Chapter 31: Road Trip

It was our last date of the semester. Finals were over and most of us had already taken off. I was sticking around for another week before heading out. I definitely wasn’t heading back to the old homestead! Before he went home, Joe Bradley and I boxed up all our shit and drove it over to Kegs. It had taken us several trips, but our boxes were now all moved in. I would be in the room before he was, so I told him I would sort it out at some point.

It was a last date in several ways. Marilyn was heading home tomorrow also, but she wasn’t coming back to Saint Rose in the fall. Much like before, she had flunked out. It wasn’t that Marilyn was dumb. She wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t a genius, but she wasn’t stupid. However, Saint Rose was a bad mix for her. She needed the structure and discipline of family to keep her focused, and she certainly wasn’t getting that in Albany.

Tomorrow her parents were coming to pick her up and take her and her possessions home. She would start over again in the fall at Mohawk Valley Community College. She could apply her credits from Saint Rose, but since I don’t think she passed a single course all year long, nothing would apply. I didn’t tell her I knew that, but I let her put as good a face on it as she could. Regardless, Marilyn was quite depressed about it, and the fact that she felt we were breaking up and would never see each other again had her on the verge of tears.

I had felt that the first time around as well. I had taken her out to dinner and afterwards had cried myself to sleep. Then, we started writing each other over the summer, and I took the train from Albany to Utica in the fall and we figured out how to see each other. The rest was history or would be history.

I picked her up outside her dorm about seven or so. I had stressed that I wanted to take her to a nice restaurant, and I was going to wear a suit, so she needed to dress nicely as well. A dress and heels would look good on her. It was a beautiful spring day, dry and warm, and I was all smiles when I saw her. She had on a red and black knee-length dress with a U-shaped neckline that showed just the tops of her breasts and was tight enough through the waist with a slight flair at the thighs, along with hose and medium high heels. She looked like she was on the edge of crying but trying to make a brave go of it.

“My God! You look fantastic!” I told her. “I won’t be able to eat; I’ll be too busy fighting off the other men in the restaurant!”

She smiled at that. “This is all right?” she asked. Marilyn really wasn’t a very fancy girl, and her mother wouldn’t have been helpful at all, even if she had asked her for help.

“Turn around,” I said, twiddling my fingers in a circular motion. Marilyn slowly pirouetted and I whistled appreciatively. Our daughter Maggie really had been correct, in her utterly tactless way; Marilyn was hot! “You are gorgeous!” If we had gotten that far already, I would have taken her inside and ravished her a time or two before we went to dinner.

But we hadn’t gotten that far yet. This was, without a doubt, the longest period I had gone celibate since I lost my cherry to Shelley Talbot. Marilyn, however, was very Catholic, and she had told me once the difference between a good girl and a nice girl. ‘A good girl goes home and goes to bed, and a nice girl goes to bed and goes home!’ Marilyn was going to be a good girl, right up to her wedding day, and told me so in no uncertain terms. Marilyn also got extremely turned on when we were making out, as much now as before, and even if Marilyn’s mouth was saying ‘No, no, no!’, her body was screaming ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ Early in the fall I finally popped her cherry, and I was hard at work on moving the timetable forward.

“Are you sure I can’t convince you that maybe we should head back to my dorm, so that tomorrow I can serve you breakfast in bed? Wouldn’t that count as taking you out for a meal?” I teased.

Marilyn blushed but smiled. Wagging her finger at me, she said, “Forget it!”

“Well, it seems like a good idea to me, but okay, if you’d rather have dinner...” I gave her a quick kiss and then opened the door and led her outside. We held hands on the way to the Galaxie, and I opened the door for her. I went around and climbed behind the wheel, and then whistled at her again. Her dress had ridden up slightly and her legs looked spectacular! Marilyn simply giggled and tugged her dress down a touch and had me start the car.

I was taking her to L’Auberge that night, a very fancy French restaurant in Albany. It was also very expensive. On the first trip through, my mother had been visiting us once when we were living in Clifton Park, and she took us to dinner there. Afterwards, when she saw the bill, she turned green and said she was going to have to tell Dad when he was in a good mood. I suspected something sexually exotic would be involved. As it was, I fully expected the bill to be at least $100. Considering that this was 1974, and that was a month’s room and board at Kegs, L’Auberge was not where I routinely dined.

