"Memories, may be beautiful and yet. What's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget." Cue Barbra Streisand and The Way We Were.
That song takes me back to Millersville State College, now known as Millersville University. The movie came out in 1973, and it struck a chord with me. The frumpy, kinda loud, intelligent girl finally gets her man, the gorgeous blonde Robert Redford. However, they don't get their happily ever after. So damn unfair! The music always brings a tear to my eye. Ah memories..... At sixty-six, I have more memories of adventures gone by, than I will ever have of adventures yet to come. Many of my fondest memories were of my college days and the people who wove that tapestry of my life. Often, I wonder what happened to these people I haven't seen in forty-four years. So, I stalk them on Facebook. The guys especially, I stalk the guys.
Yesterday, one of my FB groups shared the tune Midnight at the Oasis and I immediately shot back to Millersville, 1974, and Mark Q. Mark was an English major and in a number of my classes. He was imposing, a big handsome long-haired blonde guy in his denim overalls, a sailor's cap, and his bushy mustache. I called him Captain Kangaroo or The Walrus because of that mustache. He thought I was a good ole gal, and he laughed with me. We were good buddies. One of my dearest memories was the night before his graduation.
Mark was a good student, but a procrastinator. He had a paper to write and turn in by midnight that night if he wanted to get his diploma the next day. He asked to borrow my typewriter. I had the cream of the crop of typewriters. It was electric. It had a ribbon with correction tape built in, a luxury not everyone could afford. And all the keys worked. When he came to my dorm to pick it up, he was happy to learn that I came with it.
In his room, we worked for hours. Intense hours. But, for this English major nerd, fun hours spent exchanging ideas, debating what to write, laughing in exhaustion, and spelling difficult words out loud. English student fun. Some of the time, he'd write a section by hand and turn it over to me to type. When he was typing, I'd relax on his bed, pillows propped up against the wall as I flipped through his Playboy magazines. Then I'd go back to typing. Later, when he proofread the paper, he had to manually correct the number of times I'd typed Gertrude Skin instead of Gertrude Stine. Fun times. Maybe you had to be there?
By 11:00 pm we were finished. Then off to the library to make a copy. Time was running out. We jumped in his VW Bug and headed into Lancaster to find his professor's house. Those were the days before GPS, and we were lost. At ten minutes before midnight, we found the dark house, stuck the brown envelope with the precious paper inside his door, rang the doorbell once, and drove off high-fiving our success.
Back on campus, he walked me and my typewriter home. I carried a gift he'd given me, a lamp he'd made himself. If any of you are old enough to remember the masking tape covered Matuese bottles that were shoe-polished to look like leather then you can picture the lamp. I treasured it for years. Mark graduated. I met his parents the next day. He said many wonderful things about me and we parted for what I believed would be the last time I'd ever see him. It made me sad.
By now you're probably wondering why Midnight at the Oasis triggered that memory. Simple. That summer he told me he'd be working at a dive bar at the Jersey shore called The Oasis. A few weeks into the summer, I asked my friend Kay if she was up for an adventure. We decided to go to the Jersey shore, have fun on the beach, locate the bar, and surprise Mark. She drove and I navigated. We spent the day, and then the real fun began, finding the bar. Finally, we found it tucked away on an iffy street. It was closed. I was crushed. My crush was not there, and I knew I'd never see him again.
Driving home was bittersweet. We commiserated like girlfriends do. Eventually we were laughing and singing with the radio. And then I saw it. A Volkswagon Bug that looked exactly like Mark's. I screamed for Kay to pass it, but to slow down enough so I could get a look at the driver. It was Mark. He was as shocked to see me in the car next to him as I was to see him. I rolled down the window and hung out of it, waving and yelling. He was pumping his arm in the air, honking his horn, and waving frantically at me. Was this Kismet or what???? Then, he turned off the road to go one way, and we stayed straight to go our way. And, that was the last I saw of Mark Q.
Back to stalking guys on Facebook. I found him. He has had a wonderful life with a beautiful wife, two handsome sons, a home in Florida, and a dream job at Universal. He still had his moustache! He looked great. Except that he wasn't great. The messages on his public page were condolences to his family on his passing in May, 2018. How can someone who lives so vividly in my memory be gone?
So it's the laughter we will remember. Whenever we remember the way we were.
