CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE—POST PUBERTY OR ADVENTURES IN UNCERTAINLAND

   

Seal copied from Wikipedia.

     

1957 Shepherd yearbook photo and high school comment.

     Prior to puberty my relationship with girls was awkward. That's just a fact. Post puberty my relationship with girls got more awkward or uncertain. That's an undeniable fact too. It was all so confusing. I mean that I was beginning to find girls attractive. It seemed to me that it was much easier to tease or insult a girl than to court and woo her properly. Before puberty I used to tell a girl she was too fat, or too skinny, or that she gave off the distinct odor of dogs or cats. I used to pull a girl's hair, too. Teasing and annoyance were my tools of comedy and attention-getting. First I practiced these words and actions on my sisters at home and then I practiced with the girls riding on the school bus. My sister Eustelle bore the brunt of it. Eustelle was U-smell in my lexicon. Peggy was Pig-head. I know, I know, unforgivable. Mean boy. Exile him to Siberia. (My guess is that the Russians wouldn't want him either.)

     Why the confession? The arrival of puberty changed me. Something was happening that I could not understand. When I was twelve years old I told Janet Malzo that she was too fat. I knew that I hurt her but I did not care. Her family lived in a house between my house at 253 Sprout Brook Road and Al Lazar’s house at 301 Sprout Brook Road. When Janet was eighteen years old she had lost the extra weight and she was absolutely beautiful. But she never forgot my hurtful words and I would never ever be a close friend. The door to her heart was closed to me and many others until Stanley Esposito opened it. 

     By the way, Janet and Stanley witnessed my five-mile, non-stop swim from inlet bridge to dam and back again, several round trips, in Cortlandt Lake in the summer of 1957. I could see them sitting together on the beach whenever I lifted an arm and took a deep breath. They stayed for the entire event.

     Graduating from Assumption School in Peekskill and enrolling in Archbishop Stepinac H. S. in White Plains was a complicated transition. It pulled me away from many of my regular friends who attended public school at Lakeland. It also cost my family $15 each month for tuition and $15 each month for transportation. That was costly to my family. It was my mother's idea to continue my education in a Catholic high school, and she took responsibility for financing it. I was enrolled at Stepinac in 1954. My mother took a job paying $35/week at Reader's Digest in Pleasantville, N. Y. Later Rose Cillis and Beatrice "Sis" Holmes joined her. They car-pooled.

     My first girlfriend of consequence was Miss Jane McGee, who with her family lived on Locust Ave. in the town of Cortlandt. She was an honor student at Assumption School. We got to be friends in the eighth grade, and puppy-love took over in the ninth grade. We rode the same school bus and we spoke on the phone after we got home from school. Correction. She spoke. For the most part I was tongue-tied. For the first time in my life words deserted me and fear and shyness took over—a sure sign that I was in uncertainland. She was pretty, she was intelligent, and as time went by she obtained her driver's license and the privilege to drive the family car. It was a Nash or Hudson with convenient fold-down seats. Before you begin to make any assumptions, know that we never experienced misadventure in the back seat of that car. The boys I knew always said it was the perfect car to park at a drive-in movie. Jane enrolled in Ladycliff Academy when I enrolled at Stepinac H. S. We discontinued our relationship soon after. To this day I remember her with appreciation and fondness.

     Barbara Clune was my next girlfriend. We knew each other from our school bus days in elementary school. The relationship didn't blossom until she was fourteen and I was sixteen years old. Barbara and her family lived on Lafayette Ave., off Crompound Road, a mile or so east of Peekskill but five miles from my house in Continental Village. Stepinac H. S. classmate Robert Clores also lived in her neighborhood. Barbara and I dated for over a year. I remember running all the way to her house, up and down Gallows Hill Road and up and down Locust Ave., then on Crompound Road and up Lafayette Ave. After visiting at her house I ran back home again. I did not jog. The entire run each way was a rapid non-stop effort. I ran between the two homes in falling snow on weekends too. I got to know her mother and father and her younger sister Janet. They were good people. The family was Irish Catholic.

     Barbara and I had much in common. We enjoyed the same popular music and activities. She especially enjoyed the singing of Elvis Presley. A major drawback in our relationship was the lack of transportation. I did not have a car or a driver's license in 1955. In 1957 I bought a car (too late) which I later sold to George Perry. Barbara and I relied on our parents for some of our transport needs. But this lack of transportation and my absence in the summer of 1956, during which I was employed as a camp counselor at a Catholic Youth Organization summer camp near Lake Peekskill, became a major factor in Barbara's decision to leave me for another boy.

     The breakup wasn't easy for me. Her new boyfriend, Frank Tucceri, was also a classmate of mine at Stepinac H. S. He had a new car and a driver's license. His car was a white Cadillac convertible, owned by his father, a lawyer who practiced in Peekskill, N. Y. This turn of events ended my friendship with Barbara and Frank. Enter song lyrics: "Breaking up is hard to do." Despite the unsettling emotions of the breakup, I recall with admiration her pretty eyes and spirited laughter during the happy times when we were friends.

    At this time in the narrative I wish to apologize to my classmate, Frank Tucceri, for the payback, knockdown punch to his stomach in a boys' toilet room at Archbishop Stepinac H. S. in the spring of 1957.