Chapter 7: Fortune Teller

The excursion was great. 15 girls took me up on my offer. They were decorous seated in the galley with the teddybear in the corner of the lounge, supervising. The Bleeker girls, from Hart, Michigan, comprised over half the group.

Mr. Bleeker, Superintendent of Schools for Oceania County, was combining business with pleasure. He was inspecting his schools while giving the family a break from the daily routine.

Mr. Bleeker was prolific: of a family of nine children, eight were girls, aging from Vera, 17, to Jean, 10, and one of every year between. Vera, enrolled as a freshman at Eastern Michigan Teachers College, Ypsilanti, had been mostly responsible for raising the youngest children as her mother had spent years presenting her husband with tokens of her affection.

Teenaged girls, in the United States anyway, are just as hormonally driven in 1928 as they are in 1976. Growing up has as many problems and difficulties then as there are now. Chests grow tits, crotches grow hair, glands over react and curiosity abounds. In the privacy of other girls, they are as anxious to shed their clothes and 'get a little sun' as the generations they produce.

They compare and contrast as readily as boys. 1928 is in the tail-end of the 'Roaring Twenties' but it's still the age of flappers, bootleggers, mobsters and Chicago isn't all that far away.

Gather a group as diverse as women of a 'certain age' together and mix well with music ... they dance. The Charleston, the Broadway and the scandalous Black Bottom, although products of the cities, were still passed on to their rural neighbors, thanks to fast trains, motorcars and an infant but growing aviation industry.

Girls in college increased in numbers, and fond fathers sent their offspring to meet men in academic settings. College educated men will run the country, their wives will benefit. The spread of education did as much to limit inbreeding as did better roads.

There are always the administrators who are of a different age. They frown on the next generation as the generation before frowned on them. The dances of the Twenties are no less scandalous as the waltz of 1810. If you were to return to those years ... and she of the watch could ... the frowning, watchful, opinionated and controlling chaperones then, look just like the frowning, watchful, opinionated and controlling chaperones of today.

"Well, I never!" said in shock at some action, actually means, "Well, I never acted like that. I never did those things. I never had romance in my heart. I never ached for love and attention."

YOU DID TOO!! Those women you watch with disapproving eye are the product of your loins but you forgot!

I have no idea who thought my mother was a suitable chaperone for a raft of teenage girls, but they were wrong!

She was the first one to shed her clothes and dive off the stern of the boat.

She was the first one to lay nude and shivering in the sun until she 'warmed up' and jumped in again. In five minutes there were sixteen naked girls in and out of the water and in again.

We made sandwiches, drank coke, admired each other and gossiped about sex. As near as I could tell, mother was the only one with actual experience, but a few were absolutely, positively, abundantly r-e-a-d-y.

Vera, shed of her shield of clothes, was a young man's dream and an older man's vision. She might not be as beautiful of face as her sisters but she had the kind of body that drove men wild.

During the war years, a shape like hers adorned the noses of many and many B-17 and B-24 bombers. Vargas girl? Eat your heart out! Hers was the shape our men were fighting to protect and don't you forget it!

Mother ... my wonderful mother, friend, confidant and mentor, was, above all else, a witch, mindreader, and Teller of Fortune. Sometimes I forgot she could cast spells with her fingers and hands while calmly attending her business. Once she had a victim's eye, she could weave fantasies with her fingers.

'Wendolyn?' she thought at me.

'Mom?' I thought back.

'Get the girls dressed and situated on deck. I'm going below and dress in my Gypsy outfit.'

'Fortune telling?' I loved the idea.

'Yup.'

'Vera last?' I asked.

'Jean last, just before the moon comes up.'

"Girls?" I called. "We have a treat. Madam Vesant has come aboard. She wishes to speak with each and every one of you. Would you please sort your clothes and get dressed. If there is anyone who objects to fortune tellers, speak now."

Squeal and riot on deck. Soon, everyone was seated on the cabin top. One at a time I handed each girl a silver dollar. There was a rigamarole I performed while passing the coin. I didn't have a clue as to why I did it ... it just came to me.

While I was wondering Why I was doing it, mom spoke to my head, 'You are, after all, my daughter. We come from a long, ancient, and revered race. We foretold the future to the Pharaohs of Egypt, read the auguries of Sumer, cursed the Roman emperors. You are coming into your own.' 'Geese, thanks, mom.'

