My steady date in high school seemed agreeable to my company, if not thrilled. I probably bored her. I doubt if the girl ever felt that much affection for me, but I was a steady date for her to plan on and her parents evidently believed I was safe. Unfortunately, they were right. We never became the torrid affair I imagined, like Bogey and Bacall. On the many occasions I asked if she loved me, she answered, "Huh? Oh, sure, yeah." I suppose it was just her style, but it wasn't very cuddly. I can imagine if we stayed together and had someday married. At the altar when asked if she took me to be her lawful wedded husband, she might answer, "Huh? Oh, sure, yeah."
Over the years I wondered why I could not
remember much about the girl, her tastes or opinions for example. I had no idea
what might have been her favorite color, or music group, or car or TV program
or ... anything. It finally occurred to me that I never knew much about her because
I never asked. I was too busy talking about myself or a host of topics she had
little interest in, such as the possibility of space travel and the various
configurations of half wave dipole antennas.
In those high school
years I seldom left the attic, so fascinated was I with short wave radio. My
aerie up above the rest of the house was cold in the winter and hot in the
summer. Plus it was dingy with the dust
of over 50 years. To make it more hospitable
I brought home 3 or 4 refrigerator shipping boxes from an appliance store near
my high school. The cardboard panels made walls to cut the breeze that blew
through the attic in the winter and gave me vertical surfaces on which to mount
weather maps and short wave radio posters.
Without the walls there was only the sloping roof. The end wall of the attic was mostly windows.
All my paper route
earnings went into my radio hobby. No one heard from me for weeks at a time. I
neglected my studies, stayed up all night and took full advantage of the peak
in the sun spot cycle. Each night, into the early morning, I sent and received
Morse code over the Atlantic, exchanging signal reports and weather data with
fellow Hams in Europe. I learned a lot about signal propagation, the grey line,
the ionosphere and 10
meter atmospheric ducting. I threw my antenna
wire higher and higher for lower radiation launch angles to increase distance, and
installed loading coils for better standing wave ratios. I became conversant
with meteorological patterns in Spain and Romania. I become so enamored of
everything taking place a third of the globe distant that I forgot about where
my feet were planted. I flunked Geometry
and had to take it again in summer school.
I had no study habits to
speak of, but I had a terrific memory and remembered what took place in class. It
sustained my mediocre high school record while I spent my spare time day
dreaming, fooling with radios and playing in a rock band.
I almost flunked
Religion. No one ever flunked Religion. It was rumored that if you started
failing the tests, you'd be kept after school and sent over to the church next
door each day to pray until either you got the message or God got the message
and your study habits miraculously improved.
In Religion class I
became upset early in the school year when I discovered we would not be
studying Aquinas or Augustine. These were two church Fathers who had
contributed much to the philosophy and theology of our church, and I wanted the
benefit of a classroom forum in which to air my personal theories and opinions
on various theological topics.
"I'm afraid we'll
all have to struggle along without your ideas on the Majesterium, Mr.
Griffin," Sister Mary Metanoia told me when I marched up to her after our
first class and announced my disappointment. "We are instead going to
study Our Lord's life on earth, here in this vale of tears," she said. "It
will help you to put into perspective His final suffering and the debt he paid
on the cross for your sins and mine. Probably more for yours."
"But Aquinas' ideas
were always debated in the councils of the Church, Sister, and I thought we
might continue the debates here."
"Here?" she
asked. "Debate?" her voice began to rise.
"Yes, here," I
said. "In Utica, on
John Street,
near the banks of the Mohawk."
"I don't think Holy
Mother the Church will entertain any more debate on her theology, young
man," she said, now on the verge of getting really upset. "Especially
from a boy who can't even understand
Geometry."
