There's a Cow in Manhattan Part 03

Date: About 1961 to 1965

There's a Cow in Manhattan

Part Three

Senior year in High School is surely a glorious year for anyone. In those days there was never a certainty of any student going on to college, certainly not in a rural High School. In grade school it was always exciting to dream of being in an upper grade. The eighth grade students were more adult and the sisters treated them that way when the lower grades were always treated like children and the eighth graders always had a way of sneering at them especially when the nuns were around. By the time I was in the eighth grade I was looking forward to High School because Selma was always reporting High School stories until I forgot to act bigger with the nuns and forgot to sneer at the lower grades. Now this was real adult school and I was a senior and I could see all the other classes looking up to my age and grade and if I did go on to school, it would not be there at Decker, so I could walk with wider steps and pick up my heels ever so slightly as I stepped, I could smoke on the front steps, I could visualize my graduating picture group hanging in the hall saying Class of ’50 and trace it all down to 1919. But it didn’t quite work out that way. There were no little me's in the freshman year looking up at the seniors like we did when we were freshmen. There were no junior girls who forced laughs whenever I said something clever, they were all involved with the boys in their class. Augie Carey, the star basketball player, was so involved with Joyce that he lost his flair for being a hero and we were good friends, but no underclass looked at me with envy when I was joking and talking loudly with Augie. Buck and I were the same as we always were. No one thought we were like the seniors they had seen.

Bill Updike was there. He was the beauty of the class and caused some comment from the lower grades but it didn’t rub off for me when I was by myself and by the end of the first week I forgot about being a senior and school got into its usual process and that big plan of being a senior soon became an average routine.

Mr. Dick was the principal and taught one course in the school: Civics to the seniors. It was an interesting class but I kept mixing it up with Government a course I had never taken but the thought of my studying Government was such a dull thought that Civics had to be wretched. Miss Dick was Mr. Dick's wife. Her complete name was Ruth Ivy Dick and she wore sling back stiletto heeled shoes, strange princess line dresses without any waist and her body was plumb and short. Buck said she looked like she had been hit on the head with a shovel, and she did look that way. I had Miss Gilmore for Physics, a subject which always thrilled me. Everyone made light of it and borrowed last year's tests for finals because Miss Gilmore was always so proud of her tests she used them again. I was not very interested in copying my answer sheet from last year's test. I had been interested in the subject enough to do my usual "C" average, but on the day of the final Miss Gilmore announced to the class that although she had liked her last year's test a great deal, she decided she would give a new one which she had made up and although it might not be as good as the one last year she was giving the new one anyway. Even Alice Ann Osborn made a low grade because she was so certain the old test was going to be used she didn't bother to study. I thought it was a very good test and made an "A," the only "A" in the class, and this is the only time something happened so well for me, that I thought that this is what happens to a senior and I was very gratified.

That sudden interest in a pleasant life returned just like it had started when I had first met Bill Updike. We were popular at High School, I was even admitted into the Beta Club which was the honorary organization for “B” average. I never was interested in athletics but did my share whenever a big basketball game was arranged because I was always in charge of the artwork and posters. Bill was cheerleader for all four years and I was very envious because I could do the split and my sense of rhythm was always better than his but Dad refused to allow me to do this because when he was with his cronies they always referred to a boy cheerleader as an hermorphradite. It was the first time Decker High School had a male cheerleader and it did upset their tired system all four years.

I was taller and for the first time I saw people who were smaller than me. I was smarter and for the first time saw people dumber than me. I was able to decide things for myself and had a strange sensation deep inside when I arrived at the thought that Aunt Renie could be wrong. The town of Decker was so small it had only one street that was paved. We had made the stop signs from wood in shop class and there was the M and M Café that was owned by two sisters Mary and Melissa, so walking through town at noon or after a basketball game had gotten to be nothing to do. When Buck and I were given the car to drive last year we drove through Decker, but now I had the pick-up truck anytime I wanted it and after the basketball game we always drove to Vincennes, at least something was open.

After graduation I bleached my hair white and after it grew back an inch I had all the bleach cut off and was glad I didn’t have to do that again. Buck bleached his hair and saw what he looked like and dyed it back to red that very day and told everyone he wasn’t as silly as I was to even bleach his hair. Bill Updike bleached his hair but nobody ever said anything.