I told each girl, "You must cross Madam Vestry's palm with silver, before you sit. Do not speak. She knows all," as I opened the hatch and sent each one down to the galley.

Some came out excited, some came out thoughtful, some came out amazed. No one talked to another. They were, everyone of them, lost in the spell of the fortune.

Over the years, the girls of the town became women ... every forecast event happened. Only after the event did they recall an idyllic Sunday afternoon with a fortune teller who 'knew.' Some died in bed. Some lost husbands and children to the storms of November.

Life on the lakes is hard on the ones left at home.

Mother knows all.

Vera came next to last. She came out joyful and hugged me.

"How wonderful, you are from the future," she whispered in my ear, "I am to be your grandmother, your mother shall marry my son." She immediately shook her head as if she was waking, "What was that?"

"What?" 'Good Lord. Mom?' 'Nothing like a little nudge.'

"I forgot." And she had ... forgot.

Jean was trepidatious. I smiled at her, gave her the silver, and sent her below. She was down in the galley a long time. The moon, full, round and wonderful was just over the Mears State Park dunes when she came out.

"The moon!" she exclaimed. She whispered in my ear, "My hearts desire will come to me tomorrow. I shall be a nurse, attend and help many ill people. I shall marry Al Fromm. We will be marvelously happy. We will live in a house on Carole Street. Your mother is a witch ... wonderful." She immediately fell asleep. She slept all the way back to the Yacht Club.

We motored in as it was extremely calm. There was a party at the Club, the parents of our voyagers were celebrating nothing as parents sometimes do. The passengers were sorted, the locals went home after greeting their parents at the Club.

We kept the Bleeker girls aboard while their parents stayed at the teacherage. (A teacherage is a house provided by the school for use by a teacher.)

Four AM comes early, but not too early for Jean. She was sitting on deck, surrounded by a wool blanket. She looked like a miniature Dryad arising from the mist, when Al Fromm delivered our paper. We were the last on his route. He settled in next to her, she shared her hot chocolate. A relationship began that would last a lifetime. She was very happy.

The Bleeker's collected their offspring in the morning, the girls promising to come back before the end of summer.

"What shall we do today?" Mother asked.

"Sail to Ludington, park the boat, take the C&O car ferry to Milwaukee and shop shop shop until we drop drop drop!" I begged.

Mom said, "We can stay at the Ambassador Hotel. We'll have to stay a week, there'll be a terrible storm the day after we get there. Pentwater is a weather funnel so it'll be bad here. The storm surge will come straight down the channel. Having the boat in Ludington is a great idea."

"Wow!" I exclaimed, "A week with money and stores. Heaven!"

"I'll tell Mr. Fromm and we'll leave. With any luck at all we won't have to wait for the Ferry. We can take a few diamonds and rubies and sell them."

"Mom, you still haven't looked behind the drawers in the safe." I gave her that look. "I'll tell you what. You go look in the safe and I'll motor out the channel and head for Ludington."

"Your birthday?"

"Backwards. End on zero," I said. "Don't forget to lift, tilt and pull. The whole set of drawers comes out."

"Ok."

I disembarked. 'Going ashore, works, too' ' Yes, mother.'

My Nautical Bullshit list has spilled over to the backside of each of the five pages reserved for it in the Journal.

Mr. Fromm was unpacking 'things' from wood crates packed with straw. 'Things' that looked suspiciously like beer bottles and not a few clear bottles with clear liquid, brown liquid and amber liquid. I 'ahemmed.' He jumped.

"Miss Austin, you scared the bejesus out of me."

"I just wanted to let you know, mother and I will be gone a week." I grinned excitedly. "We're going to Milwaukee to shop! What fun!"

"I could drive you to Ludington."

"Mr. Fromm," I hesitated but he really did need to know. "Mother says there's a terrible storm coming in two days. We want to move the boat to a safer place. The Club is directly in line with the channel."

"She does? She said that?" Mr. Fromm frowned. "She's a weather witch?"

"I don't know about that," I commented, "She does know when the weather is changing."

"Fierce blow?"

"That's what she said."

"Thanks, I'll be moving boats the next two days."

In our other past, the storm, winds to 90 miles per hour, blew straight down the channel, struck the Yacht Club and sunk half the boats. The mess was horrendous. With mother's warning, the things damaged were the Club roof, the bandstand in the park and the park gazebo.