My First Girlfriend

by Vance Meyer

Knowing that mom had supper on the table was the only good thing about leaving Shirley’s house one humid summer afternoon in 1975.  The two of us had just blown another entire day doing pretty much nothing except swinging too high on the bulky porch swing her dad had built by hand in the back yard.

Heading down the long Highland Avenue hill, I was listening to a transistor radio that was Velcroed to the handlebars of my red Schwinn Stingray, while popping wheelies on the uneven cracks in the sidewalk.  Two years later, that same radio would inform me of the death of Elvis Presley.  But today, it was Frankie Valli singing his new hit, “My eyes adored you,” through the low-quality speaker.  I listened to Frankie carry on in song about a girl he knew in the sixth grade and wondered if I might still feel the same way about Shirley when I grew up.

Shirley Montgomery was a year behind me at our Marion, Indiana elementary school (She was fifth grade, I was sixth...)  She had long, thick, shiny brown hair, which her mom could curl up beautifully for special occasions, and deep dimples that I worked hard to keep on her face with my goofy humor.

The two of us had some things in common.  For example, our houses both backed up to the same alley between Highland Avenue and Stephenson Street, we both had dads and big brothers who worked at the Foster Forbes glass factory a few blocks away, and we both knew just enough sign language to communicate with the deaf lunch lady at our school.  (I can still finger-spell mac and cheese like nobody’s business.)

But the main thing we had in common was enough mutual admiration to stay “boyfriend and girlfriend” for a good piece of our elementary school years.  Yes, there were a handful of breakups along the way, but they typically ended if there was something more fun to do than argue.

In addition to being crazy about Shirley, I loved her mom, Betty, who allowed me to just assume that I was welcome at their house every day without asking.

One day Shirley and I were playing a game in the living room, when out of nowhere I threw up all over the floor.  Shirley screamed for her mom before even I knew what had happened.  Betty entered the room from the kitchen, just in time to lay eyes on my vomit containing somewhere between a dozen to 15 pieces of chewed gum.  I could not believe that she was actually smiling as she picked the pieces out of the carpet with just a paper towel.

A week or two later my Sunday school teacher, Mamie Hobbs, read us the story about a lady named Mary who had washed Jesus’ feet with her hair.  She asked for a show of hands from anyone who could talk of a time when they or others had made a beautiful sacrifice for another person.  Not wanting to share my gum-laden puke fiasco with a basement full of Methodists my age, I kept my mouth shut but knew in my heart that Mary had nothing on Betty Montgomery.

It was a different time of year – with snow and slush on the roads – when Betty and Shirley's pretty teenage sister, Suzy, were riding in the front bench seat of the family’s Chevy Impala, with Shirley and me sitting close to each other in the back.  Shirley announced out loud that if I would scratch an itch on her shoulder, she would blow in my ear.

Suzy began laughing hysterically and said, “Oh my God, that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”  In the rear-view mirror I could see that Betty had her hand on her mouth, trying not to crack up herself.

Shirley was a very self-assured girl, and the reaction from the front seat didn’t phase her in the slightest.  I, on the other hand, felt a deep sense of shame and wondered if Suzy and Betty might  somehow have been aware of the indescribably marvelous feeling that ear-blowing had produced in me when Shirley and I had made similar trades in the past.   

It’s my hunch that the incident would have drawn a different response if Shirley’s dad, Bill, had been at the wheel.  Bill was the big, quiet type.  During the week he was a skilled craftsman in the mold shop at Foster-Forbes, a revered job in our neighborhood, while serving as a part-time minister in a country church on Sundays.  He always wore suspenders with his work pants and kept a heavily notated Bible next to his recliner in a room just off the kitchen.

Bill would often take Shirley and me along when he went fishing, which he loved to do.  One Saturday he took us to the Salamonie River State Forest in nearby Lagro.  I was excited to try out the new Zebco 202 rod and reel combo I had purchased from a nearby bait store using the proceeds from pop bottle returns.  (In Indiana, pop means soda.)  In addition to the rod and reel, I brought a loaf of Roman Meal bread and a bottle of vanilla extract.  My buddy, Dana Millen, and I had learned that you could catch carp on stinky dough balls made from the bread and dipped in the extract.  You wouldn’t eat the carp, of course, but we didn’t care. 

