Bachelorette

When I moved to Cleveland, OH in 1966, I rented a space in an apartment in the Shaker Heights area with three other women whom I had never met. The apartments were large and so the landlord rented them out like this. It had a big living room and kitchen and dining room, but two tiny bedrooms with four single beds. The whole building was young people our age, but somehow I don’t remember becoming friends with any of them or having parties together or anything. My roommate in our little room was Mary Pat. She and I got along really well. She was a teacher. We didn’t like our other roommates because they didn’t clean up after themselves and didn’t do the chores we agreed on.
There was virtually no parking on the street in our neighborhood, so I was able to rent a tiny garage space in the back of the building, reached by a narrow driveway. One day this car was parked in the driveway so I couldn’t get to my space. I was in a hurry, had nowhere to park so I could find the person who was blocking my way, so I had to double park to go into the building to knock on every door to find the culprit. Finally I found him, this big huge guy. I politely asked him to move his car. He took his good old time doing it, but I was able to finally park. The next day, his car was blocking my driveway again! This time I was furious. I quickly found him and asked him to move, please. He went on doing what he was doing. After a few more minutes, and since it was the second time he did this, I started to yell at him and even banged on his chest with my fists. I guess I had a temper tantrum. It didn’t look good, however he was obviously goading me and I didn’t like it.
One of our roommates was named Marion. And believe it or not, she was a librarian. There was a popular song out then called Marion the Librarian. She also drove a red Thunderbird convertible. There was another cute blonde gal in the building we all liked. She drove a yellow VW bug. My VW bug was older and was a light blue color and not a convertible.
One weekend they had a wine tasting in the square in Shaker Heights. We decided to go, but had no idea about drinking wines. There were about 25 different tables with different kinds of wine. We thought you had to taste every kind in order to learn about wines, so we did! We started with the sweet wines, and really liked them, and then moved around the tent to the driest wines. We had gone the wrong way. However, by the time we got there, we didn’t care. We were lucky we didn’t have to drive home. This was back in the days of when you ordered Champagne, Burgundy, Chablis, or Chianti. Those were the only wines served in restaurants. So this wine tasting was to introduce people to other types of wines, which still would not be available in restaurants, but you could buy them at a liquor store.
Mary Pat and I finally moved out together to an apartment building on Euclid Ave. This was a very large apartment with an elevator and a bar on the ground floor. It was very close to my work. There were lots of people our age in this building, some graduate students at Case Western Reserve, now Case. We had parties and lots of fun.
One day I went to drive my car and it sounded really loud. By the time I got to my destination, I realized my muffler was gone. My first reaction was that someone stole it! Our neighborhood wasn’t that great. But when I went in to get a new one, they told me it had fallen off because it was rusty. I was very naïve about cars. A year or so later, my car wouldn’t start at all at someone else’s house. I couldn’t figure it out. I had it towed and the garage said my engine was seized up. It seems I needed to put oil in it on occasion. What a concept. Speaking of cars, much later, while living in Seattle, I had a popular book onhow to take care of your Volkswagen. It had detailed instructions and diagrams for how to change the oil, the spark plugs, do your own tune-up, even take out the engine and fix something and put it back in again. The VW was an easy engine and it was in the back of the car. I took to this challenge and started doing my own tune-ups and minor maintenance.
Back in Cleveland, we decided once to go to the bar in our building. It was always busy and looked like it would be fun. Well, we got there and realized that the only patrons were men! We had a drink and then left pretty soon after. On Valentines evening, we noticed in the parking lot all these beautifully dressed ladies with gorgeous hair, shoes, and makeup. It took us awhile to realize that they were all men.
One weekend we saw that someone was moving into the apartment across the hall. He was very busy making shelving everywhere. Then he hauled in these big boxes. We became friendly and he showed us into his place where he was putting his record collection. He was a local disk jockey who was apparently quite famous in Cleveland, and needed a place to sleep in town occasionally when he had to stay late and not drive back to his home in West Cleveland. He also needed a place to house his records, which filled the walls from floor to ceiling of the living room and second bedroom. He said he had about 5,000 records. He played a few of his favorites for us when we came over. He was about 20 years older than us, but he sure paid a lot of attention to us. At that time, disk jockeys were celebrities. He liked us because we had never heard of him and we treated him like a normal person. I wish I could remember his name, and I wonder what ever happened to all those records.
While living in this area, I participated in the cultural opportunities that were right there in walking distance. I could go to the Cleveland Museum and sit in the garden, or visit my favorite paintings. I became an usher at the Severance Hall and see George Szell conducting the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. We also went down the other way on Euclid Avenue to some of the Negro night clubs to see groups like Gladys Night and the Pips and Little Richard. Cleveland was a happening town. We also had the Cleveland Indians baseball team and the Cleveland Browns football team when they were the teams to beat.
