Traditions and Summer's End

Near the end of the school year in 1954, one of the highlights was the Junior/Senior banquet. As juniors we traditionally honored the seniors with a formal meal. While other schools had proms, Newton was primarily a Baptist town. Southern Baptist didn’t dance so instead of proms, we had a banquet. There was only one restaurant in town with a private room large enough to accommodate such an event. We had bake sales and car washes to help raise money to rent the room for the evening.

The senior class was much larger than our class, and students could bring dates. This meant many students would likely attend. Only two or three couples in our class were dating, but many of the seniors were. We sold tickets at ten dollars each. Since it was a formal occasion, the girls wore evening gowns, and the guys wore suits and ties. Some of the ‘red neck’ country boys were likely wearing their very first tie. After the guest speaker almost put us to sleep, we had a volunteer band for entertainment. Our choice of music was mostly pop. A lot of kids had learned to dance watching Lawrence Welk or other shows on TV, so some of the couples decided the Baptist rules didn’t apply to them, and they danced anyway.

Another tradition at our school was the rose chain. The junior class always made a long chain of ivy and roses to lay at the foot of the graduates. I don’t know when the tradition began, but it was a part of all the graduations in Newton High during the 12 years I was in school. I think the roses were usually artificial.

I remember an incident from when I was very young, which caused me a bit of grief and my aunt and grandmother as well. Their house was old, unpainted and weathered. But Aunt Eva and grandmother had trained climbing rose vines to grow all over one side of the house. Each year the roses made the old house look beautiful, and their scent was amazing. Grandma was so proud that the entire side was a mass of color and fragrance.

Then one year, our neighbor’s grown daughter arrived with a group of kids from that year’s senior class. She said to my grandmother, “I’m sponsoring the senior class this year, and we’re here to rob you of your roses. I told them at school, you would be more than happy to let us have them, I thought it would be especially nice to use real roses this year.”

Even at seven, I had been horrified that a pushy neighbor had the audacity to feel entitled to anything she happened to want. True to southern tradition, my grandmother didn’t think of turning down a neighbor. There wasn’t a rose left. Even the vines were stripped away, leaving the house bare and ugly. I saw tears roll down grandma’s cheeks, but all she said was, “Those roses have a lot of bees in them. It’s for the best. Beth might have gotten stung.”

For those who have read the other stories in this series, the rose bush destroyer was none other than the older sister of the guy I’d had to fight to escape from on my way back from the chinkapin tree. She was also the one who sold Mom her outdated clothes for my sophomore wardrove. Let’s just say those neighbors weren’t high on my list of ‘love thy neighbor.”

Back to the rose chain, our class wasn’t about to rob a real rose garden. We made roses from pink Kleenex tissue. We worked days to makes hundreds of them. They were lovely and although they didn’t perfume the air, they also didn’t shed petals or make old ladies cry. My junior year had been a busy one. I had worked hard, made the honor roll and was ready to coast my senior year. When the last of the graduates said goodbye, our class celebrated the fact when school started again after summer break, we would be the ones at the top.

Our Texas relatives visited again. This time Dave spent a lot of his time on the farm helping Uncle Harry. Neither of us mentioned the summer before. There was a girl who lived in the tenant house on Uncle Harry’s place who claimed Dave’s attention for the summer. Her older brother had a crush on me. Victor was cute, but Dave and I both knew these summer crushes were temporary and neither of us encouraged them.

My best friend and cousin Joy, and I spent a lot of time at each other’s houses. I introduced her to Dave, and the three of us lay on a quilt in the sunshine and played cards while working on a tan. It was the first time my fair tender skin had ever gotten burned to the point of pain. My folks had always discouraged me from exposing my skin to the sun. I’m glad they’d insisted I wear hats, because, to this day, I’ve never had a skin cancer which is so common among fair skinned people.

In early August just before the beginning of my senior year. Joy’s family left on a family vacation and Dave went back to Texas. With very little of summer left, I decided to go back to town with Dad at noon to make a library run. Dave’s sister, Jeanine, was still around and she had just told me I was old enough to start dating. She claimed I wasn’t putting out the right vibes to attract guys.

It was almost like a challenge. I knew she was right that I should stop waiting on some guy to sweep me off my feet. I was pretty sure I could master the art of flirting if I worked at it. I left home wearing a cute outfit and decided I would prove I didn’t need her advice. I thought I should be able to attract guys as good as the next girl. When Dad handed me a quarter and said, “Why don’t you go see a movie.” I knew he just wanted me off the street, but I needed some inspiration and decided the sexy movie which was playing couldn't hurt.  

I’ve written this story before of how I walked out of that movie convinced I was every bit as beautiful as the star I had just watched. Of course, I was lying to myself, but I proved the way you see yourself is often the cue others need to make up their mind about you. I realized I was turning a few heads. I got some wolf whistles along my way, but I failed to notice the young man who followed me to my uncle’s café. I had no idea I was the reason he walked in shortly after I got there.

I heard no bells tinkling to alert me that my life was about to collide with the person who would make all the difference in my journey. I wasn’t impressed, but the way he was looking at me made me think I might have met him somewhere before. I smiled and asked what he would like. He ordered coffee and asked if I went to the local high school. Neither of us were outgoing enough to keep a conversation going for long. When we ran out of things to talk about, he left. Later he would get up the nerve to return, only to find me gone.

He was from another county and obviously older. I assumed I would never see him again so I didn’t give him a second thought. It might have ended there, but It didn’t. I went home thinking my mission for the day had failed, but it hadn’t. When something is meant to be, that mysterious force some refer to as fate has to work a little harder to make it happen.

More of this story will come to light in the next post.