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bermudaroad · 5 years ago

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Personal History: Summer of ’91

My kids Walker Roe and Clayton, ages 18 and 20, his girlfriend Adrian and their friends Reed, Shelby and Trevor spent the covid spring and summer of 2020 hanging out together, swimming, kayaking, watching movies, lamenting their lost semester and generally not following recommended guidelines for social distancing. Clayton was able to continue work while the rest finished spring classes online, which was a total bummer. With businesses and restaurants shuttered for quarantine, there hasn’t been much else to do. Walker and Reed had internships lined up that were cancelled. Adrian did some housecleaning and as soon as a few restaurants did open back up, she and Trevor, who both used to work at the pub, got part-time jobs. Reed cuts grass. The rest of their time is spent mostly at leisure.

In seeming unrelated news, Thomas, one of my oldest friends, became a grandfather last week. Because of covid, no visitors could go into the hospital, so when the baby was born, the new dad held her up to the hospital window and the grandparents all held up posters and signs of congratulations outside. It was shared on Facebook, so I sent Thomas a text. I could tell from his response how giddy he was. They didn’t get to actually hold the new baby for three or four days.

The quarantine, my kids’ spring and summer getting derailed and Thomas becoming Pawpaw got me thinking about the summer after our first year of college, back in Many, the summer of 1991. I spent that time mostly with a small group with whom I had been friends since first grade: Thomas, of course; Ginger who was home from school in Oklahoma, Jeff and Andy who, like Thomas and me had been going to Northwestern State, and Ginger’s brother Clay who had just finished 10th grade and had finally stopped being a complete jerk. Sometimes there would be one or two others, but that was the core group.

Except for Clay, we were 18/19 and had just got our first big kid jobs. Thomas and Jeff went to work at the mill in Florien, Gin got a job at the radio station and I was tellering at Sabine State Bank. I can’t remember what Andy was doing, probably working for his grandpa, and Clay, who was 16 and fast growing into a giant of a man, tooled around in his truck and worked out at the gym. We no longer had curfews and seldom felt the need to ask our parents for anything.

We were all single, too, which probably explains why our group was small and close.

Ginger had come home from Oklahoma unsettled. The previous Christmas, she had appalled her family by getting engaged to her long-time boyfriend Nathen, the same person who had been fooling around with our other friend Jamie behind Ginger’s back for most of the time they were dating. Ginger found out about it in the middle of our senior year which was pretty much wrecked after that, but she and Nate stayed together, even though neither was happy. Her parents had hoped that when she shipped out for Oklahoma and Nate left for LSU, things would fizzle between them, so their surprise engagement at Christmas 1990 was less than joyous. By February, Ginger had come to her senses. She mailed Nathen back his pitiful little ring and he decided to stay in Baton Rouge for the summer, thankfully bringing that awful drama to an end. Also, she had met someone new in Oklahoma.

Clay’s girlfriend Anna had broken up with him right after Prom. She was a classy girl, also a friend of ours, and she returned the jewelry Clay had given her, which Ginger divided up with me. Thomas and Jeff had recently split with the girls they dated through and beyond high school. Andy was always single, even though he carried a torch for Jamie for years. They were funny, affable guys and great pals.

I was fractured, too. My first love Patrick and I had outgrown each other and he had broken up with me in the spring, which was for the best, but I missed him terribly. He was already seeing someone else. I was on a mission to get over Patrick, lose the freshman 15 I had packed on and have fun with my friends – Thomas being chief mischief-maker and proponent of fun.

Riding around town, “making a drag” as we called it, wasn’t for us anymore as we tried to avoid our old flames, which was hard to do in Many. Most of our friends had significant others to absorb their spare time and several had jumped straight into adulthood, going to work in the oilfield, joining the military or getting married. We, on the other hand, aside from work responsibilities, could do pretty much whatever we wanted.

Often after work, we would meet up and go hang out somewhere on Toledo Bend, the long pier at Pendleton or my parents’ place down near Quiet Cove, to drink wine coolers and talk nonsense. Weekends we went swimming at LaNan or San Miguel and a couple of times Andy drove his grandpa’s barge across the lake to the cliffs on the Texas side where kids used to shinny up a frayed rope as thick as my arm to the top of the bluff and jump off. The boys listened to the Beasty Boys, N.W.A., Sir Mix-A-Lot and Color Me Bad (I wasn’t a big fan of any of it) and Ginger had discovered Garth Brooks. We went to our friends’ weddings, stayed out too late, crashed at each other’s houses, made it to work on time and irritated our parents.

