Dallas, Part I

It was February of 1978. My good friend, Shorty Girtz, was flying down to Dallas, TX for two weeks. He was going to visit a friend of his named Hillary.

Hillary was a telephone salesperson, and she had coldcalled Shorty’s service station one day hoping to sell him something. The company she worked for sold all kinds of stuff. It was kind of the precursor of Amazon.com, maybe.

Shorty loved talking on the phone. He and Hillary hit it off and became friends. They talked to each other frequently, almost every day, I think. Shorty invited Hillary to come visit him, and Hillary accepted. She flew up to Minnesota in August or September of 1977, and in return, she invited Shorty to visit her in Texas.

I had met Hillary when she came up to Minnesota. She was attractive, taller than me or Shorty. Come to think of it, Shorty was taller than me. Hillary had long black hair, a decent body, and she liked to party. We hit it off. All of Shorty’s friends liked her, except Shorty’s girlfriend, Robin.

You know what? I think that’s why Robin went out with me when I started dating the Banana Split Girls in September later that year!

Shorty asked me if I wanted to go to Dallas with him. I asked him where we were going to stay. We would stay at Hillary’s apartment, so we wouldn’t have to pay for lodging. I thought about it for about five seconds and said, “Yeah, sure. I’m up for that.” I put in my two week notice at work and prepared for a trip to Dallas.

I was getting tired of being an orderly at the nursing home anyway…

I didn’t need to do a lots of preparing. I bought a half pound of weed, and called my buddy, Sergeant Raoul Sanchez, to let him know I was going to be in Texas. I got out of the Army in July of 1977.  Raoul was still in the Army, and was still stationed at Fort Sill. He would drive down to Dallas to meet me while I was in town.

I didn’t tell Shorty I was bringing a half pound of weed with me. I didn’t want him freaking out. But I had a perfect solution. I had a Mamiya Sekor 35mm camera and a metal Copal camera case. It looked like a metal briefcase–the kind spies and secret agents carried. I removed the big telephoto zoom lens, put the big baggie of weed in the big leather lens case, and locked it up. If airport security didn’t do a lots of snooping around in my camera case…

Robin drove us to the airport. She was very quiet during the trip. She was anything but happy about what her boyfriend was doing. She kissed us both goodbye, and charged me with taking care of Shorty while we were in Big D.

I was a little nervous at the airport, but just a little. I had learned a lots about transporting drugs when I was in the Army. And the first rule is Don’t panic. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much the first rule of everything.

I was pretty sure the airport security guys wouldn’t be too attentive when they checked my camera case. I mean, who smuggles dope to Texas from Minnesota? If you’re going to smuggle dope, it’s the other way around. And I was right. The security guys barely noticed us. Once we were through Security I told Shorty what I had done. I was right to keep him in the dark because he totally freaked out.

“You did what?!?” he hissed. We were walking to our gate. I turned into one of the bars and ordered a couple shots of whiskey.

“Relax. If I was going to get busted, it would’ve happened back there. We have nothing to worry about now.” I had checked my suitcase, but my camera case was my carry-on bag. I wasn’t letting it out of my sight. Or grasp.

“I can understand you bringing a little weed, but a fuckin’ half a pound! We could go to prison for that!!” Shorty said. I hailed the bartender for a couple more shots.

“You afraid of flying?” the bartender asked.

“No, he is.” I replied, nodding toward Shorty. The bartender poured him a double. I gave him a nice tip.

Our flight was uneventful. We took off from Minneapolis, where the temperature was probably -10°. We landed in Dallas where the temperature was probably in the mid-fifties. Waiting for us at DFW airport was Hillary.

And her live-in boyfriend, Michael.

“You didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend!” I whispered to Shorty.

“She didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend!”

I was having second thoughts about this whole Dallas trip, but it was a little late now. Well, if this thing fell apart, I could always call Raoul. He would drop everything and come get me if I asked him to. We could go hang out with him in Oklahoma as Plan B if we needed to…

Michael and Hillary took us to a Friday’s® near their apartment. We ate, drank a few beers and played several games of pool. I’m a mediocre pool player at best. Shorty was probably less than mediocre. But we played pool and told jokes, it was a good ice breaker.

Michael was a carpet layer. The company he worked for was right next to Hillary’s office. That’s how they met. Michael was a tall, skinny guy with long curly black hair. He was a handsome guy. He had moved in with Hillary about one month earlier, after Hillary had broken up with her previous boyfriend, George.

I didn’t know anything about Hillary’s complicated lovelife, nor was I much interested in hearing about it. Shorty knew all about George from the almost daily telephone conversations he had with Hillary, and he knew all about their acrimonious break up. However, he didn’t know that Hillary had hooked up with Michael. Nor did he know the true depth of hatred that existed between Hillary and George.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the chatter. I wasn’t too wild about the live-in boyfriend thing. I mean, Michael seemed like a decent guy and all. Maybe this vacation thing was probably going to be okay. At least we weren’t freezing our asses off in Minnesota…

We eventually went to Hillary and Michael’s apartment. It was in a new-ish complex designed for young urban professionals. It was filled with hundreds of singles, and at least half of them were women. The apartment we would all call home for the next two weeks was on the sixth floor.