It wasn’t more than a few minutes away in downtown Albany, a stately old home turned restaurant. It was a place frequently used by businessmen and lobbyists to wine and dine politicians, and we were younger than the usual crowd. Still, I had made reservations, and we were dressed appropriately, and I knew how to handle myself, even if Marilyn felt a little self-conscious. Before I locked my car, I reached into the back seat and pulled out a gift-wrapped box.

“What is that?” asked Marilyn once she saw me carrying something.

“That is for you, but not until we get inside,” I said, smiling.

“Tell me!”

It was my turn to waggle a finger. “Inside!” She stuck her tongue out at me, but then scampered towards the door when I moved to swat her rear with the box.

Once we were seated, I set the box on the side of the table. “We’ll get to that in a moment.” Just then, our waiter came up and we ordered drinks, with me ordering a gin and tonic and Marilyn getting something sweet and silly. Then I picked up the box.

“I can read minds,” I said, “and right now I can read yours perfectly.”

“Oh? So, what am I thinking?” she asked.

I held a hand up to my temple and closed my eyes. “Well, actually, there’s two things.” I paused dramatically and closed my eyes again. “The first thing, well, Marilyn, that’s illegal in this state, and certainly won’t get you into heaven!”

“CARLING!” she shrieked quietly.

“And the second is that you’re worried you’ll never see me again, and you’ve fallen hopelessly in love with me.” I smiled at that. Marilyn’s face screwed up and her eyes started to water. I had said the wrong thing. I reached out and patted her hand. “Marilyn, it’s all right. I love you, too, and we’ll certainly see each other in the future.”

She stared at me. “What did you say?”

“I said I love you. I didn’t think you’d be so unhappy as to cry about that.” I smiled and continued holding her hand.

“Oh, God!” She started to blubber, and I just lifted her hand and kissed her palm.

I also reached into my pocket and handed her my handkerchief. “I love you,” I repeated quietly.

Marilyn had happy tears in her eyes, and she grabbed my hankie and started wiping her eyes. Of course, then she had to honk her nose into it, so I decided to let her keep it as a souvenir.

“Now, stop worrying so much. This is not the end, and we are going to keep seeing each other and we’re going to talk about that tonight. What? Were you worried I was going to break up with you tonight?” I asked, smiling.

“Well...”

“Honey, if I was going to break up with you, I wouldn’t do it at these prices. I’d take you to a HoJo’s and go Dutch!”

Marilyn blushed. “So, what’s that?” she asked, pointing at the box.

“Here, it’s for you.” I handed her the gift.

She tore the wrapping paper off the box. Inside was a Polaroid SX-70 instant camera, a state-of-the-art (at the time) instant camera with a single lens reflex action. You took a picture and within seconds the film pack spit out a picture that would develop in your hands inside of five minutes. “What ... why...”, she asked curiously.

I handed her another couple of film packs from a pocket. “I am going to take pictures of you tonight before we split up and keep them with me over the summer. That way I won’t forget you.”

She smiled at me. “You want to take pictures of me? Like what?”

“Well, high heels at one end, and a smile at the other. The middle is kind of optional.”

“Carling!” she said with a blushing smile.

“Oh, all right. A fellow can dream, can’t he?”

I simply waggled my eyebrows at her, and she blushed some more. I opened the box up and showed her how to load a film pack, and then I took a quick picture of her, and showed her how it developed. The flash attracted some attention, which embarrassed her a touch, but nobody seemed to mind a boyfriend taking pictures of a pretty girl. I folded it back up and put it back in the box to the side. “I’ll take a few more after dinner. Then later, when you get back to the dorm, you go upstairs and put on a bikini and come down...”

“CARL!”

“It was worth a try!”

The waiter brought our drinks, and we looked over the menu and I reviewed the wine list. I decided to splurge on a nice bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. In just a few days I was going to be dining with some people a whole lot less decorative than Marilyn.

“I still can’t believe you’re going across the country next week,” she told me.