There were some long serious talks, too, as we commiserated and sorted out our broken hearts. Clay even opened up about his lost love. It was a bonding period for Clay and Ginger who had spent most of their childhood fighting, and for he and I as well.

I hope my kids aren’t as stupid as we were and I’m eternally grateful that social media did not exist. One night – I don’t know what go into us - we got a wild hair and vandalized a dumpster with spray paint. Thomas and Jeff frequently made a contest of pitching empty beer bottles at road signs going 4/60 down the highway headed to the lake. Under a full July moon, Andy took us armadillo hunting at his grandpa’s farm. Riding four-wheelers and armed with .22s and homemade pipe bombs, we crisscrossed the pasture in the moonlight firing at will in the humid night that was thick with recklessness. Another time Thomas and I were headed to Natchitoches in his monster old Bronco when I told him I wanted to smoke a cigarette. Thomas habitually swiped packs of Marlboro Reds from the carton his dad kept on top of their fridge. He offered me a light and told me what to do. And so it was that I smoked the inaugural cigarette – the very first one -- in the drive-thru at Maggio’s, coughing and turning green and reveling in my rebellion. I even remember the music we were listening to: a cassette single of “I Wanna Be with You” by Pretty Boy Floyd. I don’t know why that detail has stuck with me.

At some point, Jeff and Andy both noticed charms about Ginger that had never been obvious to them before. This was typical of Andy but surprising for Jeff. Thomas and I were greatly amused. Jeff made the first move, asking Ginger on a date that Clay offered to chaperone. They went to see “King Ralph,” and the rest of us chased them down at Hardee’s after the movie. I remember gathering around Jeff’s white Dodge stepside in the parking lot and snickering because Gin was sitting next to him in the cab. We all knew it wasn’t going anywhere; it was just a lark. It wasn’t long before Ginger’s beau from Oklahoma couldn’t stand the separation anymore and hauled it down to Louisiana for a visit, which is how I met Brent and was maid of honor at their wedding a year later.

With Ginger unavailable, Andy turned his attention to me and was rebuffed again. But he wasn’t too disappointed.

As summers do, it went by in a blink and in mid-August, it was time to get back to business. Clay started two-a-days, Gin packed up for Oklahoma and I, who had starved myself down to a wafer, moved back to Natchitoches. Thomas and Jeff were supposed to commute together, but Jeff dropped out of school to work full-time. Andy transferred to LSU. Thomas fell in with my college buddies and we share those memories as well. It wasn’t our last summer of fun – we had a few more in store before adulthood really caught up with us.

Now we are in our late 40s – the summer of our lives. Thomas and Jeff still work together. They are deacons in their church, volunteer coaches and planners of wholesome youth activities. Ginger and Brent have been over in Nacogdoches for over 20 years and active in ministry in their community. Andy married a girl from Baton Rouge and lives on his family’s farm. Clay went on to play football at Louisiana Tech, but personal troubles have always dogged him, even unto today. I married a nice guy I met in journalism class and have lived in Natchitoches ever since. We have seen each other quite a bit over the years, most recently when Ginger and Clay’s dad died, an occasion marked by the same old sense of camaraderie, nostalgia and some measure of sadness.

It’s been a strange year, this spring and summer of covid. It’s nice to see Clayton and Walker spending quality time together. Interestingly, during the pandemic, Walker and her college friends have been writing old-fashioned letters and mailing them to each other, a true novelty for them.

It brings to mind the contrasts between the now and then. In 1991 we had no cell phones, no email, no Internet, no Netflix, no Twitter or Snapchat. Our parents had no idea where we were or what we were up to most of the time. We had to make plans and sometimes locate each other by that peculiar friend-radar teenagers used to have. We could buy alcohol and never wore seatbelts. Most blessed of all, youthful indiscretions were not splashed all over the social media, although I do have some lake photos boxed up on a high shelf. It seems like our freedom was much greater in many ways. Some things change and some things stay the same.

It’s hard to believe it was almost 30 years ago. Summers always go by too fast.

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