The Beginning

Wendell answered the door. Still in uniform.

He was Sharon’s father and my boss at Baskin – Robbins.

Scooping ice cream was my first job, after four years of paper-routing.

Wendell took scooping very seriously.

New dippers trained for four days to perfect the technique that would craft the perfect 3 oz spherical portion.

Not only that. We shoveled from large tubs of ice cream and the circular surface had to be evenly lowered.

56 years later I’m an unofficial scooper inspector whenever I walk into an ice cream palace.

I see a moon surface tub and I’m outta there.

My scooping skills satisfied so Wendell hired me in the summer of 65.

On my first day behind the counter, hat and apron in place, Wendell peered at me with his head tilted upward and an impossible-to-read smile and said:

Paul, no matter where you are in the store, I can see you.

An Interlude

Wendell invited me in.

It’s the fall of 1966 and he hasn’t fired me so I’ve passed muster on the ice cream front.

But a date with his daughter? No four day training period for that.

I now see his smile as shy and not enigmatic.

The house was spit-level, popular in America in the 1950s & 60s. I stood in a little entryway, with stairs in front of me ascending to the living room, bedrooms, and kitchen. And stairs to the right descending to a TV room with a door to the garage.

In that TV room, on a couch, the following summer, 1967, a million years from this moment, Sharon and I would be safe from Wendell’s gaze.

And Beverly’s.

Beverly was Sharon’s mom who thought Sharon could do better.

I’d learn that, too, the following summer.

Pretty Sharon followed Beverly down the stairs. It looked to me like they had come from a bathroom, just off the kitchen. They came from on high. That’s what I felt.

Sharon was wearing a green dress with a fishnet pattern on top.

That’s where I was supposed to put the corsage. Somewhere on that mesh.

Without pricking…

Somehow I got it attached.

Phew.

The Middle

“Have fun” said Beverly as Sharon and I slipped into my parent’s car.

Like the out-of-sight TV room and couch, the car’s front bench seats without a center console would be a gift that kept giving, to Sharon and me the following summer. On that night, the gap between us was the size of the Grant Canyon.

On the way to my high school’s homecoming dance, I decided to take side street that paralleled Locust, a busy street.

Thank goodness.

I had just turned left off Jersey Ridge Road onto a quiet residential street and heard a pop followed by a bump-bump from the back right end of the car.

I eased the car to the side of the street, in front of another split-level.

The tire was flat. One month into my Driver’s Permit, I had never opened the trunk let alone fixed a flat.

Thankfully, I think now, no cell phone to call my dad.

I walked up to the split-level, knocked on another door, and asked the guy who answered the door for help. I didn’t know him but four years later he would hire me to work on his yard-work crew.

15 minutes later we were on our way.

The End

Honestly, and I’ve tried, I have no memory of the dance.

Did we dance? A slow dance? Surely not.

But a clue to my teenage psyche that evening lingers.

On the way back to Sharon’s house, the gap between us on that front seat had narrowed not a whit.

I took busy Locust Street as I had just learned in Geometry the shortest distance between two points was a straight line.

Damn. I was on a roll, with green lights at all intersections until we got to Locust & Brady. One of busiest intersections in Iowa, in 1966.

It is that moment I recall as if it IS this moment.

Tom Jones’ Green Green Grass was playing.

I looked over at Sharon, at the alluring fishnet, with the corsage still hanging-in & on, and thought

I have no idea what I’m doing.