants. I got in the car carefully, lifting my butt as I moved. Perhaps the pants could be saved. She drove to the sub shop where the small woman was waiting. “Scoot over,” she said as she opened the door. Lift the butt. Move. Lift the butt. Move. Perhaps I could still save my new pants. “Here, baby,” the woman said. Reaching across me, she handed one of two Italian subs to the driver. Hmm. There was a real possibility these two women were lesbians. Not like any lesbians I had ever seen or thought of or imagined, but lesbians none the less. The small woman introduced herself in a husky voice. Where the driver was tall and ample, she was small and wiry. Her blue jeans were as tight as the other’s, but her denim shirt was only open to her breasts. Her sandwich in one hand, the driver juggled a cigarette and a beer in the other. “Hold this a minute, will ya?” She handed me the beer as she unwrapped the sub. With one end of the sub exposed, she reached for the beer can. A tomato, completely encased in olive oil, squirted out, slid down my new tan canvas jacket and settled on my pants. The woman to my right reached to grab it, inadvertently grinding tomato and oil farther into the fabric. Unfortunately, she was still juggling the beer can and cigarette, and the end result was a flurry of ashes, a tiny cinder, and a generous splash of beer all landing on my pants. Fortunately, the beer put out the cinder before it made more than a small hole in the material. It was over. I couldn’t save my clothes now. As we drove along the beautiful upstate New York roads, the women told me there were six other women at the retreat. When the car turned onto a dirt road I understood the full extent of problem with the rear window. Conversation became difficult, if not impossible as I coughed and choked on the dust. The driver stopped the car at a small bridge. On the right side of the road, she pointed out a small waterfall. The lake above the falls, she explained, was where they went swimming. It was a lovely spot, and I was glad I’d brought my camera. Suddenly a voice hailed us. At the top of the falls, a woman stuck her head out of the water and waved. Someone from the retreat, I learned. I smiled, and we all waved. Then the woman stood up. She was totally naked. She wore absolutely nothing. It was impossible to only look at her eyes. My mind was totally blank. There were no previous experiences to which I could relate this one. Southern girls just didn’t see other girls without their clothes. I don’t know why, but they didn’t. It was probably a good thing. I was aware of a buzzing in my head, as well as the car starting up again. And I knew my mouth, which had dropped open when the woman stood up, was still open. The two women in the car assumed I was the same person they’d picked in town, but they were wrong. The New Haven me, with my proper job at Yale, my religious family, and twenty-seven years of assumptions about life, was gone. The new me didn’t know anything about anything. Everything was up in the air. Not everyone looked as I did or thought as I did or behaved as I did. I no longer stood on solid ground, able to see where I’d come from and where I was going. I stood on the rolling deck of a ship at sea in the middle of giant swells, trying to keep my balance, feeling seasick, unsure of what was coming, aware of the danger of being swept away, but unwilling to miss the trip.

©2009 jgschenck

Getting away

Before I left my husband July 4^th weekend, 1974, we had planned a three week vacation in Yugoslavia. I had been captivated by photos I’d seen of its mountains and the beauty of pre-war Dubrovnik. After I had moved out of our apartment, he called to ask if I was still going. I was incredulous – of course not. He wanted me to go with him anyway, but I refused, even when he said we couldn’t get our deposit money back.

I took very little when I left and selfishly left the rest for him to sort through and dispose of. It wasn’t my finest hour, and I knew then that it was unfair and self-centered. I have no justification. I believed I was running for my life, but I knew it looked irresponsible and heartless. I didn’t tell many people at Yale the truth as to why I left, because when I told my former boss she reacted very negatively. She was the one person I thought I could count on, but I was very wrong. A staunch feminist, she took what was then a common stand against homosexuality. Where I thought feminism set me free, she thought lesbianism tainted the fight for women’s rights.

One day in late July I was in the Provost’s office talking to her assistant, someone who didn’t reject me. I explained I had three weeks of vacation coming, but didn’t have anywhere to go or a lot of money. My husband had switched his plans around with the travel agency and went to England for a couple of weeks.

My friend told me she’d just read a letter to the editor of Ms Magazine about a women’s retreat in upstate New York. She got the magazine out, and read the letter to me. The place was in Paradox, New York, and offered a place for women to go who were re-assessing their lives. That sounded like me.