To say I was insulted
would be an understatement. After all, I did in fact understand Geometry. I
just forgot to memorize the theorems. When our religion studies commenced that
year I found to my chagrin we were covering every route Jesus ever took in his
walks around the Holy Land. You'd think he was aiming at a certificate to hang
on the wall like you get for completing the Appalachian Trail. We even
memorized distances. It's 18 miles from Nazareth to
the Sea of Galilee. Almost
80 miles down to Jerusalem. That's
a long walk, and there were no tour buses in 30 A.D. The class was a travelogue
of Jesus stopping at one well or another and offering a parable to desert
people who would have rather had a tour bus stop. I soon tuned out. I began to
fail, but quickly had a miraculous change in my ability to pay attention and
study when Sister threatened to call my parents and suggest they make some
changes in how I spent my time. That would have been terrible. Until report
cards came out, I had my folks convinced I was a model student. A call to Mom
and Dad would have shortened my runway.
My high school sweetheart
and I parted at the end of high school. I guess she'd had enough of my
immaturity. I started arguments just to
see if I could get a rise out of her. I would have tried to win them, but she
was an Irishwoman in training and I knew better than to waste my time. Our
estrangement was no surprise, but it left me crushed.
In my second year of
college, I lived at home, still mostly in the attic, checking out the weather
in Finland or Bulgaria in
the middle of most nights and interfering with my neighbors’ televisions when I
transmitted. I popped up on a well known Utica eye
doctor's stereo, calling "come in, Yugoslavia,"
the night he had friends over to play them a new recording of Stravinsky's Petrushka. He lived a half mile away and
his letter to the FCC in Washington
resulted in my second official offense for interference.
I began to wonder what
Jenny was doing.
Turns out Jenny was
growing nicely. She had one of those great girlish shapes that would not
survive very far into adulthood. I didn’t care much about the future at that
age and what I saw was a terrific looking girl who always gave me a cute smile.
When Jenny accepted a date with me, I was about to begin my
second year at a local community college and Jenny was thinking of going to
live with an aunt in Syracuse. That city was just fifty miles away and
close enough to get home on weekends, or every night if necessary. Syracuse
represented the Big Town to young Uticans who didn't want to go too far away. The
city was distant enough to justify renting your own apartment and getting away
from your parents’ eternal quest to see you through to maturity as a virgin or
a eunuch. And it was a new place where you could start fresh and leave behind
high school friends who knew everything about you from the date of your first
period to the time you threw up in Biology class when Petey Sardini pretended
to eat the frog he was dissecting.
In 1962 there wasn't much to do in Utica, or maybe I was
cursed with a limited imagination. A typical date at our age was to go to a bar
for a few beers and dance to music on the jukebox. I suggested we drive out to
the Blue Note on the Oriskany road, but Jenny said she didn’t like the place. Ditto
for McGuirl’s on Eagle Street. I began to suspect she didn’t want to run into my
old girlfriend, whom she knew.
At eighteen Jenny was in great shape, the effects of a
sedentary job and child bearing still in the future. On our first and only date we headed up to Old
Forge and I forgot to check the gas in the tank of my father’s car.
Jenny and I drove up the new Arterial, which ended with a
sigh half way up Deerfield Hill, as if it couldn’t wait for the new addition of
highway that would stretch over the top of the hill and connect it to the old
four-lane at South Trenton. On to Forestport and then to Thendara, over smooth
new road since Route 28 had been rebuilt in the late 1950s.
By the way, having watched my older brother buy the only car
he could afford and see it break down all the time, often in embarrassing
places, and then spend weeks earning money for repairs, I couldn’t for the life
of me understand why any teenage boy would want his own vehicle when he could
borrow his father’s showroom-fresh late model chariot. Dad didn’t quite see it
that way, but I managed to use his car evenings fairly often.
On that Friday night there must have been a terrific party
going on in a secret location, because we stopped in three bars normally full
of kids on the weekend and each place was empty. I asked Jenny twice if she
could think of any place to stop that I had missed. Her shrug told me she
didn’t care very much and she said, “Whatever you think.” We pushed on past Old
Forge and finally sat down at a sticky table in a quiet dive somewhere south of
Inlet, near Eagle Bay. We ordered a beer.
