Digital Rodeo | your country community

After almost a year there and a huge bonus, I moved back home to help take care of my ailing Mother. Once there, I enlisted in the Army Reserves and moved to Delaware for two years. I was 21 years of age at the time, very fly and my day planner was constantly full. One of the happening clubs at the time was called the Brandywine Club in Chaddsford, PA. You had to be a member in order to get in. A girlfriend and I were dressed to the nines one evening and went to the club. We were chatting near one of the bars when I felt someone put their arms around my waist from behind and he said, "I've been looking for you all night". I turned around to see this greek God in a black pin-striped suit with a white cashmere coat. His hair was dark brown and he had the most gorgeous green eyes I have ever seen in my life. We date for a while and then it was time to move on. The middle 70's were pretty wild with lots of partying. I dated the owner of a nightclub and disco was all the rage. For the life of me, how I danced the Hustle in 3” spiked heels and 4” platform shoes, I will never know. One of the coolest things that happened to me at the time, was one night a band had been hired to play at the club and the lead singer came over to me and said, “Mr._______ told us you are a very important person and told me to ask you if there were any particular songs you wanted us to play”. One of the un-coolest things that happened was I believed that Mr. ________ liked men as much as he liked women. That was truly something that was not mentioned when my Mother told me there would be days like this. My philosophy at the time was I'd try almost anything once. During the time I lived there, I had a number of friends and made a lot of acquaintances. It was a lot of fun most of the time and there are memories that will live in me forever. Just the thought of not having to work is definitely a reality for the near future. I like being the captain of my own ship, making my own decisions and not being dictated to. If I decided to fly to Paris tomorrow, I could.

Now, remember that tom boyishness that I mentioned previously? It was nowhere to be found when I needed it the most in the Army Reserves. I was all girl by every sense of the word. What did they mean when they said I had to fall out into formation at 5:30Am with no makeup on? Nonetheless, I learned to dig a foxhole, shoot an M16 rifle, break it down and put it back together again. Hiking up a mountain in Anniston, AL in November was not my idea of fun but thank God, the Captain had the good sense to order us back to base. I surely did not want my first taste of fame to be that in a story that was about a number of us soldiers being found frozen to death. My unit was comprised of some misfits who were tom boyish, some who were femme fatales and others who fell somewhere in between. There was a young Hispanic lady from Brooklyn, NY who had a difficult time in remembering not to say a curse word when she made a mistake. I remember her well and thanks to all of the push-ups we all had to do on her behalf, I suspect none of us forgot her for quite some time. The Drill Sergeant who presided over our unit had told us that never had she had a unit that scored the highest overall in competition by the time Basic Training was over. When the scores were tallied, she wept with joy and pride in her winning unit. Graduation Day arrived and on a base with only one male Drill Sergeant, I found that mentioning that only male in the questionnaire that was handed out, no matter how innocent, was not a good thing to do. The embarrassment of being called out of formation and taken to the Captain’s office where a couple of Lieutenants and a Sergeant awaited an explanation of what I had written, was a hard lesson to learn when it comes to the perception of others.

To be continued...

comments

This entry has no comments, be the first!