We got out a map, found the town, a tiny dot outside Schroon Lake, and I copied down the address. That night I wrote the woman a letter, explaining my situation and asking what the rates were. I told her when I would be coming – I decided to go for one week since I didn’t know anything about the place or the woman running it – and a week later received a reply. She gave me the sliding scale rates and told me to call when I arrived in Schroon Lake on Sunday, August 4, 1974.

My friend Mary helped me shop for a couple of new outfits, appropriate to a less formal lifestyle. No more hose or heels for me. She told me I had to have a denim shirt. All lesbians had denim shirts, and I couldn’t be without one. I also bought a pair of burnt orange brushed velvet jeans – remember, this was 1974 – and a pair of dark brown suede boots with gum soles.

I read incessantly, but came to hate evenings and weekends because I was so incredibly lonely. Mary spent weekends and evenings with her girlfriend. I walked around the University, often through areas of New Haven that weren’t really safe, but I didn’t care. Every evening I rode my bicycle over to hear the carillon concerts at Harkness Tower. One Saturday, I rode up to the top of East Rock and back, a ten-mile trip, but I was reminded of climbs I’d made with my husband up West Rock. I was restless and anxious, waiting for the trip to New York.

The bus left New Haven at 9:15am, and Mary came down to see me off. I was more than a little annoyed when she teased me about falling for someone during the week. Neither of us knew that the trip would change my life. The bus stopped in Springfield, MA, then on to Albany, NY, where I changed for the trip up I-87, the Northway. I dozed off and on, read a book I’d brought, and wondered what I’d find at the end of the five hour ride.

A teenage girl got on in Lake George and sat next to me. She babbled quite a bit about a church group or camp located in Schroon Lake and asked if I was part of that. I assured her I was not and asked about the woman’s retreat, but she had never heard of one in the area. That made me somewhat uneasy.

When I got off in Schroon Lake, I felt I was looking at a postcard. The majestic Adirondack Mountains soared around me. A road next to a white church ran down to a beautiful deep blue lake. From my bus companion, I knew that Schroon Lake was where the movie “Marjorie Morningstar” had been filmed. The lake was dotted with white sails and the sandy beach covered with people in brightly colored swimsuits.

I took my pack and guitar and sat on the hill in front of the church. No one was there to meet me. I felt very small.

©2009 jgschenck

Backyard adventures

After my brother’s Irish Mail disintegrated, broke or rusted – we aren’t sure what happened to it – we decided to build a car. Dad had some scrap lumber he donated and allowed us to use his tools. So with scrap lumber galore, a saw and a hammer, we began.

As you can see, the effort required specific accessories for me. Not only did I have to wear my favorite sailor cap, but I also needed my trusty cap pistol and holster as well as my Robin Hood t-shirt. There is no record of the outcome of this effort other than its meager beginnings.  There is a triple exposure showing the work in progress. My guess is my sister took the photo with her boxy Kodak Brownie.

The area in the back yard where this photo was taken was also the scene of a near disaster. One day, in order to save time, my brother and I decided to fill the running lawnmower with gasoline without turning it off. The gasoline spilled on the ground, and before we knew it, the backyard was on fire. Then we turned off the lawnmower. Dad was really angry at us for that one.

Our yard on Arbor Vista in Jackson was a great place to play. I’ve mentioned the ditches along the rear and side boundaries, as well as the tall oak tree for climbing and the area behind the garage and carport we used for creating miniature villages and islands. We jumped off the carport to prove our bravery and played every sport we could think of.

When spring rolled around in March, we put a tire out and practiced casting the line out with our rods and reels. My brother was always a better caster than I was, but we both loved the experience of preparing for the days of fishing summer brought.

I still fish, but spring doesn’t show its head here until May, although I’ve been known to drag people with me into the icy winds of March and April to some of the good spots around the Valley. Last year, a bitter wind blew over my tackle box, scattering my leads, hooks and sinker balls into Nashawannuck Pond in nearby Easthampton, MA. They’re cleaning the pond now and have drained it completely. I asked at town hall if I could look for my stuff, and the woman laughed. Apparently, I’m not the only fisherman who wanted to look for lost rigging.

At one point Dad bought a bunch of poles for a project he was working on. Before he could finish, we’d taken a few of them, tied string around the rounded ends and called them our horses – Visions of Monty Python and the coconuts. We cantered and galloped around the backyard all summer with them. When it came time for him to use them, we begged, pleaded and whined until he gave in and bought replacements. I don’t recall what my brother called his horse, but mine was Scout, after Tonto’s horse. Ever since I’d had my photo taken on a pinto, I believed I was destined to own one.

