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25. The Summer of '68
When Dad entered the hospital, I was in Indianapolis visiting Linda’s family again. It was the long Easter weekend. Linda and I drove to Indy on Thursday, April 11, her dad’s forty-seventh birthday. Three days later in that Easter Sunday morning service at First Baptist Church in Beech Grove, Indiana, Linda, her sister Teri and I sang. I am not a great singer by any stretch of the imagination. But in those days I could carry a bass line decently while the girls provided melody and harmony.
The following Sunday I went alone to Lincoln Park to visit Dad and see how he was doing. The actual surgery was to be performed the following Wednesday, April 24. Ten years later this date would carry another significance for our family.
Our relationship continued to progress, Linda’s and mine, that is, not my dad’s and mine. I sure get a lot of mileage out of that line, don’t I?
May arrived. We had decided on a wedding date of Saturday, June 7, 1969, still more than a year away. In fact, according to my datebook, from May 2, 1968 to June 7, 1969 is exactly four hundred days. I gave Linda a “Four Hundred Days to Go” card.
There were several end-of-the year papers to write, and, of course, cramming for final exams. But in between all the courses Linda had to finish up and all the courses I had to finish up, we managed to spend one more day at Fife Lake, three afternoon or evening trips to Lake Michigan, one trip to the Detroit Zoo (you remember, the Detroit Zoo is actually in Royal Oak) and many lunches, suppers and study times in the library together. Even the chili began to taste okay.
Soon the school year was over, and the summer’s plans were finalized. My plans were to stay in Grand Rapids, living in one of the school’s apartments and working full time at the bank. My full-time work began on Monday, May 27. But two days before that, an occasion neither of us looked forward to even though we knew it was inevitable occurred. Linda’s dad came to Grand Rapids to take his daughter home to Indianapolis for the summer.
Normally, as any red-blooded student would do, I looked forward to the summer break from classes. I enjoyed my job at Union Bank, and working an eight-hour day five days a week would certainly be a boon to my personal economy. But that summer my focus would not be my personal economy.
I had never had a relationship with a girl strong enough to be a factor during the summer break. But for the past seven months, I had been with Linda. I knew she would be there every day. I knew we would be together every day, for at least part of it. After classes, after work, at lunch, at supper, we would be together. But until school started again on Thursday, September 5, she would be in Indianapolis and I would be in Grand Rapids. She might as well have been in Bangladesh! Or so I thought.
It was hard to watch her drive away with her dad on that Saturday afternoon. I watched the car as it grew smaller and further away until it disappeared behind a clump of trees. I don’t cry much, but I was a little choked up that day. I thought maybe a tear or two clung to Linda’s eyes as she watched me grow smaller and further away and disappear behind a clump of trees.
We had agreed to write to each other every day during our separation, so shortly after she drove away, I sat down and wrote her the first of the eighty-eight letters I would write to her that summer. I wrote to her again on Sunday, and again on Monday after my first full day at Union Bank. Three letters mailed. None in return. I knew that was because of the mail system, but down inside I hoped that Linda had not gotten home and met some old boyfriend and changed her mind about the seminarian back in Grand Rapids. So I called her on Tuesday, just to be sure.
Everything was fine. On Wednesday I received two letters from her. I had mailed five now, and received two. We kept up our correspondence every day that summer. We did not receive one letter a day, of course. Sometimes we received none; sometimes we received several. But we wrote every day.
We each had our share of situations that caused us to laugh, but seemed to indicate that our minds were not focused on what we were doing but rather on each other. For example, it was raining the day I came home from the store and rolled down the window of my car to check the mail box, looking for a letter from — well, you know. That was a Saturday night. Sunday morning I went out to my car, unlocked the door, got in and sat in a puddle of water. I had left the window down during the all-night rain.
The first of several scheduled visits I would make to the Hubble home on Southport Road occurred just a week or so after Linda returned there. Linda wanted to help her parents at home because they had helped her during her now two years of college that she had completed. She noticed that part of the garage door was rusting, so she decided to paint it. When she finished, she decided to walk across the driveway to look out to the street to see if the mail - and a letter from her sweetie - had arrived. Then, splot. That’s the word she used in her letter telling me about it. Splot. She tripped and the can of red paint went off on its own to paint the scenery a deep, deep red. Then she turned the hose on to wash the paint off the driveway, but the cold water just thickened the paint more quickly. Then, to add insult to injury, her mother came out with her camera.
