Emerging from the dull as dust decade of Eisenhower's golf scores and grownups-gone-mad digging bomb shelters, we children of the 60s were the product of revolutionary and reactionary times. Ed Sullivan had introduced the viewing public to both Elvis and his glam rock and the Beatles whose haircuts raised a furor among establishment types for at least four years. Ours was a generation which questioned and challenged but discovered too few answers of its own. By the mid sixties the signs in Woolworth's declaring "White Only" and "Colored Only" were gone and notices in restaurants and hospitals stating "No Ladies in Pants" were provoking clashes with management. None of us were too sure, despite news coverage, just what the hell was happening but it didn't matter. We were along for the ride and loving each kaleidoscopic second filled with high speed and breakneck turns.
There were no student massacres in high schools in the 60s. Delinquency often consisted of one of the science students pulling the fire alarm outside their door to avoid a quiz or test. Then there were the days when the building was temporarily evacuated due to chemistry lab mistakes and stink bomb gags. Nerdy by today's standard of lethality but then it was a far more innocent time in which girls didn't kiss on the first date or date before they were at least sixteen. Films such as "Picnic" and "State Fair" and musicals such as "West Side Story" were to swoon over and, by and large, girls hoped to marry and have 2.5 children and a home in the suburbs. A lesser wish was for many pair of pastel double T strap shoes, cashmere sweater sets, a salon haircut, and to look like Carla, the perennial Homecoming Queen, cheerleader, and idol of at least 99% of the male student population.
Girls hated Carla for her designer look better suited to Jackie Kennedy than to a seventeen year old. With tasteful makeup and endless cashmere, Carla was, we chose to think, a bit 'too-too'. I mean, didn't Carla EVER have deoderant failure or PMS or get caught in the rain? Given Carla's high-end tutoring in music and dance she was the hit of each fund raising musical production and made even teenage stagecraft rival anything I've seen of Broadway since then. We loved Carla and we hated her and we would have each given ten years off our lives to BE Carla.
I went to South for my last two years of high school during 1962-64. As with most of us, my mother selected my clothes and economic considerations ruled out T strap shoes and cashmere sweaters. It was as if our mothers had joined in a conspiracy to purchase only dowdy cotton outfits consisting of full skirts and plain white blouses. Bobby sox and penny loafers completed the ensemble. We weren't the best students or the worst. We weren't the miscreants or those who excelled at sports or social graces. In brief, we were the invisible majority who hummed Bobby Vinton songs and hoped that one day love, the perfect love of song and story, would find us.
It was during that predawn time between the darkness which was my childhood and dawn of adulthood that I met Mary Anne.
It escapes me how we met but it was almost surely in a shared study hall as Mary Anne, known as "Fuzzy" to her family, was an underclassman. I recall only that we were physical opposites and with such disparity of preference that we HAD to become fast friends. We seemed to share a mutual adoration of a young unmarried music teacher named Max and a liking for girls' glee clubs. In my final year, recovering from the loss of my grandmother, we weathered the loss of President Kennedy and the escalation of the 'Vietnamese peacekeeping conflict". We shared whispered confidences about the boys we loved. To Fuzzy love was 'Mark', football jock and Fuzzy's 'Pooh Bear.' To me love was embodied by a fellow classman named Bob. Tiny Fuzzy doted on fullback-sized Mark while I must have outweighed petite Bob by at least thirty pounds. Bob was nearsighted and wore thick glasses. Bob had long hair and was school nerd. Bob was, to my overheated imagination, an Adonis personified.
There were good times and bad times as I struggled with a dysfunctional home situation which was a matter I shared only with Fuzzy.
"Your daughter is wasting her time reading filthy books from the library
again. Writers are all perverts!" my father would sneer.
"My daughter? What about OUR daughter?" my mother would ask.
"OUR daughter? God knows what you were up to before she was born. She doesn't
take after ME. Library books when she could be reading the Bible!" my father
would counter.
Both would agree that I needed discipline and discipline in my household was both corporal and violent. Never, I vowed, would I become as my parents were or rear children after their fashion of 'nurturing'. As a young child I prayed that if I had another father elsewhere he'd come take me away from that household. As I grew older I simply prayed.
There were days of victory having gotten a good grade on a paper or test, quiet sunny days of watching schoolroom dust motes dance in Friday afternoon sun, days of anticipation preceding a major school event or play. Even as I was living it I was conscious, perhaps for the first time, of time passing at an accelerated rate and of the impending terminus of public education... which made the final few months before graduation bittersweet. Fuzzy had one more year to spend within those hallowed halls but I was destined to quit them forever within a few short weeks. Neither Fuzzy nor I had made any actual progress with the objects of our affections and both boys would be away to college come autumn time. I remember photographing mentally the classrooms, my friends, ordinary scenes for an album I would carry in my recollection while life lasts. Golden days, silver nights, a shared laugh, a sympathetic tear, a hug. These things would become history but would fill my heart with the glowing warmth of friendship remembered.
In May of 1964 the school had a performance of all its several glee clubs and choirs. Unlike other theatrical events the concert was for one night only and I have often wished my late parents had attended at least this one function. Fuzzy and I were in different numbers, both about three quarters of the way through the entire presentation. That night we were told where to wait off stage and yet close at hand but I was restless.
"C'mon, Fuzz. Let's get out of here." I urged.
"But we're supposed to stay here," Fuzzy protested.
Propelled by my growing impatience, Fuzzy followed me down the corridor to the side of the auditorium and up the down staircase to an empty second floor classroom illuminated only by a dim light high above the chalkboard. Fuzzy took a seat behind the teacher's desk and I perched on the broad windowsill overlooking the plaza in front of the school. The new globe lights along the walkway cast a festive glow and the mood was mellow.
"What do you want to do when you get out of school, Fuzz?" I asked.
"I'm not really sure,' replied Fuzzy, 'be like my mom I guess. Get a job, maybe
get married.."
"Not me," I interrupted. "I want to be a great actress."
This was greated by profound silence.
"......a Hollywood actress, I think. Or maybe I'll just marry an actor."
"You probably will," stated Fuzzy as if it were a done deed.
"Yeh,' I continued, 'that's what I'll do one day."
The orchestra was reaching a crescendo in its' rendition of the theme from "Lawrence of Arabia" and we had tarried long enough in 'our' classroom. When the piece ended we would need to be in place downstairs and my group was on first to sing "No Man Is An Island" which we accomplished with hearts filled with youthful exuberance and idealism. Each note was sent soaring into the blackness of the large auditorium; both proclamation and challenge. All in all the evening was a success and yours truly didn't even fall off the risers. Never would there be a night nor a time such as this. The journey nearly ended, Fuzzy and I had completed a rite of passage that evening although our youthful aspirations seemed destined to fail. Of one thing I was certain and that was that the closeness of sisters that Fuzzy and I had shared during a part of that passage would remain untouched throughout the decades ahead. We would always be young and strong and no tragedy would mar a future which was ours for the making.
I was not to see her again.
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