©2009 jgschenck

What happened next

Several people have emailed me asking what happened to the woman with whom I went to the movies that long ago Halloween night. Put simply, nothing happened between us. Ever. I was terrified of the feelings she elicited and kept my distance. However, my husband and I were invited to a party at her house, and I met her husband.

Clayton was a jerk, and Lucy spent the evening apologizing to me for his behavior. He had a tank of piranha fish and kept daring people to put their hands in it. I never saw her outside of work again, but years later, after we had divorced, my then ex-husband returned to Chapel Hill to work. He told me she’d left Clayton and become a lesbian which made me think I wasn’t the only one who had felt something.

My relationship with my husband was such that when I became infatuated with a woman, I always talked to him about it. I was never unfaithful to him, regardless of my feelings. Over the course of the next five plus years, there were three or four women to whom I was seriously attracted. I only told one of them about my feelings, and that resulted in one of my suicide attempts. It didn’t go well. She wasn’t understanding and, in fact, teased me. She came into my office and shut the door, then started massaging my neck. Once I put my hand up to touch hers, and she laughed. “No, no, no!” she said and left laughing. That pretty much slammed the door of my closet where Chapel Hill was concerned.

In 1972, we moved to New Haven, CT, and both worked at Yale University. Yale had just gone coed, and agitation for women’s rights was surfacing, despite continued anti-war protests.  Stonewall had happened three years earlier, but gay rights wasn’t even a blip on the radar of anyone I knew.

I joined a women’s consciousness raising group at Yale, the idea being we’d sit around and talk about the things we couldn’t talk about in front of men. We supposedly bared our souls to each other, but I never once told them I was gay. I didn’t believe being a radical woman at Yale included an understanding or acceptance of lesbians.

Yale had a gay hot-line, and I called that several times, but hung up. One day as I left the Yale University Press building on York Street, I saw two women on the other side of the street holding hands. I couldn’t move, so I stood and watched them, my jaw dropped to my knees, until they were out of sight.

A few months later, I ran into a former co-worker from the Personnel Office. She’d moved away with her husband almost a year before. Shy and demure at the time I knew her, she had clearly changed. She suggested with have lunch one day, and I agreed.

Soon we were lunching together almost every day, and I soon learned that she had left her husband for a woman she’d known at Yale. They were not living together, because she wanted to experience personal freedom which she felt she’d not had while married.

About the same time, my brother graduated from the Baptist seminary in Louisville, and my husband and I drove out, camping along the way, for the event. Somewhere between Chillicothe, Ohio, and the banks for the Kentucky River, we heard on the radio that the New York state legislature had voted down a bill calling for equal rights for gays. I was furious, and my husband interrupted my rant to ask why I was so upset. I told him that I considered myself gay. He didn’t ask me what that meant in terms of our marriage, and I don’t know what I could have told him at that point.

Not long after our return from, he planned to go to New York for a weekend conference. As we were eating sandwiches on the quad in front of the library, I took a deep breath and asked Mary to stay with me that weekend. I’d never even kissed her, but thought perhaps this was an opportune time to do something.

She looked at me and said no. No? I asked. No, she said. Mary said that would be a sleazy thing to do and I could never do anything like that, because I wasn’t sleazy. Are you sure? I asked. Yes, she said.

I went home that day and told my husband I was going to leave him, because I had to find out if I was a lesbian. I’d been willing to kill myself thinking I was, but I didn’t know. I said I’d move out for six months to explore my sexuality, because I had to know one way or the other. He was devastated, and I remember wondering how I could be so cold to him when I knew I loved him. Hadn’t I promised I’d stay with him forever?

It was as if the optometrist was showing me different optical prescriptions. Was this better or that? Staying was fuzzy and leaving was as clear as could be. Once I’d made that decision, I knew it was the right one.

I got a small apartment near the campus. Mary helped me move, but that was it. She continued to be my friend for several years, but now I’m grateful to the universe that I was spared being drawn into a group of people who had Bloomsbury Group parties and dressed up like those characters. I shiver to think of it.

I know my leaving hurt my husband almost beyond belief, and I carried that load of guilt for years. However, he has been married for many years to a wonderful woman who shares his love of books and appreciates his sense of humor.

Now I know we were part of each other’s journey, but not the final destination. I am at peace and at home within myself.

