A Front Porch Visit

Tonight, Better Half took some dinner up to our neighbor/friend/third dad, Frank.  He lives up the hill from us. We've known him for 27 years, since we first moved to the North Forty.  He's watched us grow up.  He is a widower.  His wife, Connie, died a couple of years ago after prolonged illness. 

I saw Better Half take a seat and then Frank take a seat on the other side of the front porch.  Not wanting to miss a a good Sunday evening visit, I bounded up the hill and had a seat, as well 

Well, we watched the cars drive up and down the street.  Mama amused us with her antics.  She rolled around on the cool concrete of the porch for a while, then burst out into the yard to perform her theatrics.  Frank kept a watchful eye on her for us.

After some minutes of catching up, Frank asked us if we were too young to remember the pool.  Anyone from this small town over the age of 25 knows "the pool".  For decades, and for generations of young people,  it was the place to be in the summer.  I knew it as the Terrace Club, and later as Dreamland. 

It was a huge pool with sidewalks all around and a veranda above it on the east side.  The pool sported two piers, one in the shallow end and one in the deep end. I remember skinned red knees as a child from jumping from the pier and hitting the rough concrete bottom.   Five diving boards ringed the south end of the pool.  On the west side of the pool rising high above the poool, were three grass terraces.  Apparently, some fairly interesting adolescent kinds of things took place on those terraces, though I can't say that I know that first hand.

There was a swim team.  There was synchronized swimming.  There was a water show every summer. And, there were regular swim dances on the veranda.  I think a lot more dancing took place than swimming.

The Terrace Club served the best french fries ever. You padded through the screen door, hungry and wet, into the snack bar, which smelled of chlorine, stale wet bathing suits, grease and cheeseburgers, to order your food.  You then ate your fries at the blue metal tables and benches on the veranda that overlooked the pool, in the shade of a bluish green corrugated roof. 

I spent hours and hours at "the pool", strategically lounging on my towel, hoping, ardently, to be noticed by my crush of the week.  I learned to dive off the meter board at The Terrace Club, though I never screwed up the courage to dive from the high dive board.  I even took Ivey and Orion there as babies, just before the pool closed for good.  They liked the french fries, too. 

But, I digress.

Frank met his wife, Connie, at the Terrace Club when they were sophomores in high school.  He had gone with a friend who was going to meet up with his girlfriend.  By the end of the afternoon, Frank asked Connie if he could walk her home.  She lived on 5th Street.  He lived on 8th Street.  She said yes, and so it began.

Frank became a front porch regular at her house.  Soon he was asked to dinner.

World War II interrupted the courtship.  At the age of 17, Frank enlisted in the Navy and said his good-byes to Connie. They continued their relationship by letter.  He traveled completely around the world.  It's almost impossible for me to imagine 17 year olds sailing around the world on a ship in combat.  Once back in the country, and on his way to being released at the Great Lake Naval Training Center, he learned his train would stop in Portsmouth on its way to Great Lakes. He sent a telegram to Connie.

There she was, at the station, with her parents, where they spent a few lovely moments together. 

Frank returned to this little town after being released from the Navy.  Three days after stepping off the train, he and his friend headed to a jewelry store, where he bought Connie an engagement ring with his discharge money.

They were married at the age of 20.  They spent many happy decades together.  There was great love and affection in his voice as he talked of the love of his life.  He, no doubt, misses her greatly. 

Then, quitely simply, he told us it was her birthday.  Today she would have been 85. 

Happy Birthday, Connie.