“It’ll be fun. You should come along!”

“No way! I think you’re just going to chase girls and drink and smoke pot,” she said, smiling.

“No on one, yes on two and three,” I said with a shrug.

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“This is my only chance to do this. My next two summers I’ll be camping with the Army.” I told her.

“I still can’t believe you’re going into the Army.”

I shrugged. “It’s not like I have a choice. Uncle Sam is paying for college for me, and he’s looking for some payback. If my father could do it during World War II and my grandfather could do it during World War I, I guess I can survive it now. At least nobody’s shooting at us at the moment.”

We talked some more about my joining the army, and how ROTC worked, and also about my family’s military tradition. This took us through a fair bit of dinner, and I took this as an opportunity to toss a new idea into the mix. “After I get back, let’s go to Maryland. I can take you to see my folks for a few days, and then we can go to the beach.”

“The beach? You live near the beach?”

I shook my head. “No. Several hours away, in fact. Here’s my suggestion. I’ll get two rooms at a place in Ocean City. You’ll have your own room. I know you well enough for that.” Marilyn looked relieved at that. “We’ll stay at my folks’ for a few days and then drive to the beach. Take a week or two at the beach and then come back up to New York for the fall.”

Marilyn was looking intrigued, so I told her all the positive ideas about meeting my parents and family, which are always important to a woman. I also stressed the idea of sun and sand and warm, warm water. You just don’t get that in Utica. By the time dessert arrived she had agreed.

I’d warn her about Hamilton some other time, like after she got to Lutherville. I would put up with him for a few days for Marilyn’s sake, so my family could meet her. Besides, she’d never believe my stories about my family without meeting them first.

After dinner I had her pose a bit in the lobby, and I took a few more pictures. When we got back to the dorm, I asked her again to change into a bikini, but she declined again. I grabbed my shots of her and tucked them in a pocket, and gave her the camera, and then I gave her a big kiss and left.

The next day I spent the morning on the phone long distance to the Hilton Hotel in Ocean City, Maryland. My parents preferred to visit Rehoboth Beach, which is in southern Delaware, about half an hour north of Ocean City. Rehoboth is a smaller and quieter town than Ocean City. Me, I preferred a little glitz and glamour on my vacations. The Hilton is near the Boardwalk, and I could afford it. Although the economy wasn’t too happy about it, I had ridden the oil shock up and down, and was now invested in some stocks that did well under these conditions. I was worth about $1.5 million now, plus the $2.47 my atoms were supposed to be worth. I was able to reserve a large suite with two bedrooms (I did tell her she would have her own room, just not what type of room) for two weeks starting a week after I got back. I also specified that I would probably show up late in the first week, but I wasn’t sure when, and let them bill it to my American Express card, which they were quite happy to do.

After that, it was just necessary to wait a couple of days for Ricky and Marty to finish with the semester. Both guys were juniors and had to finish finals, but after that, they were free for the summer. Marty never went home anyway but stayed at school and lived in the house. Ricky, on the other hand, was in ROTC, and would normally have gone to do his second summer at training, but he had deferred it until after graduation. He had the summer free, too. They were planning a road trip across the country. When I asked them what they were up to, they invited me along. I was planning on living at the house and goofing off. I jumped at the chance to join them!

The general plan was that we would travel across the country, spending the nights at various Kegs chapter houses around the country. Kappa Gamma Sigma was a national fraternity, with dozens of chapters all across the U.S. It was not at all unheard of for brothers to show up at another house, out of the blue. Every year we would get a few people passing through from other colleges, who would be invited in for anywhere from a night to a few days. We’d let them sleep in their sleeping bags in the formal room, mooch some meals with us, share some beer and weed, and otherwise goof off. Why anybody in their right mind would visit Troy was an entirely different question. The usual answer was they were on their way through to somewhere a whole lot more interesting.

Marty, Ricky, and I were going to return the favor. We all tossed sleeping bags and duffel bags into the trunk of Marty’s 1970 Buick LeSabre. That thing was just a beast of a car! I think it was bigger than my Galaxie, with a bigger engine, and generally roomier. Of course, while the Galaxie needed an oil well in the back yard to feed it, this thing needed two!

