CHAPTER 78. 1958 - 1959
I had my first date with Peggy Whitely for the Junior Prom on April 25, 1958. By the end of that school year, sometime in Early June, I pinned her. Now don’t misconstrue that expression. There was nothing untoward about it. I said pinned, not nailed. In twelfth grade we would buy our class rings, but in eleventh we would receive a class pin. For the younger folk out there who may not be familiar with this practice, if a boy give his pin to a girl it symbolized they were steadies, (in college it would be his fraternity pin). The girl would wear the guy’s pin on a chain around her neck On the left is what school pins looked like.
Now I can hear the chorus of Women Libbers out there booing and hissing, Well, get over it, this was a custom nearly 70 years ago and that is what the heck pinning symbolized, like it or not.
We continued dating all summer into the fall of our senior year. Peggy was a horsewoman and I went to horse shows with her, including the big one at Ludwig’s Corner on Labor Day. She rode in some of the ring events, but didn’t win any place ribbons.
We bowled, played miniature golf, danced, roller skated, went to the movies; went somewhere every week, usually several times each week, but through all that time I had only kissed her good night. I realized partly that was my lack of aggression and partly my shyness, but the truth was there was no magic there. Peggy and I got along. We enjoyed the times we spent together and we had no difficulty talking.
Our relationship jumped the shark on a double date with Richard Wilson at the Exton Drive-in.
I suppose I must describe what a Drive-in was. I’m not certain anyone of Millennial age or younger is familiar with the phenomena. They were very popular in my youth and there were many, many around. Today they have practically disappeared from the scene, although some have reopened because of the pandemic. A Drive-in was a movie theater without the theater. There was a field made into a parking lot. The parking spaces slanted up on mounts of packed earth or concrete. At the front of the lot was a giant movie screen. In the middle of the lot was a small building.
Inside were the projection room, restrooms and usually a refreshment stand. You could buy popcorn, hotdogs, hamburgers, fries, candy, soda and several other edible items at an inflated price. You carried your purchase to your car in a cardboard box. One of the pathetic sights at a Drive-in was some poor soul, loaded down with his refreshments, wandering aimlessly about because he forgot where he parked. They would project ads for the refreshment stand during intermission. We always laughed at the poor construction of one message.
“Our restrooms are located in the center of the field. Please join the folks chatting and chewing…”
There was a pole with a speaker at each parking space. You took the speaker off the pole and hung it over the glass of a side window. This was how you heard the voices of the actors on the screen. The beauty of the Drive-in was the privacy. You could talk if you wished. A family could bring the kids knowing they wouldn’t disturb anyone around them if they fidgeted or fussed. Teenagers favored it as a great make-out spot. My friends and I went to the Drive-ins a lot, especially to the Exton and The 202 south of West Chester. Both are gone now.
I drove on this double date, naturally. Once the movie began
Richard and his date disappeared from my mirror’s view somewhere in the back seat. They were “smooching”, “petting”, “making out” and going at it “hot and heavy”. Peggy and I were watching the film. Peggy had moved over against me. I put my arm around her shoulder.
And she bit my thumb.
She bit hard.
I yanked my arm back from around her and we watched the rest of the movie sitting apart in silence. I knew this relationship was doomed from that moment. It was ridiculous. We had been going steady for five months and she is going to bite my thumb because I put an arm around her? I wasn’t going to do anything else. I wasn’t going to put my hand anywhere it didn’t belong.
It wasn’t very long after the night of the teeth-marked thumb that I got a phone call from Ronald Tipton. He informed me there was a dance coming at Downingtown.
“I think we should double date,” he said.
“We can’t,” I said. “Downingtown doesn’t allow students from other schools in.”
“It does if they are dates of the opposite sex.”
“So?”
“So,” says Ronald, “I take Peggy in as my guest and my date takes you in as a guest and we switch inside.”
That would work, so I told him to made the arrangements.