Gail Carey always smelled like pee when we were in grade school. She was fat. Aunt Hootie said she was fat and smelled like pee because her mother died and she felt sorry for her. In High School Gail was still fat but prettier because she was deciding she was a girl. Aunt Stell always made us promise we would dance with Gail at the school dances but I always did anyway because I always knew fat girls danced well. Lela Witsman was Gail’s girlfriend and she was fat too and she danced beautifully and those girls were always the reason I went to dances. I’ve always loved fat girls. Sweetie Ready was skinny and she and I got along well. In fact she was said to be my girl when we were in the last year of High School. Bill Updike and I saw to it that she was the Senior Queen of the annual carnival and sold so many votes that she won over the entire school and was the High School Queen that year. Thelma Jean Watkins was cross-eyed and very stupid and had naturally curly hair which is a mistake for any girl in the twentieth century. She and Lela, who was a year behind me, and Gail Carey and Anna Marie Swing often walked the main street of Vincennes on Saturday night giggling too loud and if you did talk to them one always slapped you too hard and made too much noise until even Aunt Renie knew their story and called them the street corner gals. Lela was the first girl whose breasts I played with. We were in Bill Updike’s car, there was Gail, Lela, Bill, Buck, Anna Marie Swing, who wasn’t so pretty, and me. I simply slipped my hand under her blouse and unsnapped her brassiere. We didn’t let anyone know.

Joyce Teewald and Rosalie Rietmeyer were the prettiest girls in the class. Rosalie was a cheerleader all four years of high school like her sister Barbara who was also very pretty. All the girls were very pretty in her family except another older sister named Nelta who looked like Jackie Kennedy. Of course Jackie Kennedy was not known about then and anyone looking like her then would not be pretty. Nelta must be very pretty now. Joyce began dating Augie Carey, Gail’s cousin, the first year of high school and by our senior year everyone knew she and Augie would marry, which they did. This made Rosalie, by far the most beautiful girl in class, a loner. She was very friendly, very much fun, but no boy could really get close to her. She always rode to basketball games with Joyce and Augie and no one really wanted to double-date with Joyce and Augie by this time because they were so dull after having gone together all through high school. Augie played center on the basketball team, Joyce was a cheer leader too, so there was no interest and Rosalie always stayed with them. She finally married a man who was one year in front of us in school. He was always popular and charming, but none of our class thought Rosalie would marry someone whom everybody knew.

Dorothy Lambert came into school the second year and no one expected her because in Indiana when one is in school any newcomer remains new all through school. Dorothy was very pretty, but us boys always knew she would marry someone from away. She had come into Decker from Evansville and that was even bigger than Vincennes. After high school she worked as a telephone operator and when I recognized her voice when using a pay phone she and I would chat a bit. Then she would return my nickel. Dorothy ran around with Gail, who was nice enough but she could have done better had she stayed in Evansville. No one dated Dorothy and I’m sure she had a sad life during those years. Now no one knows what she did. If she’s married she married someone from away, but now I realize if she went back to Evansville she would be just as much a newcomer as she had been at Decker. She’s the second Dorothy I knew as a fellow student, the other was Dorothy Pooler who was poor and rode on our bus but didn’t go to the same school. This was when I was still in the grades. She was part of a share-cropping family and always rode with her half-sister Mary Teets. Their bus stop was the last stop before St. Thomas and they would both get on laughing about something and not speaking to anyone. They dressed in hand-me-down clothes and I began watching them closely when I was in the eighth grade and discovered they made up the things they were laughing at right before the bus got to them.

Rosemary Mousin was also very pretty and Bill Updike and Rosemary dated a bit. If Rosalie Rietmeyer wasn’t with Joyce, she began being with Rosemary. However Rosemary wasn’t the cheerleader type and Rosalie had to be with Joyce at all basketball games so nobody knew Rosalie and Rosemary were such good friends. At times Rosemary would sit in the front row at a basketball game with the cheerleaders. I always sat with the cheerleaders because of Bill Updike. Rosemary Mousin and I always got along very well together. When we first had a chance to date, I took Rosemary to a class party in the freshman year. I kissed her afterwards, but it was so dark I missed her face and hit her hair and knocked off her earring. We had to turn the pick-up lights on to find it and then she ran away. I would have too. The first girl I kissed in my life was Loretta Vieck but she is now a Benedictine nun named Sister Mary Luke.

