January 1, 1972

Girls
 
Fifty years ago, I was at a party at my friend, Byron Haflich’s, house, along with about 30-40 classmates and friends. My high school class, for the most part, seemed to be a close group that were also friends with the other classes, and it was pretty common to have BIG parties. On this night, Byron’s parents were not home and it was a good reason to have a party at his house. Of course, part of the celebration was that it was New Year’s Day, but for my group of about 10 close guy friends, it was also for celebrating my birthday.
 
I even got a gift from the guys. Well, I say that lightly because I’m not sure it was from the group. My friend Mark Morgan gave me an 8-track player for my car. Mark worked at Schmitt Auto, a car parts store in Vincennes and he bought the 8-track player there. As he gave it to me, he said “we all pitched in to buy you a new 8-track player.” Knowing Mark as I do now, I’m guessing he bought it with his own money but wanted to give credit to the other guys, to make them feel good and to make me feel good that it was coming from everyone. As a back-story, 8-track players were the cool thing to have in your car in those days and I had had one, but someone broke into my car on prom night of my junior year and stole it. So, Mark was being kind and replacing my stolen one. Mark was a good guy.
 
Meanwhile at the party, while lots of folks were milling around the house, partying, I was at the dinner table with 3 other guys playing euchre. Several other people were standing around the table watching us and rooting us on and one of our classmates, Cindy Irvin, was looking over my shoulder and said at one point, “I don’t understand this game, so I don’t know how to play it.” I pulled up a chair and told her to sit down by me and I’d teach her how to play.
 
The night went on into the wee hours. Most of our gang of 10 and a few stragglers stayed overnight at Byron’s. Cindy and the other 40-or-so people went home at some point.
 
The next Saturday, January 8, another party broke out, this time at Lucy McGiffin’s house, which was out on the edge of town. Again, her parents were gone so….party time. Again, lots of folks, lots of mingling, and eventually 4 of us sitting at a table playing euchre. Sure enough, Cindy Irvin is there and I spot her and ask her to sit down by me and I’ll teach her some more about euchre. As the night is beginning to wind down for some, Jimmy Miller comes running into the house to say, “Ruth Obermeyer just ran over herself.” We all ran out into the yard and it had gotten very foggy out. There were lots of cars out in the front yard and while trying to back out and get her car in the driveway to leave, Ruth opened her car door to lean out to make sure she wasn’t going to hit anyone’s car, and she fell out and her car kept rolling and the front wheel ran over her leg. We called for an ambulance and they came and got her, among a yard full of cars, and took her to the hospital. Why there weren’t any police officers that came along I’m not sure, but we were happy because we would all have been in deep doo-doo. While we were standing outside watching the action, I had my coat on and Cindy didn’t, so I did the ‘gentlemanly’ thing and took my coat off and put it around her. It hung on her like I had put a 5-XXX jacket on her…but I thought I was cool. The party began to wrap up shortly after 'the Ruth thing' but before I left, I asked Miss Irvin if she would like to go out on a date the next Saturday. I was so excited when she said, 'sure'.
 
I don’t think we talked much to each other at school during the week, probably as I was nervous and stupid and worried she might change her mind…but on Saturday, January 15, 1972, I picked her up for our first date and we had a great night together, going to see movie and driving around the main drag seeing all our friends. As I took her home, I asked if she’d like to go out the next Friday, and as fate would have it…she said YES.

That...was the start.  50 years ago!

Be talkin' to ya.

Dad