Peggy and I picked Ronald up on the night of the dance. He
directed me to his date’s home in a nicer section of the Downingtown’s Westside. We walked up and knocked on the door. Her father lets us in. He was wearing a smoking jacket. Other than Mr. Meisel, I hadn’t ever seen anyone outside the movies wearing a smoking jacket about the house. The living room was rather ornately furnished. There was a piano in one corner, not a upright either, a grand piano. It was not a huge house and the piano dominated. Her mother rose from a chair; perhaps you could describe it as flowing up from her seat. She wore a flower print dress. Finally Their daughter made her appearance in the room and Ronald introduced her as Carmella.
After some chitchat with the parents, we left. As we headed to my car Peggy took my one elbow and Carmella took my other.
At the car, Carmella jumped quickly into the front seat first. I shrugged. Ronald and Peggy slipped into the back and then I got in the Driver’s Side. It was a short drive before we arrived and parked at the high school and got out. I pulled Ron aside and asked what’s going on. He says it is all right, we have to look as if Carmella is my date. I should walk with Carmella and he with Peggy until after we get inside and then we’ll switch around as planned.
Only inside the switch didn’t happen. Peggy sat down next to me and so does Carmella on the other side. I now understand that for whatever reason Carmella thought I was her date.
And I am about to do another bad thing.
It is not a fun drive home from Downingtown to Bucktown that night. It was a wonder ice didn’t form on my windows. Peggy didn’t speak. Not a peep. I spoke to her, but she remained silent until I gave the attempt. She leaned against the passenger door looking angrily straight ahead. She ran from the car into her house when I dropped her off. My dating of Peggy has ended.
My dating of Carmella Cressman or Carmella Baxter had begun. She was mysterious this girl with two last names that I never did figure out which was the right one. I assume she was the daughter of the woman in the print dress for there seemed to be a similarity to their features, certainly their hair. She might have had a different father than the man in the smoking jacket that greeted us. Her mother probably remarried, but did she marry Cressman or Baxter first?
The Philadelphia Orchestra or the Academy of Music employed her father in some capacity. There was usually classical music playing in the home when I picked her up. That first night they had “The Voice of Firestone” on the TV. The Baxters or the Cressmans or whomever were very formal and genteel.
Carmella was warm to Peggy’s ice, like a premonition to the future TV series called A Tale of Ice and Fire. I liked her very much. I found her beautiful. I believed from the get-go this relationship would last longer and with more fire than my time with Peggy. And it might have if I had not made a fatal mistake. I decided to show her off to Richard Wilson.
I'm not proud to declare
My inebriation in her dark embrace,
In the moonshine of her hair.
Her eyes were wine decanters
In the wondrous bouquet of her face.
I am not proud to share
I became an alcoholic afloat in space,
Intoxicated on air
Beyond reason and care
Except the drinking in of her face.
I wanted just a taste
To explore its mystery
To claim it as my drink
Obtain some mastery
Being high beyond that face.
This is my confession,
I have no precedent; I haven't a case.
It was an act of passion,
A rash and foolish action
I was becoming drunk on that face;
I was addicted to that face.
“Drunk in the Dark of Her Face”
From Life Ate Our Homework
Copyright 2005
Book & Lyrics by Larry Eugene Meredith & Stuart R. G. `````````````````````Meisel with input from Ronald W. Tipton
Music by Marc Cagulangan
Claymont, Delaware & Fort Lauderdale, Florida
No, Richard did not steal her away.
I was cruising around with Richard, with his girl of the moment, one weekend. I am not sure anymore why we had come all the way to Downingtown, but it wasn’t an unusual destination for us. Since we were in the area I asked if he wanted to meet Carmella. I drove to her house and we went to the door. Her dad welcomed us inside. I introduced Richard and we were standing about chatting when Richard used some very crude language. These were not the type of words that a teenager used in front of proper gentlemen and ladies in the 1950s. I didn’t think it appropriate, but didn’t think it got a lot of notice at the moment it happened.
