PITY THE POOR SAILOR

The year was 1952 and I was a junior in high school. Early one afternoon my good friend Miles, a neighbor boy who practically was a fixture at our house, showed up at the door with a young fellow in tow. They both were dressed in the young male's clothing of the day - Levis and white T-shirts. After introducing this fellow to me, Miles said he and Al were heading up the street to a nearby restaurant for a hamburger and coke and asked if I’d like to come along. I had not started dating yet and did not automatically look at unattached males as date possibilities, so I was delighted to come along with them.

All was well until Al mentioned that he was from Wyoming and that he was in the Navy, having just arrived in port from Subic Bay in the Philippines. I nearly fainted. In fact, I was horrified. Me, sitting in a restaurant with a sailor! Both my sister and I had been taught to stay away from sailors, that downtown Long Beach was OFF LIMITS to nice girls when the fleet was in. What would my mother think! I assumed that meant no sailors any time, anywhere. I tried to act blasé about the whole thing but inside I was mortified. A Sailor! Me with a Sailor!

We walked back home and I was hoping to scoot into the house alone and disappear into my room. But since our house was a place where my friends were always welcome, Miles invited Al in to meet my folks. Mother and Dad were very welcoming and then suggested we all go out to the patio; dad would make some coffee for us. Miles didn’t mention to my folks that Al was a sailor, and I sure wasn’t going to do it. But of course when they asked Al about himself they soon learned. After the visit, there was no reference made in our house about Al.

However, a few days later Al showed up alone on our doorstep about 4 in the afternoon, having just gotten off duty, and to my chagrin my mother invited him to stay for dinner. Of course he was delighted to have home-cooked food, and he was truly polite, very courteous and considerate. My parents were charmed. They liked him a lot. He mentioned he would be shipping out shortly for another tour of duty in Japan. I saw him several times over the next couple of weeks but do not think that we "dated", except for one movie that we walked to one evening and in which he held my hand. I do know that we never kissed. When it was time for him to return to the base, my dad offered to drive him and I was expected to go along. Al shook my father’s hand as he prepared to leave. And then he surreptitiously slipped me a letter to read after I got home.

The letter was a courteous Midwestern “love” letter, professing his besottedness with me and saying that he would write me while he was gone. He hoped I would write him in return and said when he got out of the service he would like to “court me proper.”

I was so relieved that he was gone. I didn’t want to be “courted proper.” I didn’t want to date a sailor. Shortly he sent me a white shortie-jacket made in Japan that had “tuck and roll” lapels that went down the front, just like all the other girls at school who dated sailors wore. I hid it in the back of my closet and never wore it. My folks – and Miles – were very disappointed when I wrote to tell him that I was not interested.

I always have felt a bit embarrassed about my treatment of Al, feeling that sometime, somehow I needed to make amends, or apologies, or something. All I could tell him is that I was at the age and stage where I still didn't question my parents' orders and hadn't even yet arrived at the point where I was interested in "boys." Given another two years, when my teen-aged rebellion hit hard, I might have run off with him and become a Wyoming housewife. Who knows?

I do hope that down the line he found a nice Midwestern girl to marry and lived happily ever after. He really was a nice fellow, but just not for me.