Christmas 1968
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| National Christm as Tree 1968 |
Judy and I both participated in the Distributive Education or Work-Study program, meaning we only attended three classes a day and worked the remainder of the day. That gave us a nice break depending on our work hours of anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours before we went to work. We had a lot of pleasant long lunch hours with our classmates before we "clocked in."
Somewhere in early October, Judy stayed with my mom and me for a while. It was like having a sister, but one that you liked and got along with. We both went to school and worked, and then we had goof-off time in the evening after we both got home. We talked, we laughed, we "went to the library," watching TV, or just did nothing. Neither of us had a sister; we both had the curse of older brothers, so it was a unique situation for both of us.
Our Work-Study classes were going to create a float for the school's first Homecoming Parade and events. I don't remember the specifics, but somehow Judy and I ended up making hundreds and hundreds of paper flowers that would be used to decorate the float. How did we do that, you may ask? We went through boxes and boxes of Kleenex and hundreds of bobby pins. My room had bags of flowers all over it; what didn't stay in the bags was everywhere else in the area. We tried to make a couple of tissue boxes worth of the flowers every night. I don't know how many of them that was, but it was a lot. Then we would take the plastic bags to school for them to be attached to the float. Needless to say, we both got tired of it. When it was all said and done, our float won third place.
My boyfriend. David was in Vietnam, and his brother and some of his friends would drive up every weekend and take me out under their watchful and protective eyes. When Judy started staying with me, she and David's brother Jimmy developed a casual "thing." We would go out and ride around drinking and acting like we didn't have a care in the world. That interfered with our flower making in October, but we had until Thanksgiving weekend before making our next commitment to something else. That something else was both of us taking on a second job working at a shoe store during the Christmas season. Now we had less available fun time.
Even though we were both tied to our jobs, we still managed to force ourselves to have some good times. We drove into DC one night to see The National Christmas Tree with Jimmy and friends. I had never been there as an "almost" adult and apparently had only been taken to see just the Christmas Tree presentations. This time we went on what was probably the coldest night of the year, frigid temps, blustering wind, and dirty snow and ice everywhere. And we were all drinking. We spent a long time at the reindeer exhibit because they had an enormous fire pit blazing away. And I believe the guys that were working there were high, so they were very entertaining. Also, if you ventured away from the fire, the "I'm drunk, and I gotta pee" syndrome would strike, and that was a very uncomfortable thing to have to happen in the cold with no relief around. The only good thing about the cold was that you could sober up pretty quickly before you got home. We had a pretty good time that night singing Drunk Christmas Lyrics and fighting over who had the right words to the tunes. We sounded very much like a jolly bunch of Bali Hai and Bud sponsored carolers.
One night we invited Shelley over to stay the night. We had snuck beer in and put it in my closet and were drinking. We had music on and had to keep our giggles and belly laughs as quietly as possible to not get caught by my snooping grandmother, Dickette Tracey. We took some posed pictures and eventually crashed.
The shoe store we worked in had young employees except for the manager, and he thought he was young. One of the guys named Harry had a super big crush on Judy. He was always asking her out; she was always bursting his bubble. One Saturday night after we all got off at 10 PM, Judy asked me if I would go to Georgetown with them. Georgetown! If you were from anywhere within a hundred-mile radius of DC, everyone knew about Georgetown. It was THE place to go, club after club after club. It was and still is legendary. "I don't have a fake ID." No problem. In less than five minutes, I was trying to memorize my new identity. It was a yokel sounding name, like, ew, almost embarrassing. But Judy and I were only seventeen, and the drinking age for DC was 18. I could be Annie Lou if I had to.
When we got to the club, I was so nervous. The door guy was checking out the ID and looking at me; I was shaking. He asked me one verification question, looked at me as if I were the most significant pain in his ass, rolled his eyes, and said. "Go ahead." It was great! It was like a sixties mod movie. Strobe lights, black lights, banging out Crimson and Clover and Creedence. And then there was beer and wine. Tall boots, short skirts, various hairstyles, and every color of person you could think of. Georgetown University was not far away, and the place was crawling with youngness.
The only problem was I was kind of stuck with the friend of Harry, but only for drinking and dancing purposes. I wasn't really looking for anyone because my guy was in Vietnam, but I have always enjoyed looking at offerings. I felt a little guilty, but after a few drinks, that went away, and I was just into psychedelic joy. Judy had on this blonde wig cut into a very sexy bob, and I kept forgetting that when I would try to find her. I'm not a very adept drinker, even to this day and draft beer always kicks my butt after a while of dancing so much and then slugging down beer to quench real thirst. The strobe lights started to bother me. If I looked directly at them, I would get sick at my stomach, a motion sickness kind of feeling. I was afraid I was going to throw up. I had to make sure we got to the inside of the dance floor, where I couldn't see them as much, and it helped. After we had been there for a while, we were all feeling no pain. I felt like Rubber Band Man, surely there were no bones in my body, and I was developing a bit of a lean. I looked at my co-drinkers and was secretly hoping that it was almost 2 AM. It was. Thank you, God, of the Bars.
On the way home, we were all quiet. Judy and I were tired, we had been up and functioning since 7 AM., went to school, and worked two jobs. We earned a night out, and tomorrow we could sleep late. And there was no way I was going to kiss anybody goodnight. No way. We bailed out as quiet as two imbibed people can be and flowed into my room and bed. Clothes on. Lights out. Silence.
The next week Judy went back home, and our goods times were put on hold. David came home on emergency leave and stayed until after Christmas. I spent every moment that I could with him. After he had left to go back, I'm pretty sure that I was in a funky depression for awhile. Judy was not there to keep me company, and I missed her. She had helped me get through bad times, always having that fear in the back of my mind that David might not come back was a hard thing for a 17-year-old to deal with. Judy helped distract me from some of that anxiety, and I thank her for it. She was my lifesaver, my raft, my sanity, and my temporary sister. I love her for helping me so much.
That was the last carefree fun Christmas of my life, and it was a good one. One that I still think about and always will.
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