1976

The Dancer

I continued taking modern dance classes at the dance studio and Cathy, the girl who I left alone that night at the dance performance in West Palm Beach, continued to show interest in me so I finally asked her out on a date, and she readily said yes. The following Friday evening after work I picked her up at her home and we went to some inexpensive restaurant for dinner.  The dinner and her company was pleasant but was to quickly over.  I paid the check and as we were leaving I asked her if she would like to do something else. I had checked the movie schedule out at the two theaters in town and suggested we might go see a movie but her reply was, “Why don’t we go to your place.”   Well, I didn’t expect that, but there was a problem, Elizabeth was staying at my place. 

By this time my relationship with Elizabeth was mostly over, she still stayed at my place, well most of the time, but she had her own room and I seldom saw her, but still I wasn’t sure about bringing another girl home with me. I explained to her that I lived a good half hour drive out in the country, but her answer to that was, “That’s okay, she could stay the night.”   How could I say no?   So we got into my Chevy van and drove to my place.  As a drove out Williston Road, then turned off on a smaller side road than onto the then dirt road to the old house, I was hoping that Elizabeth wouldn’t be there but as I pulled up to the house her Volkswagen van was there. 

As I parked, I told Cathy to give me a minute, that I had a roommate and wanted to go in first and let her know that I was bringing someone in.  She said okay, and I got out I could only imagine what Cathy was thinking, guy brings girl home, drives her way out into the country and leaves her in a dark van. 

I go inside and find Elizabeth in the kitchen sitting at the kitchen table and I tell her that I have brought a girl home and perhaps she could stay in her room.   She looked at me with a sad, disappointed, and perhaps a bit angry look and without saying a word, got up and went to her room.  I went back outside and got Cathy and brought he into  the house and we went to my bedroom and soon were undressing and in bed together when I heard the unmistakable sound of  Volkswagen van starting and driving away, Elizabeth had left.  Things were progressing well, I was more than ready, when Cathy stops and says to me that she needs to put in her birth control.  I wasn’t sure what she meant and she explained she used a diaphragm and I watched as she inserted it.  I found it quite interesting, I had never seen such a thing before, it did dampen the moment but not for long.

We lay in bed afterwards and Cathy soon fell asleep, but I laid there awake a while expecting to hear the sound of Elizabeth’s Volkswagen van returning but never did and I too eventually fell asleep.  The next morning we got up and I made scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast then drove Cathy back to her house in town. 

After that, Elizabeth still came to the house but always seem to avoid me.  I always remember she came home late one night and got up and left early the next morning.  I heard her come and go but didn’t see her.  When I got up the next morning and opened the refrigerator to get some orange juice, there was a white trash bag on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator.  Puzzled as to what it was, I looked inside and to my surprise there was a dead racoon.  I closed it back up, finished breakfast and I went to work.  That evening when I got home, there next to the back door was a board with the skinned racoon hide nailed to it to dry.  

The Spring Quarter started at the end of March, and I signed up for CIS-406, Data Processing Languages. For the class I wrote a couple of small programs in the COBOL programming language that was popular at the time for business applications.  It was the one and only time I programed in COBOL.