I really liked the whole lots of single women thing, but…  I still wasn’t sure about this situation.

Once in the apartment, I opened my camera case and produced a very large baggie of weed.

“Wanna get high?” I asked our hosts.

“I wasn’t too sure about this thing when Hillary told me about it, but I think this is gonna work out okay.” Michael said. He had a big ol’ Texas sized grin on his face.

I was glad to hear I wasn’t the only one that thought this was kind of a fucked up mess, but I didn’t say anything. I did breathe a sigh of relief, and smiled at Shorty and winked.

I had just hit a grand slam.

We had gotten through that mess.

There were so many more to follow.

Dancing in September

Before I became a married guy, I was a single guy. I dated a lots of girls before I got married, generally one at time, but in September of 1978, I dated three girls at once.

Pat Levinski was a blonde. Sandy Evan was a brunette. Robin Wolfe was a redhead. Put ’em all together and you have a banana split. They were all living in Rice, MN, which is a small town about halfway between Little Falls and St Cloud on Highway 10.

There’s a saying that goes, If nobody knows the trouble you’ve seen, you’re not from a small town. I should’ve remembered that. In retrospect, I’m surprised now that none of them told the others who they were going out with back then.

My best friend at the time was Shorty Girtz. He was the owner/operator of a gas station in downtown Rice. Shorty’s station was the de facto gathering place of all young potheads living in the Rice area, and that’s where I met my three girlfriends.

I know I’ve said I was somewhat blithe of scruple prior to becoming a nurse, and there’s nothing that illustrates that fact as clearly as this story. Pat and Sandy were best friends, and my cousin, Danny W. Long, was kind of dating Sandy. Robin was a friend of theirs, but more importantly, she was dating my very good friend, Shorty. I had no moral conflict about dating all of them, not even Robin. Or Sandy. And maybe I wasn’t the only one with questionable ethics…

Small World Factoid: another one of my very good friends, Don Nelson, also dated Robin. Just not at the same time Shorty and I did. Well, not that I know of anyhow…

On the weekends, I liked to go out to the Little Rock Ballroom, just outside of Rice. It was set on Little Rock Lake, hence the name. They served cheap beer, they had live bands on Friday and Saturday nights, and the largest dancefloor in Central Minnesota. I loved drinking and dancing a lots back then. So did Pat and Sandy, and they could dance. I was a pretty good dancing guy back then, but those girls put me to shame.

I fell in love with both of them. Robin was a good dancer, but I think what drew me to her was her sophistication. She was easily the classiest woman in Rice.

I asked Pat out first. I probably took her to a movie in St Cloud. Then I asked out Sandy, and I probably took her to a different movie. And then I took Robin to yet another movie. There was a lots of hugging and kissing afterwards, but none of my relationships with the Banana Split Girls would progress to the level of the couple in the car in the woods that Don and I saw on our excellent canoeing adventure.

For roughly three and a half weeks I went out with one of my three girlfriends every night, or every other night. Even I needed to sleep every now and then. A movie, dinner and a movie, drinks and dinner, dancing and drinks, just drinks. Whatever they were up for, so was I. I was living the high life with a different gorgeous gal almost every night. I was pretty sure I was in heaven.

I went to work everyday at 6:00 AM. I put in my eight hours, then I’d go home and call my girls to see what they were up to, shuffle the deck and cut the cards, and the winner is…  We’d make plans for the evening, and away we would go.

There was only one downside that I clearly remember. My playboy lifestyle I was exhausting. I probably wouldn’t be that tired again until my wife became chronically ill and I lived at two hospitals.

I’m thinking now I also had to be broke because all that wining and dining and movies and gasoline had to be expensive, even at 1970’s prices. I was working as a long distance operator at the phone company in Little Falls, so I certainly wasn’t making a six figure salary. Looking back, I figure I was maybe making around five to six grand a year.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. So the saying goes. I found a way. There’s another saying, All good things must end. And so it was with me and the Banana Split Girls.

It was near the end of that magical month of September. I had gone out with Robin. I don’t remember where we went, or what we did. I was taking Robin home, and we decided to drop in at one of the greasy spoon dining places in Rice–it doesn’t seem fair to call it a restaurant–to get something to eat so we’d have a lots of energy for hugging and kissing.

We had eaten our entrees and were sharing dessert. Robin wanted a piece of pie. She must have had a sweet tooth craving or something. And guess who walked in? Pat and Sandy!

They took one look at me, one look at Robin, and turned around and walked out. And that was how my brief career as a player in the dating scene in Rice came to an end. Neither of them would go out with me again. Neither would Robin, for that matter. She decided she couldn’t date two guys that also happened to be good friends, and she chose Shorty over me.

At the time, I was probably a little bummed out that my playboy lifestyle came to such an abrupt end, but I was also relieved. I could go back to drinking beer with my guy buddies, who didn’t expect me to buy them all their drinks, and buy them dinner.

And I could go back to sleeping again at night. In some ways, that was the most fortuitous piece of pie I’ve ever had in my life.