Anyhow, at Lagro, I wound up putting smaller-than-normal dough balls on Shirley’s and my tiny hooks, and we fished just inches from the shore with bobbers.  By the end of the morning, the two of us had caught maybe 20 small bluegill and put them on a stringer which I checked on frequently.  Bill caught nothing that day, but made a big deal about my secret-formula bait in front of Shirley, which fed my ego for a week.  He also artfully convinced me that it would not be good for the ecology of the lake if we took that big a haul with us, so Shirley held the stringer while I let the fish swim away one by one.

Bill and Betty also occasionally took me camping with the family at nearby campgrounds, including Mar-Brook out on I-69, and another one near Wabash on State Road 15.  Bill and Betty liked to play music around the fire outside of their small pull-behind camper, and on one occasion let me bring along my snare drum and a cowbell to accompany the guitar.  Bill actually taped the session and played it for my brother in the mold shop.

While I didn’t own a camper, Shirley’s mom and mine did jointly approve an overnight sleep-over in my back yard one summer evening.  Shirley brought a sleeping bag and stretched it out on the lawn next to mine.  Rodney, Penny and Valerie Carter, my cousins who lived next door, had made their beds on a thick piece of foam just on the other side of the chain-link fence between their yard and mine.  They considered Shirley’s presence at our somewhat regular summer camp-outs to be a significant development in my relationship with her, as did I.

The only thing missing from such a lovely evening was a campfire, so I went into the garage and poured some lawnmower gas into an old Ball Mason jar and lit it up outside with a match.  The flame was captivating for a short period until the jar cracked and I had to perform remediation on the lawn with dad’s garden hose.

In 2010, I was greeting a long line of visitors at my mother’s wake in at the Needham Storey Wampner funeral home in Marion, with my sister, Carol, standing beside me.  It had been a long trip from Florida and I was exhausted, when I looked at the end of the line and spotted Betty Montgomery looking exactly the same as she had 35 years ago.  Standing next to her was – son of a gun – Shirley.  Without asking if she minded, I left Carol’s side and moved quickly in their direction. 

Looking back, it is the only good thing I can remember about the funeral, and for a moment – while exchanging pleasantries -- I actually entertained the notion of asking Shirley and Betty if they wanted to go have a Coke to laugh about old times and exchange information about Shirley’s family and mine.  Instead, we maintained the decorum of the funeral home and kept the encounter short, which may have been just fine as far as she was concerned, I realized.

Aside from her now short hair, Shirley looked a lot more like she did when we were kids than I did, a harsh reality I hoped she didn’t notice.  For a strange second or two, I could not figure out why it was only now dawning on me in my late forties that people with dimples keep them their whole lives.

After Shirley and Betty left the building, I realized that the encounter I had certainly not expected that evening might have the added significance of being the last time I would ever see my dear friend – a reality that seemed particularly sad on the occasion of my mother’s funeral.

Two days ago, while in South Carolina to pick up our oldest son from college, my wife, Teresa, turned “Seventies on Seven” on our car radio and “My Eyes Adored You” was playing.  She asked if I liked Frankie Valli, and that song in particular, back in the day.  I told her the story about the bike and the transistor radio and decided it would be fun to jot down some memories when I got home, as I frequently do.

To ready myself for the task, on the long interstate drive back to Florida, I began flipping through old mental snapshots of Shirley:  Riding on the back of my mini-bike with her arms wrapped tightly around my waist and dragging her sneakers in the gravel alley...  Appearing genuinely, or at least politely, interested as I demonstrated how to catch a frog by wrapping an orange price tag around a fish hook and dangling it in front of his eyes...  Pretending, like me, to be an old pro on our first kiss behind the Highland Avenue school, as Dana stood watch for anyone who might be coming through the area.

For the past 42 years or so, Shirley’s older brother, Dave, has been married to my cousin, Dixie, who grew up in a small Highland Avenue house between Shirley’s and mine.  I see Dave very infrequently.  But, when I do, will make a nonchalant inquiry to see how Shirley, a nurse, and her husband, a doctor, are faring.  The reports are always positive, which makes me happy.

Over the past several years I have watched my own boys grow up in a social structure which seems to favor group activities over one-on-one relationships like Shirley's and mine.  I like the new way, but have to admit that it also seems “so close and yet so far” from the experiences I shared with that little girl and her family on Highland Avenue.  

Vance Meyer is a former corporate communication and marketing professional whose blog, myTMI, contains short stories about his life which he hopes that his boys, Samuel and Noah, will enjoy in their later years.