"So," I said, "you're thinking of moving to Syracuse."
"Maybe," she said. "I have to decide whether
I'll go to college or get a job, but Syracuse might be a good place for either
of those."
"Have you ever thought of going into business for
yourself?" I asked.
"No," she laughed, "what would I do?"
"Sell hot dogs," I said. "I got talking to a
guy in Yorkville the other day and he makes a good living at it. The cart isn’t that expensive, and you can take out a payment
plan."
"I don't think I'd be good at selling hot dogs,"
she said, her smile now gone.
"Sure you would," I replied.
"I think I will probably find something better to do in
life," she said.
"You could sell them wearing a bikini." I said.
She didn't answer.
"For a few years, anyway." I said.
I found it difficult to have a conversation with Jenny. I
wasn’t so much tongue tied as I was unable to find any common ground. Of
course, without asking very much about how her life was going, I launched into The Story of Dave in 3D and Technicolor,
conveniently served up with my own reviews and a self-supplied laugh track.
That this approach never worked on any girl didn’t stop me. It was my Magnum
Opus at the time and I was sure it deserved an audience.
Jenny was polite, but unimpressed. She didn’t have the
wherewithal of the young woman I dated the next year, who one night at the Blue
Note in the middle of my lengthy monologue reached across the table and grabbed
the front of my sweater. She roughly pulled me toward her as the ash tray went
flying and said, “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to break this beer bottle
over your head.” A slight young woman, but impressive nonetheless. I always
wondered if she wound up killing her husband in the ensuing years.
When Jenny and I got in the car to drive back to Utica, she
fell asleep over against the far door, possibly as a self defense against the
onslaught of more chatter. Of course, she may have been faking, but a gentleman
doesn't inquire. Besides, if it got too quiet I could always talk to myself, an
easy task for someone who spent most of his life in his head. I didn't try to
wake her until I checked the gas gauge. It sat just above Empty. How the heck
did that happen? I had put two dollars worth of gas in the night before. And
how did I not notice it on our way up from Utica?
"I think we're running out of gas," I said.'
She said nothing, but stopped breathing.
Finally, she said, "That's not funny."
"I'm not trying to be funny and I didn't arrange this. The
tank must be leaking. Don't you smell gas?"
"No," she replied.
"I do," I said.
"We're not spending the night in the car," she
said.
"Well, if we have to, we have to," I replied. "You
can sleep in the back seat and I'll stay up front."
"You can sleep in the trunk," she said.
"I think my father has a load of stuff in there for St.
Vincent de Paul’s."
She didn't respond. A
moment later she pulled her coat over her shoulder, turned away from me and did
everything but snore to indicate she was asleep.
I watched the gas gauge very closely, hoping it would stay
on the safe side of “E.” There was an all-night gas station on Deerfield
Corners in North Utica and I hoped I’d make it there. But by the time we passed
through Forestport and turned down Route 12 at Alder Creek, I was sure we'd run
out of gas before reaching Utica.
That’s
when the tiny NY State Trooper station loomed up on the left. For years I’d
seen the little ranch house perched on a rise by the side of Route 12. I
remembered a gas pump outside the garage doors beneath the house. I braked and
turned left into the driveway. I told Jenny I was going to try to get some gas.
There were no other vehicles around. I got out of the car, leaving it running
because I'd read that starting a car takes as much gas as driving for fifteen
minutes. I climbed the hill to the front door. It was locked and I peered
through the little window in the door. No one was inside. What the hell, I
thought. Back down in the driveway, I inspected the pump as best I could by the
weak light of a floodlight mounted on a utility pole. The nozzle wasn’t locked
to the side of the stanchion as I’d once seen on a farm. When I backed the car
around and tried to pump gas, I found the electricity to the pump was not
turned on.
