September 19, 2005 – Making a Fantasy Come True

September 19, 2005 – Making a Fantasy Come True

I spent the first half of 1965 in New Hyde Park on Long Island going to a factory school being taught out of strip mall in New Hyde Park. I met my wife IM at a hang out in Long Beach called the Page Two. A DJ played dance music a couple of nights each week and I came to find the place by a most circuitous route. In New York State in 1965, the drinking age was 18, which I had just turned in November of 1964. I found my new enfranchisement liberating as I pictured myself a sophisticated young man about town. I had a job that paid far too much money for my own good. I was receiving the pay of E-3 enlisted man in the U.S. Navy, but what was really funding my new lifestyle was the monthly per diem I was receiving to live on the civilian economy, which increased my monthly take home by two to three fold—I just remember now.

Most of this new found wealth was finding its way to Manhattan as I made a habit of taking the train into the city every weekend since late January when I had first arrived. The only thing that was missing from this sophisticated image I had of myself was a beautiful girl to enjoy the city with. I wasn’t finding the girl of my dreams in any of the bars in midtown Manhattan where I spent most of the day on Saturday and Sunday for the first couple of weekends after arriving. I was in school with two other sailors John and Ken. We each had rooms in homes in New Hyde Park, but I usually went to the city alone.

In New Hyde Park, however, the three of us hung out at a bar nearby the homes where we lived. The bar was on Jericho Turnpike near New Hyde Park Road. The houses we had rooms in were a few blocks west of New Hyde Park Road and a few blocks north of Jericho Turnpike. The food specialty of the bar was its pizza and burgers and fries. And of course they served plenty of alcoholic refreshments to accompany the greasy food, beer being the most popular with us. The one other attraction of this bar was its pool table in the back room. As I recalled you entered the place and its long bar with stools lined the wall to the right of the entrance. The kitchen was opposite the entrance. Through a door in a wall behind the tables on your left in front of the bar was the room housing the bar’s one pool table, which was busy most nights.

We typically hung out in the poolroom where John usually held sway. With a pool cue in his hand, John was an artist. He could break a rack of balls and when he got a ball to drop on the break would typically run the table right up to and including the 8 ball. Even with several beers in him, he could still work his magic with cue stick and ball. His ability to play several shots in sequence was something to admire. He would play one ball and he would ensure the placement of the cue ball afterwards made the next shot an easy one. Ken and I would try to keep up with him to no avail. The locals soon learned that he would hustle them and so stopped playing him for money. There were plenty of others who would come in and take him on for $5 to $10 a ball. John had an uncanny ability to win at pool and he let everyone know so no one could complain when he took their money.

When I would return from Manhattan on a Saturday or Sunday night, I would stop at the bar for a final beer before calling it a night. I soon got to know the locals who made the bar their own. I had befriended a young couple and learned they had been going together since high school and planned to get married the following year. I think it was the young man who was hesitant to completely commit. He was enjoying the courtship too much. One Saturday evening upon returning from the city, I found the couple at the bar and I sat next to them. They asked what I had done during the day and I explained that I had walked around Manhattan during the day and had a few drinks before catching a train back. I had learned from John that a good drink to order was a Rob Roy, which had become my standard reply to “what would you like?”. This was a step up from the Whiskey Sour—a lady’s drink though IM fancied Rye and Ginger—that I drank illegally in San Francisco at a bar that turned a blind eye to underage sailors.

I was close to being drunk when I left the city and by the time I reached the bar, I still had a buzz that was probably noticeable in my speech, the beer I was having wasn’t helping either. I was feeling forlorn and frustrated at not having someone to enjoy this fantasy with me and said as much to the young couple. They were both having a great time watching me explained the sad state of my life for them. The young girl finally took pity on me and asked why I was spending so much time looking for someone in Manhattan when my chances were so much better on Long Island. Other than the bar we were in, I didn’t have a clue where I could go to meet single unattached women. She replied that I needed to go to the Page Two in Long Beach. The young woman suggested I go on Tuesday. And I said I would.

I spent Monday wishing it over, something I’ve stopped doing in my old age—time is too precious to wish it past. On Tuesday evening, I took the bus from New Hyde Park to Long Beach and found the Page Two. Inside the place was mobbed, with the music of the early 1960s blaring at high volume: “The Peppermint Twist,” “Oh What A Night,” “Bye Bye Baby,” and many others time has hidden away. I wandered about for a good hour asking one or two girls sitting along or with others to dance. I got turned down more times than I got accepted. I was getting a bit disappointed when I saw IM sitting alone at the bar watching the other dancers on the floor. I walked up to her and asked her to dance. She accepted and we spent the rest of the evening dancing together, fast songs and slow songs, the latter being my favorite.

After our first dance, she asked my name and I replied and I asked hers. As soon as she replied I asked about her accent and she replied Scottish. She asked about my name and I replied it was Irish. She quickly corrected me saying that it was a very well know Scottish name, the clan to which the name belonged had their home on the Isle of Skye and I realized that my family had been living under the misguided notion all these years that their great ancestor was over from the Emerald Isle and not Caledonia. To say I was smitten would be a gross understatement. I was head over heels. I asked her out the following weekend and she accepted. Thus began four months of my realizing a fantasy that I had carried in my head since first learning I would be going to Long Island for five months.