On Christmas morning of 1962, Marilyn Todd climbed out the bedroom window of her parents’ house in Austin and walked across the frozen lawn and into my steel-grey 1952 Cadillac Superior hearse for an unknowable adventure across time and space. Even brilliant young ladies like Marilyn will do crazy things when they are in love. We headed east, then north to my old home town in Massachusetts to find work and build a future, hopefully in Gainesville, Florida when the time was right.
Marilyn and I had met at Threadgill’s bar when it was far from famous but picking up interest from University of Texas faculty, the Austin Ghetto crowd and a few enlightened local high school kids. Marilyn was one year removed from high school, having forgone her first year of college to care for an ailing mother, and was thrilled to have a night to herself. She sat on the stool next to me, the only one available and we had a humorous conversation when her date dropped his beer glass and it fell to pieces at my feet.
Next day, Marilyn’s best friend, Pat Brown, who was dating Gilbert Shelton, brought her by the Ranger magazine office and I was smitten, walking her a very long way home over what seemed like miles of hills. Thus began a delightful three months of almost daily phone calls and meeting when we could. There was no work for me in Austin, however, and I was fast running out of what few funds I had after replacing the radiator in my giant vehicle. I had to head back home to Lawrence…would she come with me? Turns out she would, knowing full well all hell would break loose when her father woke for breakfast.
None of that mattered, nor did the fear of future folly. We were young and foolish, optimists riding a cloud of adrenaline, off to see the world, unthinking of its tolls. Reality would have to wait, right now we were alive, together and rolling forward. Right now, it was Christmas.
2 |
| Marilyn Todd, 1964 |
Celia’s Christmas
Alphonsine Wickey was born in Alsace-Lorraine, emigrated to the United States at an early age, married and morphed into Celia Gosselin, wife of Bill. Her husband bought a roomy two-story house on Garfield Street in Lawrence, Massachusetts and also a bar on South Union Street. He named it The Whippet Club, celebrating his fondness for racing dogs, of which he had several. Celia and Bill had one child, Marie, who married an old guy named Tom Killeen when she was barely out of high school. Her first child, Billy, set Marie back a bit and she remained in the hospital a few days after giving birth. Billy went home with grandma, or Nan, as we called her. Whether it was this very early communion with her grandchild which created a permanent bond or something else known only to Celia, from Day One, Billy could do no wrong in his grandmother’s eyes. If I shot someone in the middle of Winthrop Avenue, she would have said he deserved it, then called a lawyer.
The depth of this love was occasionally tested. We had four officers of the law living in our neighborhood and they took turns giving me a hard time, but when Celia showed up they fled in terror. “Yes, Mrs. Gosselin. You’re right about that, Mrs. Gosselin. We’ll leave it to you then, Mrs. G.” One afternoon playing baseball, I hit an unusually long home run over the Eidam’s Oil Company building and right onto my grandmother’s upstairs porch, where she sat reading the newspaper. That baseball bounced all over hell as she jumped around the veranda trying to avoid it, cursing me loudly in German as she danced. What does “Verdammt nochmal, du verruckter bastard!” mean, anyhow?
I saw my grandmother cry only once, at the death of her husband, but she almost shed a tear when I headed off for college at age 17. Despite an undistinguished university career as a writer/troublemaker with average grades, Celia never let her friends forget she had a genius grandson. She maintained a small bedroom for me at one end of the house and kept it in sparkling shape for those few days at Thanksgiving or Christmas when I might come home.
Celia Gosselin didn’t know what the Subterranean Circus was, just that “Billy owns a store in Florida.” I think my mother was as vague about the place as possible. In 1968, the Circus really took off and was grossing about $1000 a day, $300 of which was net. It was the first time in my life I had a nickel to my name and by then I was a shocking 28 years old. Celia was also getting along in years and I thought it was about time I did something for her. She was a big TV fan, spent hours watching her old black and white set in the living room. It was more than time for a Christmas upgrade.
