The accounts of how Brenda and I met differ, according to
whomever tells the story. I thought about this the other day. It made me smile.
Someone posted a photograph of a Burger Chef outlet on Facebook. The now
defunct fast-food empire once had a franchise in the Riverdale area of Little Rock. That’s
where I saw her for the second time in my life.
The first time was in the parking lot of a long-ago
demolished apartment complex on the hill where Dillard’s corporate headquarters
now stands.
Here’s where the tales diverge. I was working on an old
clunker of a car I owned, having gone to work at an urban planning firm in Little Rock a year
earlier. I seem to remember I was replacing a headlight.
Now, if you ain’t from the South, you won’t fully understand
the next part. There’s a term we use: “sashay.” There may not be a precise
definition. It’s just something you know when you see it. It is a term used in
square dancing, but that isn’t the right context.
She just sashayed up to where I was working, that’s all. I
say she was wearing this bouncy blue dress with a bow in front. She says she
never owned such an article of clothing. Feel free to believe whomever.
We both agreed she had long red hair, gorgeous red hair that
guided one’s attention to an asset that made a young man’s heart go “wickedy-wonk.”
(My friend and mentor Sonny Rhodes advises professional and descriptive terminology,
so I try).
She was headed to meet a date, I found out later.
I gawked, and here’s another of collective-memory
disagreements. I remember that she stopped, stared, and said, “What the hell
are you looking at?”
She denies it. In a rare instance of conciliation among
Americans, we agreed many years ago that perhaps I had merely read her mind.
Before the staring contest escalated, a mutual friend walked
up and introduced us. It was apparent that she, Brenda, was unimpressed. It
must have been equally apparent that I was smitten. After she walked away, the
friend said, “She’s a farmer’s daughter. She has her own tractor, been driving
them since she was ten years old.”
I went back to my work. Over the next several days, I admit
to falling prey to occasional fantasies, some involving hay barns. I found out
she was a school teacher and roommate of our mutual friend. She had a
boyfriend, hence the date. I was starting to forget about the whole affair.
Now comes the Burger Chef part. It was a Saturday, I think,
and I had gone for a burger. This was long before the VA Fat Nazi had “forbidden”
such things. I was chowing down, as they say in the Navy, when a well-dressed
beauty with short gray hair came in. She strode over and I stopped eating. She
waited for recognition and, seeing none, said, “You don’t know who I am, do
you?”
The devil on my left shoulder suggested, "No, who the hell
are you?”
The angel on the right said, “No, but it would be one of the
great blessings of my life if you told me.”
I said, “You look kinda familiar.” I always was the snappy
conversationalist.
She said, “It’s the hair, isn’t it?”
“I reckon. What about it?”
“It’s a wig. Are you a little slow coming out of the chute,
or what?” Once again, we may be talking about mind-reading rather than precise
reporting.
She told me who she was. I pretended to know it all the time
and assured her that it would have come to me in few seconds more. She ignored
me and said she had been to a funeral, hence the wig. She assured me that she
hadn’t cut her hair and asked if I came to the Burger Chef often.
I said usually on weekends when I could afford it. She said
that she only came there after funerals and, after that jolly bit of repartee, I
invited her to sit. “No,” was all she said.
That was 45 years ago. She said, “Yes,” later, after
confiding to me that the boyfriend was a basketball coach and that she would
prefer to have a tooth drilled without Novocain than sit through a basketball game.
I assured her that I would never ask her out to one on a date.
She said, “Maybe there is hope for you yet.”
I think that very hope still exists within her.
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| The two faces of love. |
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