Men, on the other hand, are hunters. We go out, see the first thing that resembles
what we want, bag it and go home. Go in
and get out, take it home, don’t think twice, nice and simple.
From the first date with Vicki, I saw what I wanted and
that was it for me. It took her a little
longer. After our first informal
meeting at the Holiday House, we had four more incredible dates over the next
several weekends. So I guess it was
inevitable that I would receive an invitation to a family dinner at her
home. Though somewhat nervous, I really
couldn’t wait. Sunday was another really
hot day for the first week in October.
It was about 95 degrees with 98 % humidity. I arrived on time and Vicki answered the
door. The first thing I noticed was the
wonderfully delicious smells that came through the front door. ‘Good home cooking was on the way’, I
thought. Inside I met Vicki’s mother,
Ruby, and her father, Dan. I liked Ruby right
from the start. She had the cutest, thick
Texas accent and was friendly and welcoming.
I could tell there was hardly ever a stranger in her home, especially
someone invited there by any of her four children. It also occurred to me that she must be over
40 and, if her daughter took after her, Vicki was going to be a very beautiful
woman for a very long time. Dan was a big man with huge hands and thick
fingers. By his handshake I could tell
that years of wielding a hawk and trowel, the tools of the plasterer’s trade,
had made a very powerful man out of him.
Although it struck me he had a very gentle disposition.
The Matthews house was a modest structure with a small
combination living room and dining room.
It was neat and clean but the furniture looked a little warn and the
walls were ready for another coat of paint.
Oh, and the house had no air conditioning. The only method of temperature control was a
huge “swamp cooler” hung in the living room window on the side of the
house.
Now, since the advent of electric air conditioning,
evaporative coolers were pretty much a thing of the past. I thought the best chance of seeing one might
be in a small, backwoods house in Mississippi or Alabama, possibly, but not in
a town the size of Austin. The principle
of a swamp cooler is to constantly run water over a filter media, usually Tectum,
while a fan pulls air over the surface.
The evaporation of the water cools the air, slightly, and the fan then
picks up the moisture laden air and funnels it into the house. Few moving parts, inexpensive, albeit,
somewhat crude. There was one major
drawback, however, which I noticed the second I was offered a seat on the
sofa.
The entire piece of furniture was covered with
water. I’m not talking just damp here, I
mean it was wet. At first I thought I
must have sat in something which had gotten spilled by one of the kid’s moments
before I walked in the door. Then I
realized it was the swamp cooler.
Everything in the room was wet and moisture hung in the air almost like
a thick invisible fog. After a few
minutes, it was soaking into my pants and through my shirt back. No one seemed to notice but me so I just
tried to put it out of my mind.
The conversation was going quite smoothly, I
thought. Ruby was doing most of the
talking, asking me about school, my major, my jobs, my parents. She was actually a skilled inquisitor without
seeming like one. Just as I was
explaining about my parents living in Waco and how we got there from Southern
California, a medium-sized black poodle came racing into the room and leapt up
in my lap. “Twinkle”, Ruby scolded the
playful dog, “Get down from there”. I
was about to say it was alright and I love dogs but then it hit me like a
baseball bat between the eyes. What the hell was this awful odor? It smelled like a cross between rotten eggs
and a bad fart. ‘What is wrong with this
dog?!?’ I thought as I returned the dogs advances by scratching him behind the
ear while trying not to puke.
“Get down, Twinkle”, Vicki commanded in a tone of voice I
had not heard from her before. If I was
a dog, I would have jumped down instantly just like Twinkle did. Vicki leaned over to me and in a low voice,
almost like she didn’t want to embarrass the dog, said, “He’s got a hormonal
problem”. ‘Thank, God’, I thought,
‘better that than something had crawled up inside of him and died’.
I looked down at my light yellow shirt and it was covered
with short curly black hairs. 'Great,' I
thought, 'he smells bad and he sheds.'
This dog didn’t have a lot going for him. I also noticed that now the front of my shirt
was damp because the swamp cooler had coated the dog too. I wondered to myself if this was what it was
like living in the Everglades.
My concentration was broken by the entrance of Vicki’s
three siblings. I was introduced to Ruth
Evelyn first. “Everyone calls me
Ruthie”, she said. She was thin and
attractive and quiet. Then there was
David. He was a strapping boy with a
burr haircut and obviously in that awkward age of early adolescence where his
feet were too big for his body. He shook
my hand firmly though and then didn’t take his eyes off of me the rest of the
afternoon. He was a boy of few words
except when the opportunity presented itself to tease his little sister. Patricia was a really cute little blonde girl
who listened attentively and was very well behaved unless David was teasing
her. Typical family.
The food was amazing.
Fried chicken with country gravy, about ten pounds of mash potatoes,
with a stick of butter melting on top, black-eyed peas cooked with bone-in ham,
green beans cooked with chunks of thick-sliced bacon, a wonderful Jell-O and
whipped cream type salad and big glasses of ice tea. Then out came the dessert. It was a huge slice of homemade apple pie (my
favorite) with Blue Bell vanilla ice cream.
There were two pies. I had a
small piece of the chocolate cream pie too.
It was one of the best meals I had eaten in my life and sure as heck
beat my usual poor student diet. I was
so stuffed. I kept thinking a woman who
can cook this good most certainly would have taught her daughter everything she
knows.
After the fine meal, Vicki and I took a little drive out
around south Austin, enjoying the gorgeous day and ignoring the heat. I complimented her family and the meal and
everything else I could think of. I
wanted this girl to like me. No, I
wanted this girl to love me.
We parked outside her house for about an hour, listening
to the radio. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by
the Beach Boys and “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles confirmed we loved the same
kind of music. She had to go to work
early the next day and I had to pay serious attention to the fall
semester. I just wanted to be around
her, talk to her, smell her, touch her and feel her touch for as long and as
often as I could. We kissed very tenderly
and I walked her to the door. “Can I see
you next weekend?”, I asked.
“I would love that”, she said. “LOVE THAT”, again! A tingle of joy went up my spine and I
thought this must be what love is like.
As I drove away headed back to campus, I said to myself
and knew in my heart, this would be the
girl I would marry. But women shop
differently than men.
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