I searched around and found a very large RCA color floor model with all the bells and whistles, a furniture piece as much as a television. We put it in a gigantic box, wrapped it in holiday paper and put it beside the tree with someone else’s name on it. Every time Celia walked by, she stopped to look at it and wonder “what the hell this is?” never imagining it might be for her.
When Christmas finally arrived and everyone gathered for the ceremonial drinking of nectars and the dramatic gift reveal, Celia was the recipient of the usual gifts, glowing every time she opened something. Finally, all the presents were delivered but one, the treasure in the enormous box. Everyone was in on the game, of course, and when I announced that the gift had been mislabeled, all eyes fell on Nan. She didn’t quite get it at first and had to be encouraged to open the box, a slow and laborious process during which she was unusually confused. Finally, the veil fell and the colossal TV was exposed. Nan gasped and almost fell backwards onto the floor. Then, for just the second time since I’d known her, Celia Gosselin began to cry.
 |
| Celia the Great |
A Little Romance
They met at a small gathering spot in the University’s Student Union, she sitting in a booth with a smiling girlfriend, he walking by with a dormitory roommate. The young woman invited them to take a seat, they did, conversation flowed, people laughed, phone numbers were exchanged, facile promises were made.
The taller of the two boys called the taller of the two girls one day and a meeting was arranged at a park with a pond at the center of campus. The boy, who came from the East, related tales of life in New England, replete with blizzards and baseball and history. The girl told stories of a very different existence on a Native American reservation where her father was an “Indian Agent.”
The boy liked the girl very much and the girl liked the boy. One day, they went to the movies together. Another, they dined on banana splits at a sweet shop. They had dinner together at a cheap restaurant with a tiny menu. They walked together often, automobiles being a great luxury in those days. The boy was always very respectful of the girl. At night, she returned to her dorm and he to a room in an old lady’s home.
Time passed, emotions rose. When they kissed on a bench by the pond on a twilight meeting, the girl from the Indian reservation made it known by her actions that something more was required. The boy said he would make the arrangements. The boy and the girl had limited experience in these matters and the excitement was palpable.
A few nights later, the boy whisked the girl in the back door of the old lady’s house and into his small room, adorned with a bed, a desk and little else. They were careful to be quiet as this was a forbidden adventure promising severe retribution if discovered. The tall girl smiled as the boy helped her unbutton her clothes. The bed creaked a little too loudly as they fell into it, bringing muffled laughter. In a warm room in an old lady’s house on a chilly winter night in December, the Eastern boy and the Western girl shared a night of rare bliss. “Merry Christmas,” said the boy a few days in advance. “I’ll say,” replied the girl. The next morning, the tall girl left before the old lady rose to start her coffee. The New England boy kissed her out the door.
Two days later, the boy met the girl one more time at the downtown bus station. He was leaving school for the last time, moving back East where he had a nice job waiting in Manhattan. The girl would stay in school one more year, then move back to the reservation, possessed of great knowledge to help her aging father.
“I know that I will never see you again,” said the Western girl. “I know I will never meet anyone like you, and my future is cast. Just do me one favor as you leave—don’t turn around when you go to the bus.” The boy had a tear in his eye and a lump in his throat, but humor was always his saving grace. “You sure that’s not a line from some movie you saw?” he smiled. “No, it’s not,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I have seen about three movies in my whole life. Just do as you’re told and get on that bus.”
The tall boy from back East walked up the steps of the bus with tears running down his face. The sympathetic bus driver touched him on the shoulder and asked, “Are you sure you want to be leaving THAT woman?” The boy tried to smile and said, “I’m not sure of anything right now. Well, maybe one thing. I’m really sorry that I’ve been rooting for the cavalry all these years.”
That’s all, folks….and Merry Christmas from the Eastern boy and the Western girl….wherever they may be.
 |
| Theta Pond, Oklahoma State University |
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