Later that same Friday, I arrived for the first of several visits with Linda and her family I would make that summer. I saw the red splotch on the garage. Actually, after forty years, it is still there. But I wasn’t there to look at red splotches. I was there to be with my sweetheart.
All too soon that first visit was over, and I was back in Grand Rapids and she was in Indianapolis. After all the rain that had come to both cities, the skies cleared, and the first of several weeks of really steamy weather settled in. June 5, which was my twenty-seventh birthday, was particularly hot and humid in Grand Rapids. Of course, the bank was air conditioned, and it was quite comfortable there. But at home, in my second-floor apartment, things were really sticky.
When I got home, I got into the lightest clothes I could find, fixed a cool supper, and sat down in front of the television set to watch the news.
It happened in Los Angeles, California. Robert Kennedy was shot in a hotel after giving a victory speech for winning the California primary in his own bid for the White House that his brother, John F. Kennedy, had occupied until his assassination less than five years earlier. Earlier in that year of 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Once again, as in November of 1963, television took us into the heart of a major national crisis. On Saturday, June 8, we watched the funeral service for Robert Kennedy, just as we had watched his brother’s service five years earlier. I watched in Grand Rapids. Linda watched in Indianapolis.
NEXT CHAPTER
As I remember my life as it was lived in 1968, I remember the joy of finally falling in love with a young woman who returned that love many times over. It was a joyful year for me. Sometimes I forget what a troubled and troubling year it was for the nation and for the world in general. That was the year of the Pueblo incident. The Navy ship was captured by North Korea and its crew held for the better part of that year until the United States admitted a violation of North Korean waters had taken place. After the crew’s release, the U. S. again denied any violation had taken place. That was the year there were protests in Warsaw, Poland against the government’s intervention into cultural matters. That was the year President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek another term as president. That was the year students in Paris rioted. In that same year Prime Minister DeGaulle asked the citizens of France to give him a vote of confidence. That was the year the Democratic Party nominated Hubert H. Humphrey as their candidate against Richard M. Nixon. The convention in Chicago brought out rioters and charges of police brutality. And that was the year of the Red’s Restaurant incident. I first learned of Red’s Restaurant in mid-June. Linda had been looking for a job that summer, hoping to be able to add cash to the family coffers to pay for school the next year. She had been looking in the heat of that long, hot, Indianapolis summer but had not found anything. The year before she had worked in the office of an insurance company, but they did not have anything for her this summer. I knew she needed a job, but I was not happy about a job at Red’s Restaurant. Because of the two or three day delay the U. S. Postal Service took to deliver our letters to each other, I had not yet read her June 14 letter when she wrote to tell me she got the job. When I got her letter of June 15, I wrote a lengthy lecture to her about how evil this job was. I didn’t think she should work Sundays. I didn’t think she should work until midnight. I didn’t think she should be exposed to the male customers who might be rude to say the least. I didn’t think she should have to carry heavy trays and walk miles each day.
I did have a way with words. And that ought to have taken care of it. I had given my fiancé several good reasons why I did not want her to work at Red’s Restaurant. But she had a few things of her own to say in response to my concerns.
She called me a worrywart! She said I made her job sound like a “terror tank.” The hours were Monday through Friday 12:00 noon to 7:30 or 8:00, which shot down my Sunday and midnight arguments, or as she put it so gently, “that shoots two reasons.” She said no one was making passes at her, or, if they were, she was too busy to notice. And, yes, the work was hard and the trays were heavy, but hard work would be good for her. It would prepare her for being a housewife.
With tips she was earning over $2.00 per hour, more than I was earning at my desk in the air-conditioned bank. And she thought God was using her experience to help her develop a servant’s heart, something she felt she would need as a pastor’s wife.
She said she appreciated the fact that I was being protective of her, but that I shouldn’t worry about her job. She said she needed me to be protective of her and treat her as an independent person. She said I was doing a good job at both. Sweet talk has always been the most effective tool in her arsenal where I am concerned. It still is after forty years.
My bride-to-be could certainly hold her own in a fair fight! This would not be the last time in my life that I would yield to the convincing arguments of my beautiful and intelligent girl from Indiana. However, as she related in a letter later that summer, I might not have been so far off center in my concerns.
