Meeting Jess

  

  I I dated a boy during my Junior year of High School.   He was fun and had a good car.  I went with him to a church basketball game at Archer.  There was a tall, dark, good looking boy playing on the Archer team.  I had never seen him before.  I was seated next to Dora Burns and ask her who he was.  She said he was her cousin and would introduce me, after the game.  Jess played spectacular and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.  It was love at first sight.
     He phoned several days later and I accepted a date, for the next night.  When I told my mother who I was going out with, the next night she said “no” he is too old for you.  I didn’t have a number to call him back and I didn’t know what to do.  When Jess came to take me on the date, Mom took one look at him and said it was alright for me to go with him.  We went to a show and just talked.  He was so easy to be with.  He didn’t have much to say but I jabbered steady.
     We didn’t date long because as soon as harvest was over Jess and three other boys went to California looking for work.   They found work in a factory and all lived in a boarding house.   Jess wrote once a week   Jess bought a red convertible car that the engine was ruined.  He and his friends overhauled it and had it running by Christmas so three of them drove back for the holidays   . Can you imagine riding in a convertible in the winter, with no heater?
  

    We only had one date during the holidays.  We went to Riverside Gardens to a dance, in his Dad’s car,  when it was forty below zero.  After the dance, we went to Rigby to eat and the car froze up and wouldn’t run.  Jess phoned his Dad to come and get us.   Jess’s  Dad walked to his brother Charles house and borrowed his car and started down to Rigby to get us.  That car froze up and Jess’s Dad had to walk back home.
     Jess and I sat in the café until it closed and phoned his Dad again.  It was after 2:00 am and his Dad hadn’t come.   He didn’t have any way to come and get us so we sat in the lobby of the hotel the rest of the night.  Jess offered to buy me a hotel room but I didn’t think that was right so we half slept in the lobby and no one bothered us.  As soon as the café opened in the morning we stayed there until his Dad came around noon.
     I had no way to let my folk know where I was.   When I got home my mother didn’t even scold me, she trusted me.  There was magic that night and Jess decided not to go back to California.  He left a good easy job to stay home and sort potatoes.

They did love that convertible!!!  Was Jess handsome or what!!!