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June 20, Sunday - Father's Day. Mom's birthday. Nice day. went to church and then took Marv to dinner at Waid's. Good meal. Went over to Mom's in evening. Frank and Jean were there. Jean's hearing is much improved. Thank goodness.
June 21, Monday - Marv and I washed. Then I paid rent and went to store. Stayed home in evening. Not much doing. Went downtown and bought two new dresses. Bud went to drive-in and got in at 1:30 a.m.
My cousin Susan was my closest relative on the Patton side of the family. She lived near the Wyandotte-Johnson County line in Kansas City, Kansas. We had always been pals, and when the family gathered at Pansy's, we always found ways to entertain ourselves.
Susan belonged to the Sun and Surf Swim Club out on County Line Road. Although I was recovering from the Mother of All Sunburns, I jumped at the chance to go hang out with Susan and her pals. Susan was two years older than I was, and was thus far more sophisticated and way more clever than I was. Her friends were smart, confident, and popular. They teased me mercilessly. It was like landing on Venus.
Most of my time this trip was spent preening and trying figure out how to wear my hair. I had given up the little dabs of Brylcreem and the polished Princeton haircut I had been wearing for years in favor of a more Beach Boys inspired fluffy mop, with just the right amount of front coverage. Not Beatles-style by any means, but certainly not my previous L7 square look, either. I'm sure I looked a fool, but I was so unaware of my place in the universe, it really didn't matter. I added a light spritz of peroxide to the front to add a bit of highlights. Jesus, really?
It must have been a special day indeed to break out of the Crane's Cafeteria rut and head over to Waid's for dinner for Father's Day. We always made a fuss over such days.
My aunt Jean's hearing has improved. Good thing. We were starting to yell at her so she could hear us. Family gatherings had started to sound like Sundays in Little Italy, except we didn't have anyone named Anthony to yell at, and there was no Caruso to be heard.
Monday is wash day, and mom went to Cirese's and paid the rent, ran downtown and just generally puttered. I get my puttering gene from mom. Man, I really hate puttering.
Mom and dad rented their house on 11th Street from Joe and Mary Cirese. My uncle Lawrence worked for them as a handyman and maintenance worker. When we moved into the house in 1955, the rent was set at $60 per month. That equals the buying power of about $575 in today's dollars. When the Cirese's son died in a horrific car crash in 1960, mom and dad sent flowers to the funeral home and visited before the funeral mass. Mary Cirese took my mom aside and told her that as long as she lived, she would never pay a dollar more in rent than she did on that day. My mom moved out of our house in 1978 to live in an assisted living complex. Her last rent payment was for $60. Mary Cirese was a saint. She died in 1999 at the age of 97.
I went to the drive-in, although mom doesn't say who I went with. There are only two possibilities - I might have gone with Ron and Mike, or I might have gone with dad's fishing buddy Sandy. I preferred Ron and Company because of the movie choices. Ron would have been more likely to go see Beach Party movies, and Sandy and her friends were more chick-flick and drama prone. There were, however, additional benefits to hanging out with Sandy.
Usually, it was Sandy, one of her girlfriends and me. We sat three across the front seat, gnawing on drive-in corn dogs and pizza, and slurping huge Cokes, and more or less tried to track with the movie. Sometimes we parked ourselves on a blanket on the hood of her car.
It took an entirely new turn the first time Sandy invited two friends. Sandy and her original friend sat up front, and I shared the back seat with a younger girl, who we'll call Friend Number Two. (Kevin help me, I can't remember her name.) She was maybe five feet tall, slightly built, freckled, had short-cropped hair, and was a bit high-strung, as I remember. The second it got dark enough for the movie to start, she peeled off her shirt and settled in, now topless, to snuggle up against me and watch the movie. I sensed that I was the unwitting and red-faced butt of a giggly girl-joke, but I really didn't care. It's difficult to explain how unprepared I was for all of this.
For a shy fourteen-year-old, the proximity of compact and unfettered teenage breasts in the back seat of an old Dodge was like a birthday, Christmas and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. My blushing, stammering overreaction to her sudden partial nudity made her laugh. She encouraged me to make the best of the situation. This routine happened maybe a three or four times that summer.
I kinda wish I could remember her name. Nah.
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