Sunday Scribblings: Dance

I suffered torture most of the eighth grade from wanting Laura Oakland to wear my initial ring as a sign we were going steady.

One night I met Laura at Dr. Zhivago at the Rena Theater in Kellogg and never knew what was happening in the movie because I kept obsessively sliding off my initial ring, trying to get the guts to ask her to go steady, and chickened out, my ring finger so slick with clammy sweat that my ring slid on and off as if it were buttered.


At the last dance of our eighth grade year, Laura and I were sitting out a dance or two in the grandstands of the junior high gym. I never asked Laura to a dance or a movie. I was too chicken. We always just met there.



Time was running out. The dance was nearing its end. So was the school year. Laura lived over five miles from our house out in Page and I never saw her in the summer. The Beatles' “Penny Lane” played over the gym’s tinny sound system --





Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes.

There beneath the blue suburban skies

Finally, stomach cramped and cotton-mouthed, I asked Laura Oakland to go steady.

“No. My mom won’t let me.”


“Oh. - - - - OK.”


Shame scorched my face. I bit my lower lip. “Penny Lane’s” trumpets floated with mockery through the gym.


We danced the last dance. Laura rode home with other Page kids. Or spent the night with a girl friend.


I walked home, alone, past Dick and Floyd’s and turned down McKinley. Laughing payday carousers moved in and out of the Rio Club, the Inland Lounge, and the other uptown Kellogg bars.


I crossed over to the alley by the YMCA. It reeked where someone had taken a leak on the west wall. I trudged down to Railroad Avenue, past Freddy Walter’s flimsy house, on my way past the IGA at Cameron and Hill and further west on Cameron, past the Sunshine Inn where Dad was tending bar, and on to our house.


“Penny Lane” played over and over in my ears. I imagined that wherever Laura Oakland was, she and her friends laughed.


I arrived home. Mom was asleep on the couch. The front door opening woke her. She lit a cigarette. “How was the dance?”


“Fine. Care if I change the channel?”


“Go ahead.”


I watched a fight, probably Ray “Windmill” White vs. Mike “Irish” Quarry on Boxing from the Forum. I ate a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. I went to bed.


I had baseball practice in the morning. Looking back, I remember that practice. Scott Stuart sang lines from “Lady Madonna” while we waited for our coach. He made it sound so funny. He only knew three lines:


Lady Madonna,
Baby at your breast
Wonders how you manage to feed the rest.


Later that summer, our team, Jim Schaffer Auto played the Eagles. I made four errors at third base that day. In one inning.


That summer Jimmy Ferris ran into John Kerns. John was in high school. John lived in Page. John boasted to Jimmy.


He and Laura spent the summer making out.