I really did not want to run out of gas. I didn't know what
would happen if we were stranded. I could wish for a friendly Trooper to see us
later by the side of the road... maybe the guy who should have been upstairs in
the barracks. He might carry a full gas can for just such emergencies. But I
doubted it. It was more likely he'd call a tow truck and I'd have to pay a
service fee for a man to bring us gas, or even pay for a tow. Either way, it
could cost $25. It might cost more. I was just a poor student.
The $25 would have to be taken out of the $100 I had saved
so far for a new radio transmitter I had my heart set on, a new rig that would
triple my output power. Of course, I could use it only very late at night or blot
out every radio and television within a six block radius. I pictured myself
throwing the big switch, the house lights dimming, and the power surging
through my antenna. Any of those damned birds perched on the wire would go straight
to the hereafter with their feathers sticking out in all directions. It would
be just my luck to find someday when I got to those pearly gates that St. Peter
was a bird lover.
If no rescuer showed up and we never got any gas, Jenny
would be forced to spend the night with me. She would hate me. Her mother would
probably have me arrested. Well, we were not likely to fall in love and get married
anyway, but I have never wanted any woman to hate me. I always felt I was a
nice guy. A little self absorbed, maybe. But I had come through my teens and no
one had seriously tried to kill me. So I think I was somewhat likeable. My
inflated opinion of myself happily leveled off as I reached age twenty. Had it
followed a natural arc of ascending absurdity, I would have been impossible to
live with. As it was, I was only annoying.
I kept staring at the pump as if I could wish it to turn on
and fill up the car with hi-test. Jenny was awake. Through the open window of
the car she said, “What are you doing?"
“I’m trying to get some gas from the New York State
Police," I said, "because you won't sleep with me." I was
exasperated with her pretending to sleep.
My sarcasm was met by silence. I'd call it a cold, stony
silence.
I could hear trickling when I stuck the gas nozzle into the car’s
filler tube and I hoped at least a tiny amount of gas was flowing into the
tank. A kind of siphoning action may have been happening. If I first held the
nozzle up in the air and then brought it down and inserted it into the filler
tube, a small amount of gas could be heard leaking down the hose and into the
tank. I repeated the procedure numerous times while my mind floated to nowhere
in particular. I wondered if any part of this technique of raising the hose
high in the air before inserting the nozzle into the filler might lend itself
to making the act of conception more fruitful. I might be able to patent
something here and sell the idea to childless couples. Television was the way
to sell an item that promised results and I tried to imagine the artwork,
thinking of the TV commercials that sold kitchen devices for $19.95. I’d have
to get around the FCC’s ban on prurient advertising, of course, but I might be
on to something that could lead to millions in sales and royalties. My fame
would certainly embarrass that nun who flunked me in Geometry.
Gassing up by this method would take a while, so I reached
in the car and turned the ignition off. Jenny
was sitting ramrod stiff in her seat, staring straight ahead. Her eyes were
wide open, like a deer just before it gets run down by a Peterbilt. My heart
melted and I knew her derision was in fact fear. I felt awful that she might be
afraid of me.
"Jenny," I said, "don't worry. I'm a dope who
forgets to put gas in the tank, not someone who would try to take advantage of
you. If we have to stay out all night I'll sleep outside on the ground. You can
lock yourself in the car. I'll explain everything to your mother and offer to
compensate her for her worry."
She turned her head slowly toward me and said,
"Compensate her?"
"Well, uh, yes," I said. I'll offer to mow her
lawn for a couple of weeks, or maybe ..."
"My brother does the lawn," she said.
"You have a sister, Jenny, not a brother," I said.
"My older
brother," she said. "He's married and lives in New Hartford. And he's
gonna kill you!"
I repeated the lift and fill procedure a couple of dozen
times, all the while worrying that a Trooper would return to the station while
I was stealing his gas. With the engine
now off, I couldn’t tell if the gas gauge was ever so slightly heading up away
from “E.”