©2009 jgschenck

My most embarrassing moment

In 1982, we lived in a second floor apartment and had two cats. My cat Thea was a grey and white rescue who I named after tennis great Althea Gibson. Our cats hung around outside during the day and came in at night. Thea had feline leukemia, but the disease was dormant. There was only one vet who would treat her, all others saying to put her down; the problem was his office was on the other side of the Connecticut River in Amherst, about eight miles and twenty minutes away.

One Friday I came home from work and couldn’t find Thea. When I asked my landlady if she’d seen her, she said she thought she was under her car. I went to get her right away, because Thea had given herself a reverse Mohawk haircut one day when the landlady started her car, and the fan clipped the cat’s head because she was hiding under the car.

This day I could tell she was hurt, because she couldn’t move her rear legs. We called the vet who said to bring her over immediately.  I wrapped Thea in a towel, put her in my car, and rushed through Northampton, only to be held up at the Coolidge Bridge over the Connecticut. I looked at the long line of traffic, heard Thea crying in pain, and whipped my car into a U-turn in the middle of the road.

I hurried back the way I’d come, jumped on I-91 north, roaring along at 80mph and got off in South Deerfield, 15 miles away, tore down Rte 116 and arrived at the vet’s office in about 15 minutes. I was shaking all over – from an adrenalin rush I presume. When we came in, the vet techs took Thea right away, leaving me in the waiting room too upset to even hold a magazine.

In a minute, one of the technicians came out and told me to wait in one of their little rooms inside. Thea would be okay, but the vet wanted to talk with me. There was a long hallway with exam rooms on either side, plus a large laboratory to one side. Conversations buzzed from every room. The technician showed me to a room with only a chair in it. I tried to calm down, to slow my breathing, but I was still shaking.

About this time, a young male vet tech stopped next to the room with a West Highland Terrier. In an attempt to compose myself, I struck up a conversation. I commented on how nice the dog looked – she’d clearly just been groomed – and asked if it had been in for veterinary care or if it belonged to someone who just couldn’t groom it herself.

The young man was clearly waiting for final paperwork so he could take the dog out to its waiting owner, but was polite enough to tell me it had been in for a couple of days with a stomach bug and belonged to an elderly woman. So they cleaned the dog up before sending it home.

At this moment, all conversation ceased, and when I spoke, my voice was amplified a hundred times. At least that’s how I remember it.

With horror, I heard myself say to the dog, “Isn’t that nice? They cleaned you up and before sending you home gave you a nice blow job.”

I swear I heard an echo – blow job, blow job, blow job. People up and down the hallway asked, “What did she say?” They went into hysterics, and several walked by to see who the idiot was who’d said such a thing.

I turned beet red and tried to focus on the dog, petting it and cooing, as if nothing was amiss. The tech wasn’t fooled, however, and when I glanced up his face which was as red as mine was contorted in an attempt not to laugh out loud.

When I came to pick Thea up the next day, there was only one person working the desk – him. I didn’t look at him, and he didn’t look at me, but as soon as the door shut behind me, I heard him erupt into more laughter. It isn’t easy being me.

©2009 jgschenck

What did I know and when did I know it

I did not intend to write about all of my life in this blog, but I’m not sure I can separate who I was from who I am. And so I come to this place.

In the summer of 1966, I worked on a newspaper in Florida and lived with my sister and brother-in-law. By July 4^th, I’d begun dating a boy who also worked on the newspaper and was ready to enter his senior year at Johns Hopkins University. Some people thought we were an odd pair, but I thought he was smart, cute and very funny. However, he was neither Southern nor Baptist, and my parents were not pleased. They tried to talk me out of seeing him, but I persisted. We became more serious through the school year, despite seeing other people, but something wasn’t right for me. I couldn’t say what it was, because I didn’t know, and when he came for a visit at Easter I tried to break it off. My parents were happy, but I cared about him and eventually we agreed to continue our relationship.

The following summer, after his senior year and before mine, we became engaged. Even that wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to take that step and for a while refused to shop for rings. He insisted in spite of my reluctance and eventually he did get me into a store where we picked out a ring. When he proposed, I made a joke out of it, instead of being romantic about it.

We were to be married in January right after I finished my last semester of college. Three weeks before the wedding, I began panicking. I didn’t want to get married, but I couldn’t give anyone a reason. I remember Mother showing me all of the beautiful wedding presents in the living and dining rooms. All of these, she said, would have to be sent back. Did I really want to do that? Did I love him? Yes, I did love him. I just had cold feet, she assured me.