As soon as Buck and Bill and I realized Rosalie was friendly with Rosemary Mousin we began inviting her to our parties. It happened that I was very friendly with Betty Marie Neal. She got on the bus two stops after me and always sat with me. I had hoped Rosalie would sit with me, but her stop was many stops beyond mine and by the time she got on the bus was crowded. I wonder if I would have married Rosalie if her stop was closer to mine even to this day. Betty Marie kissed very well and was a good friend, but I never was very interested in her. Her best friend was Betty Jo Dohmeyer who was always giving parties and trying to date Bill Updike. Sweetie Ready (Reedy rhymes with Sweetie) was liked by everyone, so when Betty Jo Dohmeyer had her parties Rosemary Moussin, Sweetie Ready, and Betty Marie Neal were always there. At times we would all go around Vincennes with Buck’s car, or Bill”s, even mine in the summer, because I had only the pick-up. When Rosalie became friendly with Rosemary, we always went by for Rosalie too. I know why I was never too attracted to Betty Marie now and it was because she was too serious. She was serious about her studies, serious about her religion and just not very much fun. She had a sister named Dorothy Mae whom I hardly knew. Dorothy Mae was very fat and rather stupid. She got cirrhosis of the liver and almost died, she did die from that a few years later. Betty Marie got on the bus one day and sat by me, as she did every morning, and began crying bitterly. I was very embarrassed because I had never been with a girl who cried in public. I did pretend that she was crying over me though. Finally she told me Dorothy Mae had cirrhosis of the liver and that was very serious, but she was not crying because of that, she was crying because everyone knew cirrhosis of the liver only came about due to heavy drinking and Betty Marie and her family were Methodists and never allowed drinking or dancing. She was horrified that everyone thought Dorothy Mae was a secret drunkard. She said, "Any disease but that one!"

And that takes care of about all the girls in my high school class except for Nettie Rae Dobson and Carol Peach who were local Decker farm girls with no personality. Both of them had their heads forward so that their hair fell behind their coats. Nettie Rae had a speech impediment and was very thin and formless. Carol Peach walked a bit sideways, always smelled a bit of old underwear and wore crepe dresses that were obviously all her sister’s Sunday dresses from another era. She was a good student because I always copied her English, but she had wet hands, was easily sick and her hair never hung right, but would cling to itself and always needed washing even when it didn’t.

I had better mention Clara Fellows, another girl I have forgotten who was in our class. She was very pretty, a bit overweight, but just right and a love of all the boys. The only time I ever wished I were a girl is when I knew Clara. She could talk and laugh with everyone in a complete natural way. One day she wore a blue button-up sweater with long sleeves to school. The next day I happened to see her sister Marie, who was only a year older, and she had on the same blue sweater. The day after that Clara had it on again, but this time backwards, and it looked so good, I thought I would be that way if I were a girl. We sat on benches in Glee Club practice and I always arranged for Clara to sit in front of me so I could knee her and bother her, but also we could hear one another sing. She had a lovely voice and we often sang together. One particular day Clara had a silk print dress on, a new one that I was very excited about. It fit tightly and seemed to have no seams nor waist, just a lovely paisley print, three-quarter length sleeves and it was just there with Clara in it. During Glee Club practice, Clara sat in front of me and I noticed the only break in her dress was a zipper going down the back all the way from the neck to below the butt. I reached over, got the zipper and unzipped the entire dress. It fell from her shoulders like it was wet. I was amazed that it fell from her so quickly. She was very surprised, but had the skill and wit to spear me with her pencil as fiercely as she could and hit my left shin and broke off her pencil lead. To this day I can see the black spot where the lead is.

Hadar, the Israeli sculptor, is going to move out. He is going back to Israel I guess. He came up to tell me and ask if I know of anyone who would want to rent his loft. He was wearing an officer’s uniform from the Israeli navy, which was a surprise for me. He told me he worked for the navy each summer. I asked him how he got to an Israeli boat and that was a simple answer, they dock at Pier 14, the west end of Fulton Street. He said that this is the way he came into Manhattan in the first place. I cannot imagine arriving into Manhattan by boat and walking in on Fulton Street first. I came in by train and Grand Central Station was my first view of Manhattan. Most people enter Manhattan from the center and go out from the center.

