“A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”
Many people who love film consider Orson Welles’ masterpiece “Citizen Kane” the finest American movie ever made.
The above quote is sort of an aside. I never had anything like that happen, but …
There are certainly a few young girl who never saw after my short contact with them in childhood who occasionally come to memory, some more than others.
I was 13 in the summer of 1963, the first summer we lived in Virginia after moving from Ohio. Camp Michaux was located in south central Pennsylvania, a church camp for our denomination from 1947-72. I never realized until recently it had been an army camp where German prisoners of war were interrogated during World War II.
I remember very little about the camp itself. I spent a week there in 1963 as a camper and another week three years later as a counselor. What I remember is two other people. John Young was my best friend for a week, and Cheryl McKenzie was the object of our unrequited love for that same week.
She was a dream girl, early ’60s vintage, and I never saw her again after that week in August 1963.
I think of her from time to time. She would be 73 now, and I hope she is still alive and has many memories of a happy life. Who knows? Maybe she married John Young.
Diane McClish was a story that is similar yet different. I met her when I was 7 and she was 8. I was late October 1957, and I had been promoted from second grade to third after six weeks of the school year.
The picture above was taken six years later, even even in 1957, she was the class beauty. My seat in the classroom was directly behind her, and as the bright new kid in the class, she and I became friends if only for a very short time.
It ended abruptly when another girl in the class jumped up and said, “Diane loves Mike.”
Her response was almost automatic. “No I don’t! I hate him!”
And that, as they say, was that. We had classes together for the next five years, but I don’t think we ever had another conversation. A month after I turned 13, we moved to Virginia. I never made it back to the Ohio town where I had lived for more than half my life up to that point with the exception of a half-hour detour on my way from Virginia to St. Louis in 1985.
I drove past the two houses where we had lived and marveled at how much the trees had grown. I remembered in the summer of 1962, walking out of the roadbed of what would become I-70 later in the summer. It’s hard to remember that those were early days for the interstate highway system, long years before you could drive all the way to southern Utah without leaving I-70.
Anyway, I never saw Diane again. The picture above is from the 1964 yearbook of the high school I would have attended if we hadn’t moved to Virginia. She was in ninth grade, and the website didn’t have yearbooks for the next three years after that. She would be 74 now.
It’s odd. There are numerous women who were once in my life who mattered to me, including my first wife, with whom I have no comment, but thanks to social media and Internet search engines, I know at least a little bit about almost all of them.
Except for the first two.
Cheryl and Diane. Diane and Cheryl.
In this world where everyone seems to know everything about everybody, I suppose it’s nice there are still some things secret from us.