After the wedding, we lived in Chapel Hill, NC, where my then husband was in graduate school and I worked as a secretary at the University of North Carolina. He was and is a wonderful person, and I would give almost anything in the world not to have hurt him.

Halloween night, about nine months after we were married, I went to the movies with the student worker in the Chemistry Department where I worked. My husband wasn’t happy, because he was studying and would have to answer the door to give out Halloween candy. She picked me up and we, headed over to Durham’s artsy film theater to see “The Swimmer” with Burt Lancaster. Based on the short story by John  Cheever, it was a thought-provoking film about one man’s day of swimming home by going from pool to pool.

When we pulled up outside my house, we started talking, and I soon realized I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to go on talking to her, and as the minutes turned to hours I admitted to myself for the first time that I had feelings for a woman. It was as if I’d turned on a light switch. I didn’t know. And then I did.

I don’t regret getting married, because we had wonderful times together, and he is an extraordinary human being. We remain close, and I feel truly blessed to have him in my life. He is one of my biggest fans to this day. I’ve met many women who cheated on their husbands prior to leaving, and I am glad that I didn’t do that. My husband and I talked about “my problem” for years, during most of which I was in therapy trying to fix myself.

It took six years and three suicide attempts before I realized I had to leave in order to live. I believed my parents would have preferred a dead “straight” daughter to a live lesbian daughter. For a couple of years after I left, I think that was correct. It was an extremely difficult for time for the people I loved to get through, but it was harder for me than I imagined it would be. Only the recognition that I didn’t have a choice made it all bearable.

In the end, both of my parents came to accept me, but I had to survive a lot of Biblical tomes from Dad as well as some of the cruelest remarks a mother could possibly make. I always believed our love for each other would get us through, and it did.

©2009 jgschenck

Elvis

Since this is the fifty-third anniversary of the release of the movie “Love Me Tender” it’s a good day to talk about Elvis. Of course, we lived in Mississippi, and he was from Tupelo, MS, almost 200 miles northeast of Jackson – practically neighbors. We didn’t care that his family had moved to Memphis in 1948. He was still a Mississippi boy, and, like everyone else, we were crazy about Elvis. That is everyone except Mother, Dad, and every other adult we knew. He was taboo, which only made him more attractive.

During a weekend visits to my sister at college in 1957, Elvis’ “Teddy Bear” was heating up the charts. Everyone in her dorm was singing it, and one girl had a teddy bear she sang it to. Such was Elvis mania.

Girls in my school insisted that you had to choose a favorite between Elvis and Pat Boone.  Pat was the clean-cut alternative to Elvis. His big movie break came in 1957 with “April Love.” He had a hard time convincing people he was a bad dude trying to change his evil ways.

I don’t remember who took me to see “Love Me Tender,” but remember more about Debra Paget than Elvis Presley. One surprising thing was how light his hair was. It was sort of a dirty blond at that point. I do recall vividly going to see his third movie “Jailhouse Rock” in 1957. Our neighbor took a carful of little girls to see Elvis in his second movie. He easily pulled off what Pat had not by convincing us he was a bad dude. No one could do surly like Elvis, especially when he curled that lip.

We could only listen to his music before my parents came home from work. And forget watching him on television. We missed his appearances on Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and Ed Sullivan. We never missed “Your Hit Parade” though on Saturday nights, and Snooky Larson singing “Hound Dog” was as close as my parents got to listening to Elvis. By the way, his rendition was so unpopular that the show was nearly cancelled.

Among the minutia that fills my head are two from “Your Hit Parade.” The show was sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes, and Luckies had “LSMFT” written on each pack. It translated to “Lucky Strikes means fine tobacco.” I also remember a quiz show with girls wearing oversized Old Gold cigarette packs who danced around.

My favorite Elvis movie is “Viva Las Vegas!” because I adore Ann-Margaret. If I have to choose a favorite Elvis movie without her, then it would be 1961’s “Blue Hawaii.” I’ve seen it a gazillion times, but always hang around for the ending. I even doctored up a photo of Elvis and Joan Blackman on their wedding raft, putting my dogs Jasper and Jemma with them. It is part of my “English Cocker Spaniels Throughout History” book.