I telephoned Lee Guilliatt and told her that Hadar was moving and suggested she might take the loft downstairs. Well, she did, and I helped her move, and her roommate Jean Rigg moved downstairs too and all their plants that were doing so well on Staten Island have become smaller. Now we have a type of communal eating arrangement. I cook up here for Jean and Lee one evening and they cook downstairs another evening. It is a given rule that whoever cooks also does the dishes because that allows who is ever off the kitchen work is really off. Besides, up here it is more simple when I do dishes myself because I must carry my water from the bathroom to the kitchen because I have no sink nor any water in the kitchen.  One day Lee came upstairs for dinner and Fr. Hilary was here and as I heard her close the door of her loft to come upstairs, Fr. Hilary went to the bathroom to pee. The bathroom is right by the entrance so Lee Guilliatt passed Hilary and saw he was peeing and naturally said, “Hello, Father Hilary.” Even to this day Fr. Hilary thinks this is strange that a girl saw him peeing. He will never know that Lee Guilliatt thought it very average and knows nothing about Hilary’s thoughts about it. One should think that someone like Lee Guilliatt should be a type who thought priests don’t pee, but she's the type who doesn’t care if they do or not when Fr. Hilary is the type who thinks priests don’t pee.

Peeing with people is very special. Fr. Hilary is difficult to pee with. My father was easy to pee with and I always thought that would be difficult. Benny Andrews is almost impossible to pee with. I don’t dare ask him, but I think he thinks so too. Mr. Dick, the principal at Decker High School, was difficult to pee with because he was the type to think that I thought he didn’t pee and really didn’t think about it until he got to the toilet to find me there planning to pee, so could not do anything but pee. I never hesitated not peeing when I walked into a toilet to pee and saw there were those whom I never thought free to pee with. I’ve never had any trouble peeing around girls. When I was examined for the army we were all told to pee in a bottle and a strange thin boy was beside me not being able to pee, so I told him I would pee in his bottle. He was so relieved, and I told him he would not be rejected because of his urine test because I had excellent urine.

Aunt Renie is green. Irene is green. George is brown. Selma is pink. Buck is very light green and Bill is ochre. Every name has a color and has had since I can remember. Stell is pink, but on the salmon tinge, when Selma pink is shiny like enamel. John is green like Irene and Edward is yellow. If you change your name you change your color and that is dangerous because the new color can mix with the old and it can get muddy. I’m sure movie stars have lots of trouble with their color if they must change their names and find it necessary to live with their new names. That’s why nuns are muddy. Hilary is yellow and Fr. Hilary has to be yellow when once he was brown because once he was George. When yellow and brown mix together nothing really exciting happens. Lee Guilliatt is red, because Lee is red, and Lee's roommate Jean Rigg is really named Frances. Now all Franceses are blue and Jean is orange and that makes Jean Rigg muddy like a nun is muddy and of course Jean Rigg is like a nun. Sometimes a name gets a shorter word that stands for the original name like Elizabeth turns into Betty. Both are the same color of sky blue, so little happens, but when Richard, which is brown, turns into Dick which is maroon, there is always trouble. Marge is orange and so is Judy. Gertrude is red, Rose is rose, Lily is blue-white, Veronica is pink, and Virginia is green. Ronald is blue, Anthony is yellow, Christopher is green, and Thomas is yellow. Paul is apple green and of course Patrick is green. Bill and William are both ochre. Alice is blue as everyone knows.

I’ve always been brown. Brown is hard to see to remember, but reliable and many things are painted brown when they are not to be noticed. The most exciting thing is the use of brown when it is meant to be noticed. A brown suit is not to be noticed, but a brown dress is meant to be noticed. There are Georges who are brown who are not noticed and there are Georges who are like brown dresses who are noticed. I am noticed as much as not and that makes my life very easy.

No sooner had Lee and Jean moved into their loft when next door Stephen Durkee moved from his loft and telephoned me to ask me if I knew anyone who was interested in taking his loft. It is a very wonderful loft all set among high and low gables. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg had lived there when they first lived in lofts. I understand they now live down on Coenties Slip near the Staten Island Ferry. Well I found a couple who were looking for a loft David and Deborah Lee, so I told them about it and they moved in almost right away. This certainly changed my living in a loft because now I’ve arranged to know so many people, but it has become necessary for some reason.