Well, I was wrong. Although nothing had been mentioned that evening it was given a lot of notice. The next time I called up Carmella to ask if she wanted to go out, she told me her parents didn’t want her seeing me anymore.
Well, thank you, Richard!
may have been his way to make it up to me when he arranged a date with his cousin. Pamela Wilson was the daughter of Ardell Wilson, Elmer’s brother and thus Richard’s uncle. Pamela was a girl that boys turned around to look at. She was considered beautiful. Not only did she look like a model, she had the grace of one. She was younger than me, but quite sophisticated. She had a ornery sense of humor and she was truly fun to be around. In more recent vernacular, she was also definitely “eye candy”.
During this same period I was carrying on a correspondence with two girls whose address I got from Ronald Tipton, Dotti Juris in Philadelphia and Linda Wood in Canada. I am using that word in the present sense, as a written communication between individuals, not in the snickering sense of dear Miss Hurloch of its meaning in the 19th century.
I began dating Pam regularly and would do so the rest of the year, but in the spring of 1959 it got complicated because Suzy also entered my life.
I had known Suzy Cannell since I came to NORCO. For most of that time she was dating one of my friends, Jon Harris. Because he was short and she was shorter they got that cutest couple tag. They had been going steady since Tenth Grade or maybe forever. But in the spring of 1959 something went sour between them. I never really found out what caused the rift. I only know that one day
we were sitting near each other in the auditorium after an assembly and she was crying and the next thing I knew she was crying on my shoulder. In the time it takes to wipe away a tear I found myself dating both Pamela and Suzy.
There are people you like and there are people you really like. I liked Pam and she was very pretty, and it was always uplifting to walk into a room with her on my arm, but Suzy touched something deeper in me. Pam was tall; Suzy was short, under five foot.. Pam was beautiful; Suzy was cute. Pam was stylish and pleasant; Suzy was always smiling and was adventurous. She was a risk-taker.
Suzy was already a pilot. She had a
license and flew a Cessna out of Pottstown Airport whenever she could. The airport was actually in Stowe about two miles west of Pottstown. It had originally been called Basco Airfield after the first owner. That was one of our primary activities, flying on Saturday morning. Since she was only 17 she had to have an adult pilot with her when she flew. There were always three of us in the plane.
At first I wasn’t sure about this aspect of our going out. I was afraid of height, now I was on a runway in this tiny plane about to go higher than I had ever been. I was in the rear seat behind Suzy and the adult pilot. I could see the prop spinning between their heads as the plane gained speed down the runway. It was like a wavy yellow line. The plane rose and I gripped the edge of my seat tightly. It is a wonder I didn’t pull out the stuffing. I peeked out the side window and when I saw the wheel below hanging over nothing I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. I found if I stared ahead I lost that terror. I stared straight ahead.
After the initial flight I came to relax more, although not totally. Still, I liked being in the air with her, even if we weren’t completely alone. It proved to be a good thing we weren’t.
One Saturday she flew south. She was following the Pottstown Pike, which was like a black, tangled ribbon dropped below us.. We were past the area of Pughtown pass the house where Pamila lived and then beyond the lake at Kirkwood. there was nothing beneath us now but trees. Suzy took the plane into a 180-degree bank. She went into it too sharp or something. The engine sputtered and conked out. Now we were simply coasting on a slight downward path over all those far away trees, which were getting less far away by the minute.
Suzy was bouncing about throwing switches and so was the co-pilot. I didn't quite know what the heck was going on, which was probably a good thing.They got the engine started again and we flew directly back to the airport. Suzy stepped off the plane and threw up on the tarmac.
