Vintage Valentine

 Local author and historian Bill Hunt submitted the following story to The News Courier in honor of Valentine’s Day.

In the winter of 1944, my older brother died and in late summer of that year, my sister married a soldier and moved away. Our family suddenly changed that year — a change I didn’t like nor understood.

The country was focused on an angry world at war. It seemed to me that joy in our lives was often lacking. As a young country boy, who had never traveled 100 miles from home, my greatest departure from reality were the cowboy movies on Saturday afternoons, always in black and white.

After the war ended, my mother said we would continue living in its shadows, but in time, we would find joy, even in our altered family. When I complained about something, she always smiled and countered: “Be patient, Billy, in time, your life will be colored with excitement.”

I didn’t know what she meant about patience, time and color, but it wasn’t long that I began to understand her advice. That was in 1947 and I was 12 years old.

A Valentine’s story

On my way to Momma’s car after school let out that windy, cold day in January, I walked alongside the old school bus. Jesse and Ray-boy banged on the bus window and motioned for me to come inside. “I’ve got a ride today,” I yelled back to them. As they turned away, they both gave me “the finger,” our “okay” and “see you later” sign.

I was excited when I plopped down on the soft seat of our new car, a Chevrolet Dad had bought a few months before on the so-called “black market.” Black Market didn’t sound good, but it didn’t matter to me and must have not mattered to Dad.

On Main Street, “After Christmas Sale” signs were plastered across most of the showcase windows, and Mom stopped at Weil’s Department Store, the fanciest of all the stores in town. After a few minutes, she made me try on a dark gray jacket and a pair of light gray pants made of wool. I hated wool because it stung so badly, but Momma said it was still January, winter wasn’t over and it would be cold enough that I could wear the new clothes on Valentine’s Day.

We had talked about Valentine’s Day a couple of times. In my mind, it was going to be a big event, the first time I would ask a girl to go with me to the Sweetheart Banquet at First Baptist Church. Her name was Murel.

Murel was one of the smartest girls in our class. I liked her, and wanted her to be my Valentine. She was as tall as me, really pretty and laughed easily. My sister suggested that I ask her soon or some other boy might get ahead of me. My sister also said I’d have to buy a corsage for Murel.

That worried me, because I was able to save only eight dollars for stacking groceries at Aunt Sook’s store during the Christmas holidays. But a bigger problem than the corsage was getting Dad to let me use Momma’s car, alone — to go on what I counted as my first real date.

For quite some time, I had come to believe that one of Dad’s great joys in life was to make Billy sweat. So, I figured I should start begging him to let me use the car around the first of February, giving him two whole weeks of pleasure. I figured also, his answer would come only minutes before time to arrive at Murel’s home.

I had lost hope the morning of the big event because it had drizzled rain for three days, giving Dad a puny reason to say “no.” But the rain ended late that afternoon and opened to a picture red sky in the west that evening.

I dressed in my new clothes. I had doused my hair with Wild Root Cream Oil and slicked it back, the suave look of Clark Gable. On the way to the kitchen to receive Dad’s answer, I stopped to see myself in front of Mom’s big Hollywood mirror.

In the soft light from the lamp on her vanity, I could see that I’d been transformed and I wondered what had happened to the kid. I felt like a man. I practiced my stance, my smile and how I thought a fellow like Clark would hand flowers to his sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. A few seconds later in the kitchen, Dad asked several questions which I answered directly with a “yes, sir,” or “no, sir,” and when his lecture about stop signs, red lights and driving too fast began, I knew then his answer was going to be “yes.”

When the car left the dirt road onto the gravel, I shoved the gear shift into second and made the wheels spin in the gravel, then slowed to a near stop and moved the shift into first, spinning the wheels again. I yelled with excitement when the car’s rear swung to the right, then to the left and the rocks flew.

In his lecture, Dad had demanded that I take the quiet back streets to cross town to Murel’s house. But that would be no fun at all, so I decided I would go down Main Street, very slowly and carefully looking for a friend or two on the busy sidewalk. After a block or so, I’d seen no one I knew, so I blew the horn and waved to anyone who looked my way.

I pulled the Chevrolet up to the walk in front of Murel’s house, parking it so I could open the door without stepping in a rain puddle. The sidewalk to her front door seemed a mile long, but that gave me time to tuck in my shirt, adjust my tie and smooth down my hair while carefully dangling the corsage from between my teeth. I knocked and waited for Murel to open the door. It wasn’t Murel, but her mother. I froze in place, and stammered, “Hello.”

“Hello, Billy,” she said. “Please, come in.”

I stepped into the living room and stretched as tall as I could, nearly on tiptoe.

“Murel will be ready in a few minutes, have a seat, please.” Before she sat down, she said: “I’m going to offer your mother to come and wait inside.”

My mind jerked. “No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m driving by myself.”

The pleasantness on her face changed into an anxious frown. “Excuse me, Billy,” she said as she perused me for a second and then walked into the dark hall at the back of the room.

I swallowed hard and popped my knuckles one after the other while listening to the muted rumblings of adult voices coming through the darkness in the hall. I figured then that Murel wouldn’t be let go with a dressed up 12-year-old boy driving alone in his mother’s car.

But then Murel’s soft laughter came to me as she stepped from the darkness into the living room. I held the rose corsage toward her and smiled. Her mother reached for it then pinned it to Murel’s gown. Murel was a princess, gracious and beautiful, and I — well, I wasn’t a prince, only a cleaned-up country boy making his first step into what would become a colorful new time in his life.

Every Valentine’s Day, I recall with great joy and have laughed with Murel on several occasions about Valentine’s Day in 1947, when we believed we were each other’s “first valentine.” Then I remember with great love and affection what my mother once told me: “Be patient, Billy, and in time your life will be colored with excitement.”

At many turning points in my growing up years, I thought of her advice and knew that my mother was my greatest Valentine of all.