Virginia
Let’s get one thing out of the way right up
front. The first thing I noticed about
Virginia when she was introduced to me in the library as the new 3rd Assistant Librarian was she was built like Sophia Loren
from the neck down. The second thing I
noticed was she was at least 15 years older than me, quite a bit since I was just turning 19. And the next thing I noticed was she really wasn’t
pretty in the conventional “cute” style of the Sixties. Her beauty was more classic. Such is the way young men put important
things in order.
You have to remember in 1962, college librarians
weren’t wearing provocative attire or showing a little cleavage when reaching over
the desk to stamp a return date in the back of your book. Virginia, who had the bearing of a princess, wore a modest flowery dress on the day we met,
covering her from her knees to about her Adam’s apple, flouncey in the fashion
of the day, with those multi-layered things under the skirt-part to add bulk and
let a woman swish around like Loretta Young entering a room. The undergarments resembled a stack of huge
Mr. Coffee filters hanging upside down around the waist. (I should have been a fashion writer.) Her figure pushed out the top of her dress in
the auto-bumper style so popular at the time.
Do you remember when adults stood out from a
crowd of kids instead of looking like them?
Well, Virginia looked like a Lady, and
you could easily spot her in a library filled with younger women students who
seemed never able to find any clothing but a
sweat shirt and jeans when they crawled out of bed in the morning. My friend Bob and I were convinced a young woman in our History of Civilization
class owned exactly one sweat shirt and a pair of jeans. We imagined she washed them out in the
janitor’s sink in the closet at the end of the hall each week
. So to be among the unisex girls in my classes all
day and then come to my part-time job in the college’s library to sit in a
small back office inscribing Dewey Decimal numbers on the backs of books in the
presence of Lady Virginia was like being let into
the castle and brought to the Queen.
I almost fell down on one knee the first time I
went to meet her in her little cubicle. Here I was, probably in my favorite outfit of brown
checked shirt, prison green chinos, orange shoes my father gave me after he
bought them at a discount store and decided he could live without them. And either my absolute favorite British tan
cardigan sweater with a few buttons missing or my even more absolute favorite Lineman’s
Coat. The latter wasn’t very pretty but
it could withstand a jolt of 50,000 volts, should I brush up against a high-tension power line cable as I walked to
class. To do so, of course, I’d have to
be near 60 feet tall, since the high voltage lines were at strung along the
tops of the poles.
And there was Virginia, seated elegantly on
her desk chair, legs crossed, back straight, turned partially toward me as I
stood frozen in the doorway. She had the
best posture I have ever seen in a woman, and I’m not making a joke. It was sexy.
If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean.
She bade me enter, take up a scriber and get to
work. As an official librarian, it was her
job in that day long ago to quickly skim a book’s end covers, decide on the
Dewey classification and sub-classification, hand the book over and tell me the
numbers. As an unofficial but devoted
peon, it was my job to scribe the decimals on the book’s spine using a hot, pointed
instrument and a special white tape. It
smelled awful when the heated scriber pressed against the tape. I thought of it more as branding than
labeling.
Virginia’s manner and movements were
extremely feminine, just short of
cartoon-ish. I’ve often wondered if such
femininity is inborn or learned in a woman.
From wherever it came, it was delicious.
Just to watch her open a book, tilt her head to read the inscriptions
and then push the volume across the desk to me would generate a tingle. Unintended, she had a provocative way of
pushing the book. Or it could have been
my imagination.
Virginia had a profusion of hair
I wanted to wake up lost in some morning. Of course, I’d have to her explain to
her husband what I was doing in their bed.
She arrived at the library in the morning with every strand in place,
but as the day progressed it came slightly undone. I loved it that way and was happy I worked
with her afternoons when her hair seemed so inviting to me.
She had in any case a regal appearance, but her
manner was anything but frosty. She was
very friendly and helpful, even sweet. I
felt at ease the first time I worked with her.
She loved to talk, but more important, she loved to listen. She withstood my dimwitted chatter as I wielded my branding iron across
the backs of unsuspecting books, scribing with my best penmanship as I held
forth with one story or another to somehow insinuate my own glory. She was always encouraging, even suggesting
my piano work might be good. She loved
people. Maybe too much, as it turned
out.
In 1957, Virginia had married the general
manager of her father’s large lumber company in Illinois. Maybe it was somehow arranged, I don’t know,
but I thought Ted got a good deal when he married the boss’s daughter. Becoming a matron by definition only, she worked for a local high school in Alto Pass, IL near the Trail of Tears State
Forest, as a certified librarian while Ted
wheeled and dealed lumber contracts and futures and got sicker and sicker of
business and suits and butt-licking and quotas and sales and forest inventory
and the status quo until he came home one night and told her he was quitting
and was going to become a Boy Scout.
“Aren’t you too old?” she asked.
But Ted meant he wanted to become a professional
administrator for the Boy Scouts of America.