We never even considered Ricky’s car, an ancient VW Beetle. None of us was sure it would make it to the state line, let alone across the country.

Ricky had a map of the United States with chapter houses marked with red dots, and Marty had gotten from the national headquarters a list of addresses for the chapter houses. Our tentative route had us going through Cleveland and then on to Chicago. From Chicago we wanted to go to St. Louis, but after that we weren’t sure. The idea was to go on a northerly route on the way west, and then come back on a southerly swing. Most of the chapter houses were either on the east coast, California, or the south. North and west of St. Louis was a bit limited.

I had a Kodak Instamatic camera with a few spare rolls of film, and before we set out, I got Jack Jones to take a few shots of us in front of the Buick. I got razzed by the other guys but screw it. They’d thank me someday.

The first stop was Cleveland, and the initial theory had been that we would drive on the US and state roads, not on the highways. We’d get a chance to see the real America, not just concrete. After about five hours on Route 5 going west through every Podunk little town in central New York, we said “Fuck this shit!” There’s a reason they built the Interstate system! At the pace we were going, we’d have hit the Pacific just in time to return to school - next year! We got onto the Thruway around Rochester and moved it up to the speed limit. We got to the chapter house at Case Western Reserve about eight in the evening.

I suppose Cleveland is a nice place. Certainly, people live there. Still, you really have to wonder about a city where the river tends to catch fire. I mean really, you use water to put out the fire, not to start one! The chapter house was not an auspicious start to the trip. There were two guys living there, and we met one as we pulled in the parking lot, and he was leaving. “Hi, can I help you?”

Ricky flashed a smile at the guy. “Hey, how you doing? We’re from RPI in Troy, New York. Any chance we can spend the night?” He had on a Kegs shirt, so the guy knew we were brothers.

“Yeah, sure. Welcome. Go on in. Wozinski’s in there. Let him know. I’m out of here for a few days. Nice to meet you.” Then he was in his car and leaving.

We glanced at each other and shrugged our shoulders, and then went inside. There was a single brother holding down the fort, Wozinski, and he was watching television and drinking a beer. That was it. He greeted us and grabbed a few beers and showed us where we could sleep, but that was it. He was the only guy around and not much of a talker. After a bit he left us to our own devices and went to bed. The three of us raided the fridge and had another beer and decided to keep going the next day.

Northwestern, in Chicago, was a whole different story. If the trip had consisted of houses like the one in Cleveland, we could have turned around and had more fun in Troy. There were almost a dozen guys staying over the summer at the house at Northwestern, and they greeted us warmly! We spent the first night drinking and smoking, and then stayed on for another three days. We ended up swimming in Lake Michigan, which was a bit warmer than the polar bear club routine, but not by much, and hitting some bars and clubs downtown.

I remember comedian Bill Maher commenting when Barack Obama became President, that for the first time in ages we had a President from a place you would actually want to go to. Chicago was pretty cool. I had a headache and Ricky was totally hungover by the time a groaning Marty pulled onto the road towards St. Louis.

We stayed in St. Louis (Washington University) for a couple for nights, and then drove up to Des Moines (Drake University) for another couple of days. Lots of good barbecue and beer, dull as dishwater in some other ways. I mean, I know that’s where all our food comes from and that’s important, but who the hell wants to live there? There’s just miles and miles of miles and miles! We consulted our map and list of colleges and decided to keep going west. It was about 700 miles to Denver. At normal highway speeds we could be there in nine or ten hours, easy. However, earlier that year the national speed limit dropped to fifty-five, because of the gas crisis. Trust the government to do something dramatic - and wrong! Now it was going to take us at least thirteen or fourteen hours. This was a massive waste of time and money, and dangerous to boot (you spent longer driving, so you had more chance of getting into an accident.) We left mid-afternoon and arrived in the early morning, after bypassing God only knows how many cow towns and hitting too many truck stops to pee and eat and gas up.