In High School Miss Dick taught shorthand, bookkeeping and typing. I took bookkeeping from her and never knew why, I think it was because I wanted to see her more. Somehow she learned to stand in back of her desk and teach like any other teacher but she never talked like any other person nor teacher. One day she came into the room, this bookkeeping class was the first class in the morning, and said, “I like to eat a cantaloupe in the morning, then have my Wheaties in milk right in my cantaloupe. George, what do you have in your cantaloupe?” Everyone would snicker but she would not be laughing and would ask me again and very seriously. It was better to say I had Wheaties too because I realized she would get all confused if I asked her what she meant. Another day she walked in, we could always hear her walking down the hall, it was a concrete hall in the basement and she wore such stiletto slingback heels, anyone could hear her and know who it was. She came in that morning and said, “I’ve been blowing my nose on toilet paper for years, then someone invented Kleenex and now I can’t imagine blowing my nose on toilet paper, I wish I would have thought of Kleenex.” Suddenly she would begin walking around the room talking like this and when we began listening and starting to hear what she was talking about, she would start talking about bookkeeping. Another time she entered the room and said, “Fill it up?” like it was a question. She repeated it a few times, then explained that's what gas station attendants are taught to do in order to sell more gas. At the end of the school term she explained she was a commerce teacher and had done many lectures on commerce during her classes. I learned no bookkeeping, but Buck learned typing & shorthand very well. She was a very good commerce teacher and gave very good commerce lectures. 

Miss Dick arranged most of the school activities and when Buck suggested that I mock Carmen Miranda for the school Carnival, she was very excited. She had Rosalie and Augie Carey sing together because Joyce couldn’t sing, she said, and actually Augie was the one who couldn’t sing. The Glee Club sang some songs and Lorene McCormick played “Nola” on the piano, plus accompanying everyone while I was hiding in a tent behind everyone waiting for the final act which was me singing “Tico Tico” to Lorene’s playing at the piano. Aunt Teresa had made a hat for me that included wax fruit with a kitchen knife stuck into it. It was a difficult and heavy thing to keep on so she put a huge funeral ribbon around it to tie under my chin and it was all put together with aluminum foil and when I looked in the mirror it came down well below my ears and I didn’t look like Carmen Miranda at all. Lorene sewed colored crepe paper ruffles on the sleeves of a white blouse and someone supplied a striped skirt. Buck’s Aunt Mary Vieck had big feet and I could wear her high-heeled shoes and suddenly I was ready. My big excitement was doing the split at the end of my song, but no one seemed to enjoy nor notice that, they only laughed all while I sang. Miss Dick was so proud of me she told me she did it when she was alone at home, but she couldn’t do the split like I could. She told me that the only reason she didn’t have a good Junior Play the year before was because I wasn’t there to be in it. She said when a Deem is in a Junior Play, the play is always good. 

Mr. Dick was not so pleased with my Carmen Miranda act and while we were all together In Civics Class he made a remark about our class photographs and how they should all be tinted and how the boys should have eye makeup and lipstick, then he added, “Don’t you think so, George?” I said eye make-up certainly was necessary but he could eliminate the lipstick.

Before we knew it spring had come into the school year and the thought of summer vacation crept up and suddenly the Seniors graduated. Seniors are Seniors but never expect to graduate and have nothing to do with the school again, but that’s what happened, we were all pushed out holding our diplomas, standing there in caps and gowns and having no right into the school rooms again. I had no idea what was to happen next year. I wanted to go to Chicago, to the Art Institute there, but that was not possible yet. I didn’t believe it and saw Dad and Aunt Renie didn’t believe it either, so in September, after watermelons were picked and I had made $60.00 on my row, Bill Updike and I decided to run away to Florida.

On a Sunday in September Aunt Renie and Dad had gone somewhere and I packed an old tin suitcase full of clothes, mostly winter clothes because I didn’t believe Florida could be warm during the winter. My suitcase must have weighed fifty pounds, but I didn’t have time to think of that. I drove the pick up to Bill’s and picked him up he had taken his suitcase to the bus station early that morning while his mother was at church. Her name is Fleeta and she is very short and talks very fast. She has a tattoo on her upper right arm that is two hands holding one another as in a handshake and it says love somewhere in the design. Bill’s father was married twice. During his first marriage he had three daughters, Cula, Reba and Lima. In his second marriage he had Dorothy, Archie, Jean, Bob, Bill, Carol, and Patricia. Bill met me and we took my suitcase to the bus station and he told me Harlan Hinkle was going to come by for me that evening to take the three of us to the baseball game in Decker. I got home before Aunt Renie and Dad and no one knew of my plans. That evening after milking and after supper Harlan and Bill came by. They had our suitcases in the trunk and off we went. Aunt Renie said later that it was strange of me to want to go to a baseball game, but she didn’t say anything at the time. Harlan drove us all the way to Princeton which was about 30 miles from Evansville, and left us just standing on the road. By morning we had gotten to Tennessee and felt we were doing fine. That night we stayed at a hotel in Knoxville, the same hotel we had stayed in during our senior class trip. From there I mailed a letter to Buck and one to Dad telling them I had gone away to Florida. Naturally, Buck’s letter arrived before Dad’s, I found out later, and I had not intended that.

