Ever since I was a little girl, I’d stop in front of the
iron and stone gate in front of Grace Episcopal Church and pretend I was a
bride in my wedding dress on my way through the gate to get married. I didn’t pretend to be Episcopal, so only in
a daydream was it possible to be married in a stone church with wrought
iron and richly dark stained glass right
out of a novel about knights and fair ladies.
As a Catholic I had no interest in the religion practiced at Grace, just
their architecture. At night in the
winter on the way home, I’d lean back and gaze above at the steeple, way up to
the top where the little twinkling stars were just waking up in the night
sky. What a delirious feeling to see all
that black up there. Jack later told me
the entire universe was up there and it went on forever. I didn’t know what was out there when I was a
girl. I just knew staring at it took my
breath away.
I
passed the Kresge's on the ground floor of the National Bank building on the corner of Elizabeth and
Genesee Streets. Past Woolworth's I
walked and my heart turned cold when I remembered the man who bothered me on
the job as I stood behind the fabrics counter upstairs in the back of the
building. He was the store’s floorwalker
and he gave me the creeps. He never said
anything to me, but was always hanging around,
I don’t know what he wanted. I
don’t know if he thought I was stealing something or he just wanted to be near
me for some reason, but I didn’t like him.
There was a sick something about him.
I was pretty happy to walk right by the store and keep walking.
When I
got to the H-I Factory in the morning, I always thought how lovely it
appeared. It was a dirty brick building
to most people, but to me it was so solid compared to Woolworth's. The workers and machines inside H-I turned
out thousands of fishing poles every month.
We served the needs of all those men who went down to the streams in the
early evening and brought back supper to their waiting wives. Maybe someday Jimmy would take up fishing
after we were married and I’d learn to cook fish.
