Dating!!!

Rachael:  Tell me about your first date.  And about dating in general when you were young.

This was a typical valentine when I was young.

My Very First Boyfriend

When I was three and four, I had play dates in Safford with a boy named R.D. Moats.  His family lived on our street but a cotton field lay between our two houses.  My mother was good friends with his mother, so I played at his house a lot.  After we moved across town to a different house, I would still get to go play at his house.  This was in 1937 to 1939.  We were making an airplane with a bomb sight.  How kids this young know anything about this is beyond me.  We didn't have television or movies or anything else.  The war hadn't started and even rumblings of the war were not apparent to the general public.   My mother had given me a small hinged tin with a mirror that had held rouge at one time.  I gave it to R.D.   It was to become part of the bomb sight.  

At the new house my father had been repairing a door lock.  The knobs were laying on the floor with the other parts. I picked up one of the knobs.  It was a beautiful white smooth porcelain knob. I took it with me the next time I went to play at the Moats' house.  R.D. was impressed with it and we were going to include it in the making of the airplane bomb sight.  I do not remember how either of these items were to be used in making this bomb sight. 


A few days later, my dad went to finish his repair on the door and one knob was missing.  After quizzing all of us, I confessed I had taken it to R.D.'s house.  We drove immediately to his house to retrieve it.   I can still remember how the toy box looked sitting in his breakfast nook.  R.D helped us dig through the box to find the door knob.  I also asked  to get back my little rouge container, but he couldn't find it.  I think that this was the end of our friendship.  But after seventy-five years, I still remember his name.

Sixth Grade Boyfriend

 There were six Flake cousins in my classroom.  The Flakes were  a very prominent family.  The town was named for their great grandfather. Of the eight teachers at school two were Flakes and   another one was married to a Flake sister.  In sixth grade I had a boyfriend who was one of the six cousins.  We were really just friends. I had been invited to his birthday party when we were younger and remember playing London Bridge at the party. In sixth grade we never had any movie dates or talked romantically or anything, but somehow we considered ourselves connected.  Maybe we exchanged valentines on Valentine's Day or talked at recess or danced at the school dances.  Back in those days they even had Primary dances and we always had school dances, too.  Usually two grades together such as 7th and 8th grade dance or the 5th and 6th  grade dance.  A teacher would play the piano and we would do dances such as "Put your little foot", square dances like the Virginia Reel, group dances, line dances,, and regular dances for couples like fox trot and waltz. 

One recess the class played baseball and there was an argument  about something, probably, if someone were "safe" or "out."  When the bell rang we all went inside and half-way up the stairs, this so-called  boyfriend walked up to me and hit me in the stomach with his fist.  Obviously, we must have been on opposite sides of this argument, but I was totally surprised and really hurt.  I don't think any classmate had ever hit me before or since.  Later in the afternoon, another Flake cousin gave me a note written by a third Flake cousin.  It said almost these exact words, " We are Flakes and Flakes are strong.  We should stick together.  We can easily beat up a little girl like Rayna Gay."   I don't know what motivated the girl to betray her cousins by giving me the note.  I showed it to my parents and they were rightfully incensed, but nothing happened unless it lit a little spark that would later be fanned into a flame that would lead us to move out of Snowflake.


I began to think that, maybe it was just wishful thinking and that I really hadn't had a boyfriend.  However, one night seven years later, I am a freshman in college at BYU attending a student dance and a nice looking young man asks me to dance.  He says, "You don't remember me, but I was your boyfriend in sixth grade."  He then told me how they had moved away to another state.  I wanted to ask him  why he hit me in the stomach, but I didn't.   He probably didn't remember it and he certainly didn't apologize for it, either.  But I knew then, that I hadn't imagined having a sixth grade boyfriend.  

A Kenilworth School Friendship

When we first moved to Phoenix, I was in seventh grade.  It was a much bigger school having four classes per grade and had specialty teachers for each subject.  The students were all more advanced academically and socially than in Snowflake, where we had only one class per grade and no specialty teachers at all.  At Kenilworth, our family was "country" and they were "city".  We did not see ourselves as poor, but they were mostly well-to-do families living in the nicest section of the city.  I do not remember any students being rude to  me, but I was aware that they wore the latest fashions and almost all the girls had well-developed figures and that I did not.


There was a certain boy in my class that I liked.  He was the son of the Secretary of State, who later became Governor of Arizona.  We got along great in class because we were both good students.  When I was assigned to write and produce a program for Lincoln's birthday, I chose him to be Abraham Lincoln.  One time when I was walking down town near Goldwater's and Korrick's stores, he was with his mother and he introduced her to me.  I remember that we both had the very same birthday, April 10th, only, I was a year younger than he was.  In the eighth grade he had a birthday party and invited two of my best friends, the Nelson twins, but I didn't get invited.  I was really crushed.  