For some reason, Mary Pat and I decided we wanted to really live it up as bachelorettes and live in the really swinging part of town, which was on the lake. We found an apartment in a building on the beach of Lake Erie with a view of the water. It was more expensive, but had a lot of light and was a much nicer apartment. We must have felt richer or something. That building was really fun. There were parties all the time and lots of single professionals, not students, our age. I remember a clam bake party where you could barely get into the door of the apartment having the party. Mostly it was in the yard and on the beach. There was a garbage can that had fruit punch in it. You were supposed to bring a bottle of liquor, whatever kind you wanted, and pour it into the garbage can. The punch that was created was what you drank. They may have had some clams, I don’t remember much else of that party.
One day in the elevator, Mary Pat met a cute guy named Daryl. They started dating. Up to then, our plans were to work for two years and then move to Switzerland and work there. Mary Pat went to Europe after she graduated from college, and decided she wanted to live and work there because she liked it so well. She had heard that you could do that if you had two years of experience in your profession. She found out that teachers and Medical technologists, like me, would be the type of careers they were looking for. We sent for the application and filled it our when we were close to our two years of work experience. For some reason, the Swiss government sponsored this program and got you a job and everything. Mary Pat decided that Switzerland was the place to go because it was in the middle of Europe so you could travel from there to see the rest of it.
Well, Mary Pat and Daryl decided to get married. Her plans of going to Europe vanished. In fact, Daryl was working for Everyready batteries and was being transferred to Chicago, so the wedding was planned to coincide with that. I was a bridesmaid. However, I had to move out of our luxury apartment and find something cheaper that I could afford myself. I still didn’t have my two years of experience as a Medical Technologist yet. I got a new job at the Cleveland Clinic Hospital in the microbiology department which I found was a step up from working in hematology at the Jewish Hospital. I liked microbiology, and it was a huge department and the supervisor was a sister of a boy I knew in Akron.
I found an apartment in this old, run down building with no elevator that looked out into a parking lot, but it was kind of funky and it was mine. I even had my own TV. One night it was so hot I could barely breathe, so I even bought an air conditioner. It never got that hot again, but I still used it. I somehow gathered a group of friends who would come over for dinner or watch TV or something, so I was never alone. I always thought of something fun to do each night with someone.
During this time, I received a post card from the Peace Corps telling me that they finally found a medical spot for me in a project in Africa, so if I was still interested in working as a Medical Technologist with them, I could contact them. I think the day before I had just finished sending in my paperwork for Switzerland and was committed to going there on my own without Mary Pat. So I never responded to the Peace Corps. I made my reservation to get to Europe on the ship the Bremin which was a German ship. That was I would have to start to speak German, because I was going to Bern, the capital, which was German speaking. I also took a class at the Cleveland University in German language, but I really only learned how to count and say yes and no, after a whole semester.
Before I left, I had to sublease my apartment and get rid of my furniture and TV and air conditioner. All the belongings I took had to fit in my black travel trunk I had from college days. I sold my furniture to the gal who moved in for a measly $200.00! I was disappointed, but glad to not have to worry about it anymore. At the time, I kind of thought I would be returning to Cleveland, and would only be gone a year. Luckily I did break ties there, because I never returned. I still have some of the friends I made there on my Christmas mailing list, however.
There was a big going away party before I left in my apartment. I invited lots of people and many came. We tried to think of a German toast to give with our beer, but didn’t know the German word, so we said “Zweibach”, which is the name of a German toast that we used to eat as children, sort of like a teething biscuit.
I don’t remember what happened to my car, or how I got to New York to embark on the ship, but I remember being in New York with my parents. They were there to say bon voyage. Maurice took us the night before to a very expensive French restaurant. The food was fabulous and he wanted to introduce me to French food and wines and tell me all about France that evening. I was going to be meeting his cousin, Lucienne, who would take me on a tour of Paris when I arrived in Europe. I was so nervous about leaving my life in the United States and going off alone to a foreign country that I couldn’t eat and had to throw up. It was finally hitting me that I was making a huge change and I would be all alone doing it.
The next day, my parents and friends could come onto the boat for the afternoon with me to help me settle into the boat and have a bon voyage party. I invited some guy I knew whom I forget his name, but he actually came. My parents got me some champagne and flowers. Then they blew the whistle and they had to leave and I was on my own on this German speaking ship going across the ocean.
4/28/09