Another favorite Elvis movie is “Fun in Acapulco.” Did anyone really believe Elvis dived off the cliffs? I doubt it, but even a year after her Honey Ryder appearance in the first James Bond movie “Dr. No,” I like seeing Ursula Andress.

Overall, Elvis made 31 movies, but I’ve only seen 17 of them. Despite their light-hearted nature, I can’t bring myself to waste the time to see “Loving You,” “Wild in the County,” “Kissin’ Cousins,” “Tickle Me,” “Harum Scarum,” “Easy Come, Easy Go,” or any of the others I missed. I thought the real low was “Roustabout” with Barbara Stanwyck until I saw “Change of Habit” on television one night.

I always feel sorry for Elvis when I see his later movies, because I know he really could have done better. He was a good ole boy who wouldn’t abandon Colonel Parker, even though the Colonel dragged him down to joke status level with the jumpsuits and pills. I prefer remembering him with Ann-Margaret, water skiing across Lake Mead, or with Joan Blackman hanging out at the beach.

©2009 jgschenck

George Wallace

The first time I saw George Wallace I was babysitting for friends of my parents and watching their television in early fall 1962. He was so utterly disgusting and racist that I thought to myself “well, at least nobody will vote for anyone that awful.” Clearly, I did not have the pulse of the people of Alabama.

I was astonished when he won the race in 1962, but Dad wasn’t. Wallace had run for governor in 1958 and had lost in the primary to then-governor John Patterson. It’s reported that Wallace claimed he was “out-segged” by Patterson, but those who lived in that time claim he said he was “out-n*****ed” by Patterson.  From what I saw on television that night, nobody out-n’d him in 1962.

His opponent was a Southern moderate named Ryan DeGraffenreid. When DeGraffenreid carried Birmingham, my classmates joked that Wallace would make us pay for that. It is hard to reconcile Birmingham voting for a moderate with its reputation as one of the most-racist cities in the South. It demonstrates how much worse the non-metropolitan areas were at that time.

My brother, his girlfriend, and I were part of a one-day Baptist young people’s convention in Montgomery shortly after Wallace was inaugurated. We were in the balcony of a big auditorium not far from the capital. As soon as we could, we walked out. The three of us walked through a deserted downtown Montgomery before heading back to the auditorium, talking about how phony Wallace was.

I was sickened by Wallace and what he stood for, despite his speech to us that night. So I wrote him a letter. I wrote him that I didn’t have a choice about living in Alabama at that time, but I intended to take what Alabama gave me until I was old enough to leave the state. I’d never give anything back to a state that could support a man who was such a blatant advocate of segregation.

Surprisingly enough, I got an answer. He wrote that he didn’t know what I was talking about. He intended to be governor of all of the people of Alabama, white and black. Of course, history proved my points.

In 1966, Wallace was prohibited by law from running again, so Ryan DeGraffenreid ran as a moderate, supporting racial integration. One day after qualifying to run, he was tragically killed in a plane crash, and Alabama elected Lurleen Wallace. The whole state became a very bad joke.

I think the people of Alabama ended up feeling very sorry for Lurleen Wallace. He neglected her and their four children to the point where she filed for divorce in the late 1950’s, but later dropped the suit. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1961 when the doctor noticed suspicious tissue during a cesarean delivery of their last child. As was common in those days, the doctor told her husband, not her, and Wallace insisted Lurleen not be told. Consequently, she didn’t receive the proper follow-up care that might have helped her survive. In 1965, she was treated for abnormal bleeding by her gynecologist who diagnosed uterine cancer. Her total shock turned to outrage when she discovered Wallace had discussed the cancer years earlier with his staffers, but not her.

For me, this would have been “rifle-getting” time, but Lurleen Wallace hid her cancer and radiation treatment from Alabama citizens. She went downhill fast, having maintained a brutal campaign schedule. Her longest speech was the one she gave at her inauguration – 24 minutes. Of course, the cancer spread and she endured great pain and suffering before finally dying in 1968. She weighed less than 80 lbs.  Yet, despite his obvious misuse of her, Alabama continued to elect and support him. When she died, he insisted on a bubble casket, despite her wishes for a closed casket. He didn’t gather his children to him – he shipped them off to relatives.

When he was shot in 1968, I felt no pity for him whatsoever. To paraphrase Hosea, he sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

©2009 jgschenck

Scary stuff

When I was five, we had the kind of encounter a mother hopes her children will never face. It started out innocently enough when we were in the angel chorus of the Christmas play put on by several of the Baptists churches in Jackson.