When it was time for high school he went to North High and I went to Phoenix Union so I never saw him again.  I looked him up on the internet a few years back and he had won Professor of the year at a big university in California.  It listed his birthday as April 10th, so I know it was the same person.  

Eighth Grade Graduation Dance

Graduation from eighth grade was a big deal with an orchestra, ceremonies, certificates, and "pomp and circumstance", whatever that is.  The parents of a girl in my class named Jeri West gave her a big party at the Encanto Park Country Club the evening after the daytime graduation ceremony.  It was a formal dance with dance programs, and I was invited.  She had pre-selected partners for everyone.  The boy she chose for me was an inactive Mormon that I knew only slightly.  I had no idea that anyone knew I was a Mormon, but they must have known or why select this boy for me, since we hardly knew each other and were not even in the same class.  He treated me with great respect and courtesy all evening and I was ever so thankful.


The dance was held in the early evening near the end of May which is very warm in Phoenix.  The country club ballroom was open to the patio.  There was live music and a punch bowl that every  one said had been "spiked" with ginger ale.  Now, having been a very voracious reader, I had read many books and adult short stories in Saturday Evening Post and Collier's,  so I knew what "ale" was.  Being a good Mormon girl, I did not drink any of that spiked punch all evening even though I was  very thirsty.  I have to laugh at how naive I was, not to know what ginger ale was and to be so out of my element and so impressed by the posh party that I thought they might be serving alcohol.


Years later in Virginia, I found the same thing could happen to adults as well.  I was attending a wedding reception after a temple wedding.  It was held at a fancy hotel and the waiters brought around sparkling cider in fancy green bottles and filled the stemmed glasses at our table, so we could toast the bride and groom.  I was sitting at the table with the Relief Society president and her husband.  They both refused to let the waiters pour any into their glasses. I joined in the toast and then drank from my glass.  The Relief Society president was appalled and ask me why I was drinking it.  I told her it was sparkling cider.  I could not imagine why she would think that an active Mormon family would serve alcohol to the entire group of guests most of whom were Mormons.   She then motioned for the waiter to bring some cider for herself and her husband.  

My First Real Date

When I was a teenager, there was no rule or standard by the church that you don't date until you are 16 years old.  Many of my Mormon friends dated and some even went "steady."  I was not so lucky.  Dorothy Parker said it best, "Boys never make passes at girls who wear glasses," and  I wore gold wire-rimmed glasses, which were totally out of style.   In addition, I was skinny and flat chested and so tall that I had to stand in the back row of almost every group picture.  (Only one time was I ever in the front row of a photo.  I remember it vividly.  The photographer said he couldn't get the back row in and had the entire back row come and sit down in front.  It was a once in a lifetime experience for me.) 


Since it is so warm all year in Phoenix, all the Mormon kids usually ate lunch outside on the grass.   There were several lunch periods, so, sometimes we had a big group and other times a much smaller group.   For a time, a certain boy in our ward often ate lunch with me.  It was just the two of us every day.  His mother had died and he had a step-mother.  He had the responsibility of making his own lunch and so sometimes he came with only a grapefruit in a brown bag.  I am assuming I shared some of my lunch with him. My mother made large lunches with home-made bread sandwiches, fruit, and some kind of dessert, such as  a slice of pie wrapped in wax paper.  (No zip lock bags, yet.) One day he asked me for a date using these very words, "My mother said I should ask you to the dance."  It was the most unromantic words I had ever heard, but I said, "yes."  It was some sort of stake dance for couples, and not just a regular stake dance as we know them today.

This looks very much like the dances we had when I was in high school. Maybe a little fancier dresses for a date dance.

His parents drove us to the dance which was at the Third Ward building and then they stayed on the sidelines.  I am almost certain that they were not the assigned chaperons, but maybe they might have been.  There were other kids from our ward there and we had a fairly good time socializing with them.  Near the end of the dance, the group we were with decided to go for ice cream about a block away on Central Avenue. They invited us, but my date turned them down.  I assumed that he didn't have enough money for ice cream.  Just after they left, his step-mom came over and asked us why we didn't go with the other kids.  His reply was, "But Mom, you told me never to leave a dance hall with a girl."  The only thing to add to this story would be to say that it was probably his first date, too.


I'll do another blog on another day about some later dating experiences.