Hitchhiking was very new to me. I had never had the experience of being nowhere that I knew of. It had always been exciting seeing parts of highways that were grassy or shady and wondering about people actually walking on them instead of that constant line of traffic just passing them without any interest in stopping for a while. Now there were hundreds of lovely places to walk and stand on but there was again no real choice because some of the loveliest were passed up by our getting a long steady ride that had no consideration of the best places to stand and hitch. Hitchhikers find it much more interesting waiting for the ride than getting one. The real bore is riding and the most exciting is waiting and hoping and dreaming. Bill and I did many variations. We dressed alike at times, we made signs that we held up, we even took turns hiding with plans of surprising the driver by rushing out when they stopped. We didn’t talk for long periods of time because of the freedom we thought we were in, then there were times we bet on the next car that was to pick us up. One time, after having waited until late into the night three men picked us up and they were all drunk. The one driving just drove silently at such a high speed I knew we were going to crash. Finally Bill offered to drive and we went for many miles while everyone slept. Most rides were comfortable some were in backs of trucks and they were most fun. I was surprised how all drivers were on very planned schedules and had little interest in where we were going, but were only interested in having company. None of them knew the thrill of being hitchhiking, even if they spoke of knowing about it. In Georgia two men picked us up and drove through flooded highways until there was water in the car. They left us off in Savannah and after checking into a cheap hotel I found my suitcase had gotten wet and there were my winter clothes soaked with water. We hung them up all around our room and tried to sleep, but panic and fright had set in by now. A door leading to another room was nailed shut from our side, we could see the nails and all night a man and woman in that next room repeated the playing of a recording of Hank Snow and Kay Starr singing a popular record of that time, or they played television very low and during the sleepless night I experienced for the first time how cold and lonely sounds like that can be. If you are not there with those sound-making instruments they make no sense, but only echo a din that is lifeless and so depressing. It continued raining all night, the air was damp and still, nothing dried and I had to pack it all up again. Folding wet shirts and wool sweaters to pack them into a suitcase is one of the worst things I can think of doing. It gives me chills like I get when scratching on a blackboard.

A bit of relief came when later in the day we took a bus to the ocean beach and swam until sunset in the Atlantic. It was my first time in the sea and the salt water made my nose drain of sinus and I felt better. However, we were low on money now, the beauty of Savannah made no difference anymore because it turned into a place where people had homes to go to and live and by dark nobody was out walking around like we were so there was no choice but to take a local bus to the city limits and attempt hiking all night until we got to Daytona Beach, where the sun was shining, where people gave you free glasses of orange juice freshly squeezed from their crop right along the roadside stands. I saw many tourist novelties in these roadside stands and decided I could make some and build my own stand and live along the road for the rest of my life in the Florida sun. What we were really planning was to catch a freighter to Europe and live in Europe.

Anytime someone is doing something and he doesn’t know quite what it is that he’s doing and he doesn’t have enough money to give him time to figure it all out, the money just goes away. I decided that surely I had lost twenty dollars, that someone had short-changed me, that whatever happened was not my fault because suddenly we had ten dollars between us and nothing else. We were now at Daytona Beach walking along the main highway that was all built up with beautiful homes and hotels and with a beach that extended for miles. I had never seen anything so grand. The space was full of shade and huge palm trees. The houses were mostly private, we had not gone far enough through the town to be able to walk along the public beaches where we hoped to spend the night.