The play was to be held at the City Auditorium in the downtown area, so Mother drove us to the rehearsal.

Even though I was quite young, I have flashes of that day. I recall being on the stage with all of the other children. I looked for my mother, but couldn’t see her with the stage lights on and the auditorium in darkness. After the rehearsal ended, we made it out to the lobby when my brother who was six and a half said he had to go to the bathroom.

Mother didn’t want him to go, since Dad wasn’t there and my brother was too old to use the ladies room. He had to go in alone. My sister and I stood with our mother just outside the men’s room doorway. Suddenly a man came running out, and Mother became very upset. What I didn’t see, but my mother and sister did was that the man had a gun.

My brother came out and Mother asked what happened. This is anecdotal, because I don’t remember it myself and must rely on my brother’s and sister’s memories. I didn’t understand some of it; for example, I wasn’t sure what it meant that the man had tried to get my brother, but someone came into the bathroom and he fled. I believe the man who had walked in on them brought my brother out and told Mother what he’d seen.

At any rate, Mother held it together, as she always did when bad things happened, and we all went to the police station to file a report. If it ended there, it would have been bad enough.

One afternoon a few weeks later, my brother and I were playing outside when we saw a city road crew working at the end of the street. I remember this very clearly. My brother got very still, and when I asked him what was wrong he pointed to the road crew. The man was in the crew and saw my brother point at him, and we saw him seeing us seeing him.

We ran to the house. My sister, eight years older than me, was inside, and she ran around locking the doors and making sure the windows were all locked. In one of the rooms, as she was checking the lock on the windows, we saw the man outside the house. We heard him try to get inside, but my sister ran to the phone and called Mother who then called the police. We huddled together and within a couple of minutes we heard sirens coming. The man must have heard them, too, because he took off, and we never saw him again.

Mother came home shortly afterwards and talked to the road crew supervisor. He gave the police the man’s name. I have no idea if he was ever caught.

I believe my sister is the hero in this story, because she saved us. She didn’t ask a lot of questions, but took immediate action. If she hadn’t believed my brother, the man would have had time to get in the house.

There are events during which time does seem to stand still, when things move in slow motion, and you can hear your heart beating. All the sounds of the outside world stop, something like white noise fills your head, and you realize you can’t breathe. That’s what it felt like when the man saw us seeing him. I didn’t realize how much of that fear I still carried until I began writing this. It’s good to be grown up and years away from the things children face and have just cause to fear.

©2009 jgschenck

Kindergarten

It was unusual for white women to work outside of the home in the early 1950’s, but when I was five, Mother became the office manager and went to his office every day in downtown Jackson.  There weren’t many daycare options at the time, but they finally found a place that would keep me all day. I was dropped off on their way to work and picked up on the way home.

While many of my memories of that time are vague, there are some things that stand out. The place I went was a large house with a big fenced in side and back yard. I remember screaming my head off the first few times I was dropped off – I wanted to go to school with my brother – and flying into Mother’s arms when she picked me up.

Every day after lunch, we had nap time. I got my towel out, found a spot on the floor and took a nap. Well, I lay there quietly, trying to figure out how long it would be until nap time was over. It really was quite boring.

They had a tree house outside which I wasn’t supposed to climb, because I was a girl and had to wear dresses. Apparently all the little boys looked up my dress, but I had my revenge on their leader. I jumped out of the tree house onto him, pushing him back onto an exposed root. He had to go home, because his leg was bleeding, and he had a nasty bruise for several days. I think that was the first time anyone complained to my mother that I was too rough or a tomboy.

The most vivid memory I have, however, was the chicken. We were playing outside, and the cook came out – right in front of all the children, grabbed one of the chickens, laid it across a stump and cut its head off with a hatchet. We all stood there with our mouths open, but then the chicken began running around, blood pouring out of it open neck. We all screamed and ran as far away from it as we could. The woman who ran the place came out and yelled at the cook for doing the deed in front of us.

I couldn’t stop crying and had nightmares. I know Mother had a conversation with the owner of the kindergarten the next day, because I really didn’t want to go back. The chicken had been minding its own business. What were they likely to do to me if they found out I’d jumped on that boy on purpose?

The next year I went to a private Lutheran school, but the memory of kindergarten stayed with me. For a long time I got upset whenever I heard that someone was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

©2009 jgschenck