Walking Home

When I was a freshman at Woodruff High School, we lived on North Jefferson and I walked the 10 or so blocks to and from school. On the way home, I often encountered three grade school aged kids, a boy and two girls returning home from Greely Grade School which right across the street from our apartment house. The smallest girl was always walking up in the grass.

I was shy at the time (I’ve gotten over that, thank goodness), and didn’t really know how to handle saying ‘hi’ every time we met, so often I would cross the street and walk down the other side so I didn’t have to say hello. Seems silly now, but that’s how it was. During my sophomore year we moved  to Dechman Street so I no longer met them when I was walking home.

Occasionally I’d see a dark-haired, older boy going into the house where the three kids lived, but I merely noted the fact and didn’t think any more about it.

Fast-forward a year.

Ronnie Marshall was going to run for school president and he noticed that I was always drawing, so he thought I might be an addition to his campaign committee. The time of the first meeting arrived (February 1954), and Buddy Curtis was to pick me up and take me to another committee member’s house; I think she lived on North Madison across from the Episcopal Church. Someday I’m going to remember to drive down that street and see if my memory is right or if it’s all haywire.

On the way, Buddy was to pick up some boy who was playing in the Woodruff High Jazz Band. There was another boy in the pick-up truck, but I can’t remember who he was. He and Buddy kept talking about how this guy they were to pick up was so funny!

We waited just awhile and out came a guy from the school, and we four (in the front seat of a pick-up) headed the few blocks to the meeting place. All evening I noticed the “funny” boy, and he was indeed funny. Kept everyone in stitches.

I looked for him at school the next week, but didn’t see him. The next meeting of the committee came, and we managed to be sitting next to each other all evening and in the back of the pick-up on the way to my house.

Fast forward again.

The funny fellow turned out to be Jim Fyke. We’ve been married 54 years now, and he still keeps me in stitches.

The three kids I met on Madison Street were his brother and sisters, Gary, Mary Ellen and Barbara. The boy entering the house was probably him.

Soon I was a frequent visitor at 1209 NE Madison. We dated for 5 years before we could afford to get married.

Fast forward yet again.

At the gathering of the five Fyke siblings in June 2013, Barbara (the youngest, the one who walked in the grass) said that the three of them often talked about the pretty girl they met on the street. She and Mary Ellen noticed that the girl had a leather purse! And a camelhair coat! And they wondered if she were nice or snooty. I had no idea they even noticed me, let alone remembered so many details.

You know, I can never tell teen agers that their high school loves are just passing infatuations, because Jim and I fell in love when we were just 17 and 15, and I can’t imagine having lived the last 59 years (54 married, 5 dating) without him.

Tina and the Electric Plug

   At our recent Fyke family gathering, the five ‘kids’ were reminiscing about their youthful experiences. Barbara (the youngest) said her mother was the very best at instilling fear in her. She said, “She had me so scared of electrical plugs that all she had to do was point one at me and I thought killing electricity was going to jump out of those two prongs and strike me!”

   Then Harvey added that they were darned lucky to have had a mother. He told of a time when he was about 3 or 4, which must have been about 1940---he heard the story from one of his parents much later. They lived in an apartment in Peoria. It had limited electricity, and the only place to plug in the electric iron was into an outlet hanging on a cord from the ceiling.

   One afternoon Willis came home to a completely dark house. He asked what happened, and Tina just said that the lights went out. He went to the basement and put in some new fuses, and all was fine. Except that he saw a table knife with a very blackened tip lying on the table. He quizzed Tina on it and learned that she couldn’t get the iron’s plug out of the socket, so she stuck the knife in there to pry the two apart.

   Then Jim remembered seeing that knife around for years and years, and suddenly all their memories coalesced and they had the whole picture, and Barbara finally learned why Tina frightened her so about electric plugs.