Planning, organizing and executing were his métier, he believed, and he
would feel better about himself if he could use those talents for a worthwhile
cause, in this case the instilling of basic values in youths, which he knew to
be more than just showing kids how to start a fire with two sticks. “Where are the Boy Scout headquarters?” Virginia asked. “Well,” said Ted, “I would have to begin in a
field office and there is an opening in Utica, NY. It’s a medium size city in the Mohawk Valley in upstate New York.”
“How much would you earn?” she asked.
“It’s a very scenic valley,” said Ted.
Virginia told me when she went
to bed on the night of Ted’s announcement, she couldn’t make up her mind if she
was thrilled or terrified. She may have
been brought up in luxury, she hinted, but her math skills were good enough to reckon
they would not have anything like the
same life style to which they were accustomed.
She knew Ted would cope, if only
by dint of his steel clad will power. She frankly had never cared much for the cars
and toys and club memberships they had only mildly enjoyed. Still awake at 2 a.m., she decided these
amenities had really been burdens. By 4 a.m., she was rehearsing
life with a meager income and by 6 a.m. she had begun to have
thoughts about people in poverty and in trouble and how she might be of service
to them in some small way while Ted worked with his Scouts. By breakfast, she had decided to become a sort
of Mother Theresa, except no one knew of Mother Theresa back then, but you know
what I mean.
Virginia and Ted, leaving behind a very disappointed father-father-in-law,
arrived in Utica during the week before Christmas of 1961 and rented a flat in a two-family house on Utica’s rapidly
deteriorating Near West Side, down the street from the Tub of Suds bar everyone
mistook for a Laundromat. It was quite
common to see a man or woman enter the Tub carrying a basket of dirty clothes,
look around and then leave. Ted began
work at the BSA Field Office on the day after Santa Claus somehow brought a new
couch down the chimney from Illinois. For the time being, it was their only furniture,
other than the bed and the kitchen table and chairs. Ted wore his Boy Scout Uniform to work each
day and to any official BSA business in the community. Long pants in the winter, short pants in the
summer, it included a larger version of
the official shirt, a bright yellow neckerchief and the Scout “overseas” cap he seldom wore, topped by a tan
raincoat with a zip-in liner for those frigid Mohawk Valley winters.
Almost immediately, Virginia began to invite the
neighbors in for spaghetti dinners and ice cream evenings. Drunks, bums and heroin addicts mixed it
up with welfare mothers and “uncles” while Dvorak and Mahler pounded out a beat on
the record player. After a plate of
spaghetti or a Fudgesicle, many would head out to find their dealers, pimps or children.
At the library, Virginia took on the role of an
aunt I might have preferred over those given to me in the natural course of events. Very, very gently she began to offer
suggestions to me regarding my clothing, figures of speech and other mannerisms. These were niceties I thought were silly, but had little understanding of their
importance. I still don’t. But who could refuse the counsel of a real woman
with such great posture?
One afternoon as Virginia and I enjoyed a nice
change of scene standing guard at the checkout desk, a young woman with flaming red hair and a mischievous
twinkle in her eye approached with a book and asked if it had been me she’d
seen playing in a band at a local beer joint the previous Friday night. “What was the song you were singing?” she asked. A bit tongue tied and embarrassed, I replied,
“It’s called ’I Need Your Body’….but the song wasn’t my idea.” Red Hair seemed disappointed I was wimping on
the issue and left with her stamped book, but
not before I noticed, among other things, she was wearing a skirt. Virginia moved over to me and
said, “What a nice girl, do you know
her?”
“No,” I said, “and she’s not my type.”
Which could
have been true, but Virginia didn’t think so and Red
Hair and I have now been married for over 45 years and she still gets a twinkle
in her eye. I’ve come to know it means she wants to go
shopping.
Virginia’s solo Mother Theresa
Act came to a close just before I graduated the following year. Not surprisingly, too many folks took advantage of her and in a
couple of instances the circumstances got
downright dangerous. I say “not
surprisingly” from my perspective of approaching old age, but I should remember
we all felt the need to minister at one time or another in our lives. Some of us still do, but we are a bit smarter
about it now.
To her credit, Virginia was not in the least
regretful about her Near West Side experience.
Nor did she feel awkward about her and Ted buying a modest home in New
Hartford, a suburb south of Utica.. She
continued to work with the less fortunate, but within the more organized framework
of a Not-For-Profit agency.
I have no idea if
Virginia and Ted continue to live in Utica …. I doubt it …. but I
can say each was a thread in the fabric that held together those in the community
who cared. They weren’t interested only in
what they could buy or sell. They wanted
to know where they could help. And even
today, there are a good number of people like Virginia who contribute where
they are able without fanfare, though they’re seldom seen in the news media or
discussed in the public sphere. They
live in many different neighborhoods and either work for a living or are
retired. No doubt some are at the
library.
You never know. Look for a woman with absolutely great
posture and a few strands of hair out of place.
David Griffin,
copyright by, 2007
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet,
South Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