By now our object was to go as far as Miami to look for jobs until we could find how we were going to continue our plans or make plans; by now we had forgotten just what our plans had been or just why we were in Florida. As we walked on I could certainly see the delight people found in Florida and would have enjoyed spending some time there if the situation was a bit more wholesome. We walked on thumbing cars just in case we were given a ride, when a car did stop. The middle-aged couple in the car welcomed us and told us they were going to the next town, New Smyrna. We had a nice talk as we were driven to this town, but the woman who wasn’t driving and doing most of the talking, suddenly realized that we had run away and she was distressed. “You’ve told your folks by now, haven’t you?” She was concerned about this until I explained how we had written from Knoxville on Monday. This was Friday. We got to New Smyrna and said good-by. I so hated to have to be out on the road again and was so comforted by these warm people. It was getting dark and I could see into the homes we were driving by and thought of how everyone in those houses knew where they were without even thinking about it when I always had to think about where I was these days. New Smyrna, Florida. I didn’t really know where I was at all.

The mosquitoes in Florida are very large and there are so many. I’m usually not bothered much by mosquitoes but these bothered me and were making Bill very uncomfortable. Nothing was going well by this time and now the police stopped to ask us about our being there in New Smyrna at nine o’clock on Friday night. They told us they would allow us to continue hitchhiking until ten o’clock, then they would pick us up and take us to jail for the night. After ten, hitchhikers had to be off the street. They promised they would feed us at the jail and we were not going to be booked, but it was a cheap way to spend the night and the jail was clean and we would not be behind locked bars; bars, yes, but they would not lock them. I thought it was a very kind offer and was ready to go right away, but Bill said we would try thumbing until ten. Then he told me we could hide until morning because he wasn’t going to spend the night in any jail. I thought spending a night in jail was a delightful idea. I had never spent a night in an official place and always wanted to. I had never even spent a night in a hospital and Bill had. However Bill was very much against this and decided that we should try to get a ride out of town or take a city bus to the outskirts or hide until morning, but what kind of shape would we be in with these mosquitoes?

It was nearly ten o’clock. We were hungry and tired and still being attacked by these very large mosquitoes when Bill said, “For two cents I would cross the road and start back to Indiana. We’re getting nowhere.” I reached into my pocket and found a nickel and two pennies and handed Bill the two pennies and we picked up our suitcases and crossed the road and began going north. A car came and stopped shortly afterwards and to my blinding surprise it was the couple who had taken us there to New Smyrna. The wife was very tickled that we were going back home and promised us that the road going back is never so difficult as that one going forward. She said we would get rides easily. We said good-by to the couple at Daytona and no sooner did the car drive away than another stopped. The license plate said West Virginia. The man driving was going straight through all night to West Virginia. He drove very fast and very good and I spent hours in silence trying to remember how far Indiana was from West Virginia.

The trip was uncomfortable after many hours. He kept talking and trying to talk me into staying awake. I was in front. I kept falling asleep, then waking up and smoking cigarettes to keep awake. This was when I found out things that are not very good, like cigarettes after a miserable and cramped nap, are good because one enjoys the dislike. It all rhymes with the discomfort of things and makes a kind of consistent dislike until it’s easy to see a unity and you know where you are. Many things that are not likable fall into a consistent category with other unpleasant things and they become a way of doing something, like too much coffee, coughing, chewing gum or being slightly chilly.

This man said roied instead of road and had many slurs in his accent that explained to me what West Virginia was all about. Once he almost stopped to pick up two girls that were walking along the street of some small town. I couldn’t imagine what we would do with two girls in the car if we were supposedly driving non-stop to West Virginia. He said we had time to fool around with them for an hour or so, but I knew he was talk more than action because by the time he explained all this we were at least ten miles out of the city where the girls were. That sounded West Virginia to me even then.

It became light, it was Saturday morning and we were very near Kentucky, the best place to leave Mr. West Virginia and turn toward Indiana. We got to Louisville by Saturday night and spent the night at the YMCA. The most difficult time hitchhiking, when no-one gave rides except pick up trucks going ten miles was the hitching from Louisville, Kentucky. We admitted to each other that it was futile and finally took a bus going to Vincennes.

Dad said, “Well, the prodigal son hath returned.” Everyone had just finished eating the noon meal. I was exhausted and very hungry. Aunt Renie fed me and Selma was home for a vacation from nurse’s training and kept asking me questions of why I hadn’t put a note in one of our secret places. She said I had always told her my secrets, now where was the note? I had to admit I did not write her a note, I even asked her to leave me eat so I could lie down I was half-sick with exhaust. She did leave me alone but not without telling she and Dad had sowed all the winter rye and it was a good thing she was home for vacation, he could not have done it alone, he couldn’t ride that tractor that long a time with his prostate condition and all. I was just glad all that was done, I couldn’t think anything about how difficult it was for Dad.

