Elmira, New York

I wasn’t that excited about going to the Remington Rand factory outing even though everything was free – all the food, the beer – everything. It only happened one time a year, always in the summer – the very best time to be in Elmira, New York.

While the prospect of free food and beer was tempting, the problem was I had no one to go with. I did not really know that many people who worked at the Remington Rand typewriter factory. Most of the people I met there were old farts who had worked there forever. I did not know if my new lunch buddies would make it. It was fun to chat with them during lunch in the factory canteen, but I had not really become friends outside of that twenty-five minutes when we had to huff down our lunches.

I kind of hoped I would run into Nicky Blue, my favorite lunch person. She had just bought a brand new Mustang convertible – and I could see myself riding in that thing out on Route 17 with the wind blowing through my hair.

Since I had nothing else to do, I got into the Rambler and headed out for South Main Street. I figured I’d just go in, get something to eat and drink, and not hang around.

The outing was in a huge field. It was a field where I had played intermediate league baseball several years earlier. With all the people gathered, one could not make out that it was also a baseball field.

I was getting my first beer at one of the stands and felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there was Nina Marcuse with a big smile on her face. She was like the Sophia Loren of the “other side of the tracks” in our high school – and a couple of years younger than me. Because we were from the Southside, we were all actually from “the other side of the tracks,” but we didn’t know it. Pretty much all of us were oblivious to the realities of socio-economic stratification at that time.

Every guy in school dreamed of being with Nina and probably had wet dreams about being with her. She and I bonded instantly. I guess she had hesitated to come to the factory outing also, maybe thinking that she would not find anyone she knew. So somehow, right from that first moment, without saying so exactly, we both knew that we were going to “hang together” and have a blast at the outing.

If getting drunk together was in the cards, so be it. In those days there was no shame or serious consequence to getting drunk – or even getting drunk and driving. The only real consequence was getting killed in a car wreck, and we already had more than several from our high school who had been killed in wrecks – but we didn’t think about that. That’s the way it was. And in the working class cities of the northeast, it was the norm.

It wasn’t long before Nina and I were walking around the crowded grounds with our arms around each other. We were in heaven. When they announced that the outing had come to an end there was no way that we were going to separate ourselves from the life that was unfolding on that day. We took off in my grandfather’s Rambler and drove around – ending up at Eldridge Park. We had a riot there getting on many of the rides. On the roller coaster, Nina squeezed me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. In the spook house, she put her tongue so far down my throat I thought I was going to choke. I felt like the heavens had opened up and I had been accepted into the good place.

The time at the amusement park helped us to get a second wind from the beers we drank at the outing. When it got dark we decided to move on. We went to Myhalyk’s – a restaurant/dance venue – and we danced our asses off. When a slow one came on we glued ourselves to each other and sensuously swayed in tandem, bringing up passionate bodily reactions, but we were still both (at least me) inexperienced in the ultimate point in the art of physical love.

When it got late I drove her home. Outside her house, which was rather run-down, I yanked on the seat lever of the Rambler and the seats slammed back shocking the hell out of Nina. I thought we were headed in a love-making direction, but it was an immature move on my part. Nina, being much more sophisticated than me, preferred that we go into her house. So we got out of the car and entered her living room — and immediately landed on the couch.

We both kept our clothes on and humped like Zimbabwan baboons in heat. We were so wildly driven that Nina’s pants ripped right up the seam of her crotch. I wanted to marry this girl – right then. That’s when she told me about her thirty-five year old boyfriend.

“What? You serious?”
“Yeah, I like you, but I am going with this guy. He takes good care of me.”
“Well, I can take care of you too.”

She gave me a huge hug and said, “Well… I had a great time with you.”

I slowly drove back to my parent’s place, and realized that what had just happened was a poignant way to end the summer. I also realized that I was in no position to take care of anybody. Maybe not even myself.