Next Saturday we were flying again.
but now Suzy wanted to go as well. I decided Ronald Tipton owed me for that mix up with Carmella and Peggy. I called him and asked if he would please take Suzy to my Prom. He agreed, but explained he had a school band concert the same night. He played the Sousaphone. He said the concert would be over by eight thirty and since the Prom didn’t start until nine it shouldn’t be a problem. I figured we could make it from Downingtown to Owen J. in a half hour, certainly the way I drove in those days. I once drove from South West Chester to my home in Bucktown, a distance of 23 miles, in 18 minutes. That was an average just under 77 miles per hour. In those days those were mostly 2-lane macadam roads, not super highways, plus I had to stop for lights. Pamela’s house was approximately 13 miles from Downingtown’s high school. Surely I could make 13 miles in a half hour.
the band played on. I was pacing the floor of the hallway. We were going to be late. It was nine o’clock and finally the band finished up with one last cymbal crash and Ron came out. He had to put his horn away and change into his tux. We got that out of the way and I rushed him out the door. We still had to pick up
Suzy and then Pam. I was frantic. They were going to think we stood them up on prom night. As it was we were over an hour late getting to the dance, but everybody seemed to have a good time, maybe all except Ron. He was a little uncomfortable dancing cheek to belly button. Ron was six foot four and Suzy was four foot eleven.
There was a post prom party we attended and when that ended sometime around 2:00 AM we joined some others from my class and went bowling in Reading. There we were in the wee hours of the morning with the girls bowling in their gowns and we in our tux. We certainly brought elegance to the lanes. It was after dawn when we got the girls home. I didn’t get back from dropping Ronald off until 7:00 AM.
I suppose it was that it was always fated for Jon and Suzy to be the
cutest couple. She and he made up after the prom was over and she went back to being his steady before the year ended. I continued dating Pamela well into the summer after graduation.
Suzy and Jon did not get married to each other. This was a high school romance that went no further. By the fifth reunion Jon was single and at helicopter pilot school. For a while he was married to a Sue D. He must have liked the name Susan, and then later he was married to Patricia Weil and has 1 son and 3 daughters. Beyond 1994 I don’t know too much, except he is still alive and well and living in Florida and we sometimes write each other on Facebook..
Five years out of OJR, Suzy was married to Albert Boerner, Jr. with two children. Then Albert was out of the picture and Suzy was married to Gary Mahr with three children by the tenth reunion. Her adventurous spirit continued into adulthood. She took up motorcycles. One day she hit something on a ride that flipped her Harley and she suffered several serious injuries, including some damage to her nerves. She gradually recovered from her injuries.
Suzy passed away in August of 2014. Here is her obituary from the Pottstown Mercury.
Susan J. (Cannell) Mahr, 73, of Pottstown, wife of Gary L. Mahr, passed away on Saturday at Pottstown Memorial Medical Center.
Born in Pottstown, PA, she was a daughter of the late George Cannell and the late Violet (Groff) Cannell.
Susan was a graduate of Owen J. Roberts.
Susan was a member of Berean Bible Church, Christian Motorcycle Association, and was a notary & pilot.
Surviving beside her husband are two sons, Cale S. Mahr and his wife Bernadette, Sanatoga, David S. Bonerner and his wife Penny, Reading; two daughters Heidi S. wife of Craig Stout, Boyertown, Wendy L. wife of Tom Brynan, Phoenixville; a sister Patricia Laverty, Pottstown; nine grandchildren, and one great granddaughter. -
In 2001, I combined Suzy’s flying and motorcycle accident, Jon helicopter pilot pursuits, Dick Kuntzleman’s family bar and Lane Keene’s hunting accident in a story called, “Pour Out My Life at the Old German Tavern”.
