Page 77 - People & Places In Time

and we’re walking through the doors at Wilson Junior High School clear across town and into the seventh grade. So, what happened? This was not of our own efforts and yet, there’s a different feel to our existence. Some of us do grow up quicker and adapt sooner, oth- ers not so quickly. I for one, found myself with a new perspective. All of a sudden, it will take a little more time in the morning to comb my hair and yes, the clothes I ware do matter; but there is something more. Friends that I’ve sat beside in a school room since kindergarten have changed. My view toward the girls in my life was changing, there’s an attraction I’ve not been aware until now.
My teacher entering the seventh grade was Dorothy May Nickle, and I was quickly reminded, that I “was to use Mrs. Nickle and not Dorothy May”. With all that out of the way, I could not have been more in luck. Mrs. Nickle was just the sort of teacher that you remember fondly for a life time. A beautiful woman who stood out by how she dressed, so very differently from other teachers; she dressed in the finest clothes that one couldn’t help noticing. It’s possible she didn’t need to work, as she and her husband owned several grocery stores. I believe she simply enjoyed doing something she was good at, and this was teaching. What did make her special was the sensi- tivity she offered to young boys and girls coping with their new emotions.
As the school year pressed on to-
ward spring, we would be going to our first
dance. A new experience we approached with cautious anticipation, compounded by fear of the unknown. But first things first, we needed dance lessons taught by Mrs. Nickle, in the gym. This would prove awkward. How to ask a girl to dance and I suppose how to accept, where to place your hands, how to move your feet. Gestures, that in just a few more years will seem superfluous. Girls had become an attraction, but for now this new social experiment would prove to be a significant hurdle. With my first dance behind me the consternation didn’t last
long, as the next hurdle was waiting just around the corner. My first kiss and by that, I mean with a girl, not
from my mother or grandmother . . . if not a romantic kiss, then a least one conveying the excitement for new possibil- ities beyond the life I had known up to then. On this occa- sion it’s spring time, we are in the seventh grade at Wilson School. We’re in junior high with a new outlook on life. The time and place is a warm Saturday evening in 1958, I would think during May sometime, out on Bud and Cookie Rich’s farm southwest of town. Nickie Rich has planned a party for our “newly teenagers” group of friends that have grown up together through grammar school, at birthday parties,
knowledge in subsequent years of where Nicki was, or how she was doing. Now Nickie is suffering with M.S. and has been for some time. Never the less we were able to dance together at a reunion several years back. During our dance I asked if I might kiss her and she said yes. Now with fifty years in between, I have the memo- ry of two kisses. I cherish these moments with a special friend for whom I have a special fondness, that I now carry in my heart through my remaining years.
My First Girlfriend
A couple of years ago I was getting my monthly massage in downtown Exeter from Terry Molina. Her shop faces Main Street, across the alley from The Exeter Mercantile
This is the block long emporium of farm tractors and ag equipment, garden sup- plies and hardware, with sporting goods displayed alongside fine silver, china and tablecloths. The business is owned by the Schelling family and was begun by Sid Schelling, who was married to Ruth. They are parents to sons, Sid junior, and Robert who have been running the business for the last forty years, along with their sister Elizabeth Schelling, living now in Sausalito. For the most part I’ve known her as Betty but more recently she prefers Liz.
As my massage continues, I find that I’m tired and drowse as my thoughts begin drifting to fifty years past. Not so unusual, but on this occasion for whatever reason
I feel detached, more so than simply a
daydream . . . It’s springtime and I’m walking home after school from Wilson Junior High, passing on the sidewalk in front of the shop I’m lying in today. I can’t remember what was in this building then. Anyway, for now I’m holding hands with Betty Schelling and she wears my junior high class ring around her neck, we’re on our
way from Wilson school to her home on Sierra Drive. It’s likely we had stopped by Mixter’s Drug store soda fountain, that we had just walked past, for a phosphate; I would have had my favorite, a vanilla phosphate.
in Boy scouts, Girl scouts and in families who knew each other very well, as happens in a small town.
In junior high you start to see your place in the scheme of things differently. I can’t remember who decided we should play spin the bottle, but everyone was willing. My only ‘for sure remembrance’ from that night is of myself in the shop building across the back yard from the patio with Nicki and that life changing spell cast with our first kiss.
As happens with young lives they take different paths through the years, seldom intersecting, I had no
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