Well, Ruth is gone for the next two years. You are right,, in the days of surface mail things got dragged out and the occasional phone call only helped a little. Read on, I’m posting the next chapter later today.
Novel Treatments / Chapter 14 Summer starts and hits a bump. (Analysis)
I’m not sure how I’ll handle the summers. We were apart and wrote a lot of letters. I have some very distinct memories of some things mentioned in our letters, while other events I can’t recall at all. In talking with Donna I find she has the same problem. Sometimes we can help the other remember, but sometimes it’s a blank to both of us.
That said, I will experiment with formats. I don’t think I’ll print most of the letters, but I will quote from them, and on occasion may quote most or all of one. We’ll see what happens.
Anyhow, school ended June 2nd and we each left for our own homes, I to Ohio, and she to Oklahoma. By the 3rd we were 1000 miles apart. I had no particular plans for the summer. I intended to get a job and earn enough to fly to Oklahoma to see Donna. I also intended not to see Ruth, or date anyone else. In fact I had no desire to date anyone else. There was no “anyone else.” There was only Donna.
On the 4th I did attend Ruth’s Baccalaureate, and gave her back her ring. I called her on the 6th and we talked about five minutes. As I hung up after saying goodbye, I knew I wouldn’t call again. The next time I saw or talked to Ruth was over two years later.
I also got a job. The summer before I'd worked as a roofer, doing industrial roofing. It paid very well, but I hated the work. It was hot and at times quite dangerous. Still, since my father ran the roofing company, he wanted me to work for him. Not every day, but as often as he could use me, since I worked cheaper than a union roofer. Since this would earn me more than any job I was likely to find for the summer, I agreed to do it. I found that I hated it as much as ever, but the pay was about $4.00 an hour, which in 1961 was a good wage for a one worker family, let alone for a single college kid. It also made it likely that I’d be able to fly to Oklahoma and see Donna.
Days I didn’t work I usually played golf with a few of my friends. Occasionally I went out on a weekend night with the guys. We’d go to a college age bar and dancehall called Lincoln Park. I saw a lot of my high school friends there, but somehow, either they had changed, or I had. It usually wasn’t much fun.
After news of the breakup between Ruth and me got around, which took maybe 24 hours, I got asked to several parties by girls I’d known. I always said no, though I admit that when Eva asked me to come to her graduation party (and after-party for just a few close friends); I was temped, since I’d lusted after her for two years in high school. (Likely not to anyone’s surprise, Eva was a redhead.) Still, I said no. I also refused a couple blind dates, when friends wanted me to go out with a friend of their girlfriend’s.
One of my friends, Bob, asked Ruth out as soon as he found out we were no longer going together. They dated for about three weeks before she broke it off. As the summer went on I found it easier to just not go out in the evenings, and I read a lot. I also wrote a lot to Donna.
During the summer of 1961 Donna and I wrote a total of 94 letters. She wrote 52 and I wrote 42. As a point of reference the summer break was 98 days long. In June she wrote 15 letters and I wrote 9.
In the last letter I wrote to Donna during the summer I wrote “I’ll miss writing to you every night because I have learned to know you so much better than I did while we were at school. What I mean is I have learned more about you than I knew before.” That was true, and some of the lessons were hard. However I hadn’t learned nearly all she had to teach, and the hardest lessons still lay ahead.
Let’s take it from the beginning of the summer. Donna wrote one letter during her two day ride home. Her second letter written from Tulsa Oklahoma June 4th started, “We finally made it. I guess I just sort of woke up too and I know you aren’t here with me and I miss you terribly. I’m being real good. I’ve been home for almost 30 minutes and haven’t had a date yet! (And I won’t either).”
She started summer school the very next week. Her third letter written June 6th contained the following “By the way, just to make you jealous, a guy I used to date brought me home today. (It was NOT a date!)”
Her sixth letter, written June 11th, reads in part, “I went to a picnic with Lee mainly because I wanted to see all the old gang. I’m not going to explain why any more than that because you always tell me I make things worse by trying to explain.---I know I’ve gone back on a promise and it hurts to have to tell you but it’s a promise that, in fairness to you, I never should have made—although at the time I really thought I could keep it.”
Ado Annie all the way. (Oh, for those of you who don’t know who Ado Annie is, she’s a character in the musical OKLAHOMA. She is in love with someone but—well, her main song in the show is “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No”.) She’d gone from school and me to a picnic with Lee in a week.
I remember that the letter felt like a slap in the face. I was jealous in a second, angry in half a minute, and furious in a minute. My fury was not directed at Donna, or even at Lee, but at the fact that I couldn’t get to Oklahoma. I needed to talk to her. I went back over her other letters. I saw that she had gone to a senior Walther League party and said all her old friends were there, I’d missed the implication of “all my old friends.” What to do? I decided to sleep on it, then I wrote back. Here, In part, is my reply.
Oh, I should mention that she said she was very disappointed at the behavior of her friends at the picnic. She said they hadn’t grown up, they drank, and she left and got home early.
OK, now here is part of what I wrote. “Darling, I love you. You know this and don’t ever think that ANYTHING will ever change that. So you went out with Lee. I love you as much as I ever have, even more, since you didn’t have to tell me. and you did.---I found the same thing about most of my friends. They are mostly interested in drinking and having a good time, but their idea of a good time is drinking and more drinking.---I think you will find out that most people have decisions to make about this time in their life.---What each person decides is his/or her own decision. You made me no promises which I think you can’t keep. I did notice in your letter that you didn’t say that would be the last date. (An oversight?)”
This is getting too long, I’ll pick up here next time.
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Ado Annie? Well, I suppose it looks that way. Maybe it was. It was just too easy to fall back into the pattern of life in Tulsa. I knew my friends, and we had always done a lot of things together. Together, but usually as couples. I had accepted the date with Lee as something perfectly normal. It really wasn’t until we were at the picnic and someone asked me what happened between Jack and me that it hit me what I was doing. I wrote to Joey about it the next day.
Lee was also taking classes at summer school and it just seemed natural to ride with him. Moving from that to going out with him was a very little step. In fact it was during one of those rides home that he asked me to go to the picnic with him. Somehow I didn’t see it as conflicting in any way with my love for Joe. It was in another compartment of my mind. At the tine I’m sure I didn’t even think about it as a problem. Now here I’m guessing since I don’t remember. for sure, but I probably just thought of it as getting together with my friends. And the way we did that was by going as couples. It was just the way things were supposed to be done.
Once I did realize what I had done I knew I had to tell Joe and I did write to him the next day. I didn’t know how he would take it, but I did know I had to tell him. I remember being surprised at how well Joe took it when I told him. Surprised, but at the same time Joey’s reply was not really unexpected. I knew Joe loved me and I kind of thought he would understand. .
I remember sitting and talking with Lee in the car after we left the picnic. We talked for almost an hour. We talked about school, and about Jack, and a lot about Joe. That was when Lee told me how mad he had been when I hadn’t let him visit me at school. I tried to explain why, but I don’t think he understood. When he took me home we did kiss goodnight.
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ajodom reviewed Version 1 -
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This is really good. The writing is sound, and I don’t think I saw a grammatical error in the writing. You’re style is also very good. Telling the story from both of their point of views is a idea for this particular novel.
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FrakKevin reviewed Version 1 -
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Ruth just never vanishes away huh? I like this chapter because it really shows the test of love between today and the past. Now you can text, myspace, or tweeter your long distant love in seconds. In this past it required a lot of patients and loyally to stick together. You captured that in this.
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