A constant swishing of tires out on Route 12 was interrupted
by the sound of a car slowing down and soon it could be seen at the end of the
driveway. The headlights described a wide arc as the car turned in. I froze. I
heard Jenny say, “What’ll my mother
say?”
The car came to a stop just off the road. It could not have
sat there for more than five seconds. Then it backed out. The transmission
clunked into Drive and the car continued on its way north. I have no idea who
it was or why they decided to momentarily stop in the driveway. I could see
nothing but headlights out near the road. If it was a Trooper, he almost
certainly would have seen our car, but maybe not me since I was standing on the
far side of the vehicle. He may have gotten a call on the radio and decided to
ignore my car in the driveway until he could check it out later.
In any case, I decided I’d had enough. I'd pumped out only a
trickle of gas and risked getting arrested. I held the nozzle up in the air and
this time brought it down aimed at the ground and squeezed the handle. Nothing
came out. I’d gotten all the free gas I deserved.
“I didn’t do this on purpose,” I told Jenny again as we
headed south.
“Your old girlfriend said you did things like this all the
time,” she said with a sting in her voice.
“Well, not on purpose,” I said. “We all make mistakes.”
“Yes, we certainly do,” she said witheringly.
The gas gauge needle had moved up slightly, or maybe it was
my imagination. Soon it was moving downward past E. As we crested Deerfield
Hill, I switched off the ignition, convinced I could coast down the long hill
to North Utica. Today the steering lock
on most cars would prevent that while the car is in motion. Soon afterward I
began to think I should have just put the car in neutral. Starting the car
again would probably take more gas than I saved by turning off the engine. With
the engine dead, there was no power steering or power brakes. No alternator,
either, and the headlights began to dim. Oh, great. I might make it to the gas
station, but my battery would be dead on arrival. Just as I approached a
leveling out of Trenton Road where the firehouse is today, at 40 miles per hour
I turned the key back on. Instead of using the starter, I slammed the automatic
transmission into Drive. It worked and the car started. I probably saved 4
cents worth of gas. A week later my father paid $200 to have the transmission
repaired. He gave me that look when he came home from the repair shop, but he
knew I would respond to any inquiry with a well practiced countenance of
innocence mixed with puzzlement. I’d been working on it for years.
Finally Jenny and I arrived at Deerfield Corners. I left the
engine running to charge the battery while I put two dollars in the tank.
By this time Jenny’s mood had improved and she seemed to
join in the adventure. Once we were fueled up, she relaxed and laughed about
it. You’d have thought we were an old married couple as we discussed one thing
or another as I drove up John Street and then on to Cornhill. She laughed at my
jokes and I asked her about her life and we got along famously.
I parked the car in front of
her house and we sat on her steps, continuing to enjoy our conversation. By then
we'd had a terrific evening.
I never saw her again.
I truly cannot remember
exactly why we did not go out again. I think I did call her for a second date,
but maybe she was not able to arrange her schedule. I would have gotten the
point and not asked again. And soon I left to live in New York City. I was home
for the weekend a few years later when Mom showed me a newspaper clipping of
Jenny's marriage. Mom always saved clippings about my friends, but not if they
were arrested. No older brother was mentioned in the write-up.
The night of the gas heist
Jenny and I parted friends after an evening of only slightly getting to know
each other. We sat outside her house late on that moonlit evening until she had
to go inside. I leaned toward her and she put her face up and we kissed. She
was a lousy kisser. She may have thought the same of me.
I've never been sure of what
a good kisser is anyway. Short of drooling, I suppose any kiss is a good kiss
when you have the right person in your arms. I never knew if I was good kisser
until I met my wife. It's a good thing she loves me and never thought I was all
that annoying, except on our first date when I tried to sum up Aquinas'
teaching for her. At least she's never threatened to break a beer bottle over
my head. Not in quite a while anyway.
###
copyright
2013, David Griffin