The brothers at the Colorado School of Mines took pity on the weary travelers and put us up. That was pretty good, we had some fun there. It’s a small school, about the size of RPI, and specializes in engineering. A bunch of Rocky Mountain nerds, in other words! We got along well with them. Lots of Coors beer, which at the time you couldn’t get east of the Mississippi. Some guys swear by it, but I’m not that big a beer fan. A couple of the brothers took us up Pike’s Peak with Marty’s Buick, and then helped us change the tire when he blew one coming down. We also went into Denver to drink and chase girls at a few bars. We stayed there three nights and weren’t all that sober at any given time.

We spent a couple of nights in Boise, completely bypassing Utah, which would have been the halfway point. There were no chapter houses there, and it didn’t seem like much of anything else. Big damn place, but hopelessly earnest. No drinking, drugs, fornication, or much of anything else that might be enjoyable. We bypassed it before we could be contaminated by the Mormons. It took us an entire day, what with the travel time, stopping for meals and gas, and so on. On the other hand, the brothers at Boise State were a bunch of real yahoos and cowboys. We bedded down for the night, and the next day we were taken to a bar with a mechanical bull. More Coors beer, more stupid shit going on. I’m glad we had the Instamatic along because we ended up with pictures of all of us getting thrown by the mechanical bull. My picture damn near has me upside down, but my face was recognizable.

“Someday I will show these to my kids, just to prove to them their old man was crazy,” I told Ricky.

Marty came limping up, bowlegged. “Yeah? I don’t think I’m going to have kids now!”

“If the choice is putting an ice pack on your balls for you, or letting you die, you’re going to die, Marty!” I told him.

“This from an asshole mooning over a girl who hasn’t even given it up yet! If I want horseshit, I can come here and find a horse!” he retorted.

“I agree! You need to either start drilling that well, or give up the lease!” said Ricky, a geological engineer by major.

“He’s just going to ignore us and mail her another post card!” said Marty.

“Fuck you two, and the bull you rode in on!” I replied, without any heat. “I’ve seen the women you two have been sleeping with. At least I’m working on the proper species.” I pointed at Marty’s crotch. “You’d have better luck screwing the mechanical bull rather than riding it.”

Ricky laughed. “You know how rodeo riders have sex?”

I rolled my eyes, since I knew the answer, but Marty bit on it. “How?”

“After they get on top of their girl, they whisper in her ear that she’s just as good as her sister, and then they try to stay on for eight seconds!”

“Shit!”

Marty and Ricky were right about one thing, though. Every time we stopped, I’d buy a postcard and mail it to Marilyn. I’d always be looking for something a little offbeat. In Golden I had sent her one of a fellow falling off Pike’s Peak. Boise just had postcards with either stunning vistas or cowboys. I found one with a girl on a mechanical bull, and wrote that I was behaving myself, despite the temptations. It was too bad we were going to miss Donner Pass, since there just had to be some good ones for that!

From Boise it was off to Portland (Portland State) where we spent a couple of nights. The chapter house was a gigantic Victorian three-story house, and something about it just didn’t seem right. In fact, it was sort of creepy. We went inside, following a brother named Biff and wandered around the first floor. It had about ten small rooms, all open to each other. “Man, what’s with this architecture?” wondered Marty.

I nodded in agreement. It was kind of strange. Ricky simply said, “I don’t know, but for some reason it’s kind of familiar.”

Biff had a big smile on his face. “It used to be a funeral home.”

Ricky’s eyes lit up. “That’s it! My grandmother died last winter, and the funeral home looked exactly like this! Lots of little rooms all connected one to the other!”

“Yeah, that way they can run partitions between the rooms and have more than one body in residence.”

Ricky nodded vigorously. “And a lot of these old funeral homes were family owned and run, and the family would live upstairs!”

“Exactly. Come on, let me show you around,” said Biff. We got the real nickel tour, too. Out back was a four-car garage, now devoted to junk and lawn care gear, that originally could hold four hearses and limos. Then he took us down into the basement, which had a number of curious features. For one thing, there was a driveway that went from the back to the front, down through the basement and back out to the front driveway. Midway through the basement was a room with a big stone table and drains and the ghastliest colored stone flooring. This was where the hearses would roll through and drop off the customers, who would get drained and prepped in the basement before being sent upstairs for viewing.