It was strange milking that evening, it was strange being home again since I had not actually planned being there so soon. I had been gone only a week and it seemed like months. It was such a long time I had a new way of looking at the house, the farm, the interior of the house and everybody in it. As we approached the lane I saw that such a lane was never a lane any hitchhiker would see. The artificial brick covering on the house looked so dingy and I was glad the house was not on the highway where all passersby would see it, it looked sad. I had never before seen that my home looked so sad. There was something that was lacking in ambition about it. The interior looked like those interiors of homes that have no children, where everyone lived in it practically. If there were children they were old and looked very big standing in doorways and then I began seeing that that is what had happened. There were no children in the house anymore, there was no ambition around there anymore and Dad, although he never told me, knew that I would not be staying there for the rest of my life. He asked me if I thought the rye would plant itself, he asked me what I was thinking about. All I could answer was I forgot about the rye. Now I had no school to go to, I was standing big in the doorway and not being a child any longer. Cy, my cousin asked me if I had gone away in order to sleep with a girl and I could not explain to him that my dreams were so much farther away than that. The corn wasn’t shucked yet and there was lots of plowing yet to do, so I plowed for five days in a row all by myself on the tractor and wrote a Musical Comedy. It was called “The Singing Soldier” and there were seven songs in it which I can sing right now.

It was a strange winter. We shucked the corn all by hand, cleaned the barn many times, rebuilt fence rows, but it didn’t make any difference. I had re-decorated my room, bought a kerosene heating stove and now had a studio. We had talked about my going on to school and Fr. Hilary came to the rescue. He told Dad and Aunt Renie if I want to study art at the Art Institute of Chicago I should be given the chance. Aunt Stell looked into the plan too and decided I should go first one year to Vincennes University and get my academic requirements out of the way. I showed that I was impatient and said, “You people don’t think I know what I want!” Aunt Stell calmly answered, “George, we know you don’t know what you want.” I wasn’t that furious, I wanted to try Vincennes University to see what a school was like that was after high school. A University is different from High School because instead of going to different rooms for different classes you actually go to different buildings. I understood the University right away and enjoyed going from one building to another.

I guess I should have married by now. Once I was visiting home, since living here in my loft, and wrote a letter to Lee Guilliatt and on the bottom I asked her to marry me. I was sitting on Aunt Stell’s porch re-reading the letter and decided that it was such a half-way thing to do by doing it in a letter, I should do it personally, then, when I got back here to my loft I forgot all about it, just like I forgot sowing the rye that time I ran away. There was a beautiful and lovely girl I met during my High School Years. She went to the Catholic Girls Academy called St. Rose in Vincennes, but I met her and her name was Caroline Castieaux. She was well formed and big and was wonderful to kiss and we kissed all the time. Her mother and father lived in Vincennes and they were town parents like Aunt Ollie and Uncle Ed, Uncle Ed is my godfather and we get along so well. He never has any dirty clothes like farm parents. When he goes hunting his clothes get covered with mud and thorns, but that isn’t dirt. Caroline’s father was like this and they had a dining room in their house that was not noticed by them because they used it every day. Caroline was the only girl I ever looked at and knew that in my history I was to marry her. She was perfect for every reason and I’m sure I would have loved her deeply. She looked at me and her eyes said, “This is it, Caroline, it is just as it should be.” It was just as it should be. It was like reading a good book, but somehow you lose it and never think of getting it again even though you think about getting it again and think about it with your most important thoughts. Caroline and I saw one another and then didn’t and never did again. Also my marrying Caroline would have made me the best Deem yet. It would have been the illustration of what happens when a Deem boy is raised by his father and his father’s sister. But, that is not what happened.

I did love Sally Fidler. I met her at Vincennes University. She worked in the library and looked like Kim Hunter and had a personality that was so earnest, yet if she saw her personality was in the middle of something that was funny, she would change her earnest carriage to laughter as I could always see her seeing herself, and I began seeing her see me see her and that’s the kind of love we had. But I went away to Chicago and she married Ralph Winkler, her old boy friend whom she knew before me. Ralph was her Caroline and she did what she was supposed to do historically.

End of Part Three