In July she reported an encounter with a couple of wiseguys as she called them. As she approached their table to take their order one of them said, “Hi, beautiful! You’re lookin’ great!” Linda just smiled at them and waited for them to give their orders. Wiseguy No. 2 said, “Do you take orders to go?” To which Linda replied, “yes, we do.” “Let’s go,” he said.
Again she just stared at them, not knowing what to say. Then Wiseguy No. 1 said, “What did you say your husband’s name was?” She told them she was not married. He asked, “Who are you going steady with?”
She said that after she told them she was engaged, it got easier and they gave her their orders. She ended her report with the words, “Dumb guys.”
The next conflict that summer did not put Linda and me in opposition to each other. It put us both in opposition to her parents.
Tim and Connie had invited us to spend some time in the summer of 1968 with them at Tim’s parents’ home in Coburn, West Virginia. Tim’s dad pastored a small Baptist church there, and had for many years. The church was housed in a small, white building located in a hollow, the long, shallow low place between mountains. Tim’s parents lived in a big, old house some distance from the church, but on the same road in the same hollow.
Tim’s love for West Virginia was obvious from the first time I met him. Like myself, he was interested in photography, especially nature photography. His home state had given him many opportunities to practice his skills behind the lens. He wanted me to see and photograph his beautiful state myself.
Since Tim and Connie were married, but Linda and I were not, we had to be careful about the arrangements and the accommodations we would make. Of course, we felt there would be no problem staying with Tim’s parents. After all, we would be in a pastor’s home. Who could question that? What could we possibly do amiss with a Baptist pastor present in his own home?
But the part of the state Tim especially wanted us to see was an overnight trip from Coburn. Roads do not run very straight in West Virginia, and so it would take some time to get to Blackwater Falls, and to Seneca Valley, and to Germany Valley, and to Judy Gap and the other wonderful places he wanted to show us. He thought we could stay overnight at Blackwater Lodge. We would get two rooms. Connie and Linda could share one room. Tim and I would share the other. We thought we had covered all the bases. We wanted to take the trip, but we also wanted to be certain we were doing things in a decent and respectable manner.
My parents expressed no concerns about the trip; after all, I was twenty-six years old and had not lived at home for nearly two years. Tim’s parents expressed no concerns about the trip, and even sent a formal letter to Linda’s parents inviting us to stay in their home. Linda had expressed some concern, especially about what she called “the motel bit.”
I understood her concern, but I thought with Connie’s help, and the invitation from Tim’s parents, she would see that we were being careful to avoid even the appearance of evil.
But Linda was only twenty in that summer, and had not yet moved away from home. In fact, as already related, she was living at home, except when at school.
At first, she felt she had satisfied all of her parents’ requirements for such a trip to be made; at least they had not indicated that she had not. But then one day, I received the letter.
“Get set for a shock,” she said. Then she reported that her dad did not think it was proper for us to travel before we were married, even though we had made arrangements to avoid the appearance of evil. He refused to give us permission to make the trip. Linda’s Mom agreed with her husband.
Now, in all fairness to Linda’s parents, they had hers and my interests at heart. They felt this was the only right decision they could make under the circumstances. I told them then, and I say it again now: I respect them for expressing their convictions.
But it certainly was disappointing. “Don’t let this ruin your trip,” Linda said. But how could I go to West Virginia without her? What fun would it be at Blackwater Falls or Judy Gap or anywhere else without her? I told her I would not go without her.
When I told Tim and Connie, they simply said, “Well, maybe next year. You’ll be married then.”
And so we would be.
Tim and Connie did come with me to Indianapolis one weekend that summer. They had a family wedding to attend there, so I drove down with them. On Sunday they had dinner with Linda’s family and me before we headed back to Grand Rapids. My future in-laws appreciated and liked Tim and Connie. We made no mention of the planned trip to West Virginia, nor did we need to. We all accepted Linda’s parents’ decision, and had no wish to hold it against them.
Later, Linda asked me if I would approve of such a trip for my daughter? I thought about it and concluded that I would, given the same circumstances. But that was when I was twenty-seven and not yet married and not yet a father. Today, having raised three daughters with Linda, all of whom are now married and on their own, would I answer the same way? Given the same set of circumstances, my answer is yes.
Photos in this column: [1] My father, Whelan LaVerne Parsons (Bill). [2] The picture Linda's mother took the day Linda spilled red paint all over her and the corner of the garage. Photos in the right column: [3] Linda and me in the summer of 1968 at her parents' home. [4] The Hubble home on Southport Road in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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Copyright © 2009, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 23