Brook wasn’t in the picture five years ago at all. Brook was off somewhere, one of his interminable hunting trips to the far corners of these great states, when Pammy and Sonny headed out on that Saturday night, a clear and stinking hot summer night much like tonight. They each had their own Harley because she loved pushing a Hog almost as much as flying, and they were going to a biker blowout in New York State. Road was dry and clear, wasn’t any traffic for long stretches, just a breeze of a throughway right up to the Poconos, where the deer were. Never expected the deer. Saw them grazing in a field, must have been a herd. Pammy pointed them out, one hand on the handlebar. Sonny looked to her gesture and that was when she hit an old soup can rolling across the macadam in the hot wind. She caught it with the front wheel enough the bike wobbled and then went over and slid forever down the highway. It tore hell out of skin and cloth, shattered bones, ripped her cheek to bacon, split the head just off the eyebrow, left the eye socket a pool of blood.
Most the next year was in and out of the hospital, in and out of the clinic, in and out of the doctor’s office, a year of splints, casts and bandages, of skin grafts, of learning to walk and talk again. She never got a glass eye. Something about the ocular muscle damage, the shattered socket. She wore a black eye patch thereafter.
After they took off all the patches and bailing wire keeping her parts where they belonged when they could hold themselves in place, he still had to help her eat and bathe and go to the bathroom. She gradually got to walking with the aid of a cane, but she had no sense of direction and he had to watch she didn’t wander off absently into traffic. Moving to the trailer up in the haunted woods kept her safe from whizzing cars, but he had to stand constant guard so she didn’t shuffle off into the woods and get lost. When that road took her skin, hair and bone, it sucked out bits of brain and she couldn’t remember. She didn’t know what happened to her. She couldn’t remember flying. She didn’t know what love was and couldn’t do the act.
But he knew what love was as he protected her, combing her hair of tangles, cleaning what ever seeped down her legs, dressing her in fresh clothes several times a day, learning to cook and spooning meals to her before he ate. He gave up trucking and cut firewood out of the woods, took up doing small repairs, any little thing somebody would pay for as long it kept him at home where he could watch over her. All the last four years caring for and holding Pammy against the terrors that came in her sleep. He figured she revisited the accident in every dream. She would awake screaming and shaking and lost in the dark. Or maybe those dreams haunted her with the skies she couldn’t sail.
Excerpt from “Pour Out Your Life at the Old German Tavern” (Written 2001)
Creative Writers 2001
Barnes & Nobles
Wilmington, Delaware
Joe Pokatsch, Editor
My high school graduation was on June 2, 1959. I was 17 years old. Our class sat down toward the front of the auditorium until our individual names were called. Then we went up steps on the right of the stage, crossed to the middle to receive our diploma and exited down the steps on the left side. There were speakers around the stage and other equipment. One of the early recipients tripped on the cables starting across the stage and everyone who passed that spot afterward caused a fountain of sparks to shoot upward. Fireworks for my final day just seemed appropriate.
At our fifth class reunion I went to the bar to gets drinks for my wife and I. There was a studding blond sitting on a stool. She was wearing a black dress that barely covered her curvaceous body, and as they said about a character on Seinfeld, “they were spectacular!” I ordered my drinks and nodded at her. She smiled and said, “Hello, Larry.”
I turned and stared at her.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” she said.
I shook my head.
“I’m Peggy.”
I guess that was her form of revenge.
He came to the bar. He stopped next to her and motioned for refills. One glance her way and his face simmered with lust. He peeked down at the roundness peeking from the bodice of her dress, then at the
long smooth thighs more than peeking from the hem.
“Well, hello,” he said.
“You don’t know me, do you?”
He shook his head.
“I’m Maggie.”
He froze. The fresh drinks in his hands splashed dark spots across his tie. He walked away in a slump of defeat and embarrassment.
Her mother said if a woman displayed modesty men would show respect. She displayed what modesty hid and the men showed regret.
And that was so much more satisfying.
Excerpt from “Modesty” (2001)
Creative Writers
2001
Barnes & Nobles
Wilmington, Delaware
Joe Pokatsch, Editor
Both “Pour Out Your Life at the Ol German Tavern” and “Modesty”
were in my collection Currents of the Brandywine (2003)
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