Sunday, June 27, 2010

1965 Love Story

I walked down an old street the other day right by the house where I lived in 1965. I loved that house. I loved the boy next door. We built that house new after my father died. We chose it from a model home display - the first one I had ever seen. It cost $16,000 to build back then.

The house was red brick with double white doors. Everything in it was brand new since there was nothing from our previous life that we wanted to save. There was a curved brick wall and a little fountain at the entrance. There was an upstairs room with big windows, a peaked ceiling and a parquet floor. At 17 I did most of the decorating. We had sleek, dark Danish modern furniture, beige carpet and a muted color scheme downstairs. Upstairs was a modern sofa with a kind of orange burlap upholstery and a futuristic beige leather rocker and ottoman. The man from Sears came and took measurements for drapery. I showed up and managed to object to some detail from every room. My mother gently but firmly stepped in and the drapes were made to her specifications. They were beautiful. For my room I chose a dark Danish modern bedroom set and dramatic seagreen drapes and bedspread. I used a dark coffee table as a bench in front of a long window. I had a seat cushion on it and a little aqua princess phone that lit up at night. The room smelled like "Wind Song" my favorite perfume. It was a great room!

I was engaged at the time to my first boyfriend who was serving in Vietnam. Someone built a house next to ours with one empty lot in between. My mother became friends with the owner who was a pretty divorced women. Amazingly she was a medical record librarian like my own mother. My mom kept coming home and telling me about the cute guy next door. I would peek out the window and see a tall boy with glasses. I wasn't impressed. One day I answered a knock at the door with a towel on my wet hair and there stood a very cute guy with short dark hair and crinkley gray/blue eyes. I literally lost my breath. He was returning some lawn chairs that had blown out of our yard. It turned out he was staying with his mom on break from going to Oklahoma University. The boy I kept seeing was his brother who became friends with my brother.

Anyway, long story short. I fell in love with the guy next door but I kept wearing my engagement ring and writing to the guy in the army. The day came to pick him up at the airport. I was all emotional and dramatic but determined to marry my fiance. My friend Sheila went with me and took pictures of us embracing. But I tell you as soon as I saw him I realized I loved the other one. What to do??? I went with him to get a car that he had been saving for. He picked a new burgundy 1965 Mustang.

Inevitably we had a dramatic scene with me and my neighbor running to meet each other in the middle of the vacant lot next door. My army boyfriend was very upset but he met up with my friend, Sheila. They eventually ended up getting married. Unfortunately the neighbor went back to school a few months later and I ended up alone. I went heartbroken with my mom and brother to our new home in Florida near my aunt Nellie. That was 45 years ago!

So, the other day I typed what I thought was the old address into Googlemap. I turned on Street View and there it was. The big windows upstairs, the double white doors, my bedroom window in the front. And there was the vacant lot still vacant and my boyfriend's house next door with the windows covered over with boards. From the satelite map I could zoom into the back yard and pick out the octagon shaped patio we put under some trees to hold a covered swing. So I knew it was the right place. I don't have many pictures of that time. Army boyfriend burned the ones I sent him and I didn't have any copies.

Imagine this post with Sonny and Cher singing "I Got You, Babe". I was into the popular songs of the 60's along with folk music and Bob Dylan. That is my memory trip back to 1965.