Wayne
Kyleen Stonehammer. Who could forget a euphonious name like that? More important, who could forget Kyleen? It's been over fifty years, and my memory of her and that summer we met remain as vivid as a morning sunrise on a cloudless day.
It was the summer of 1966. Lyndon Johnson was president. We were mired in Vietnam. Gas was around thirty cents a gallon. Racial riots, follow-ups from Watts in the summer before, raged in some cities. In the South, kids burned Beatles records because of John Lennon's flippant remark about the group being more popular than Jesus, while others flocked to record stores to buy the group's newly-released Revolver album. The murder of eight student nurses in Chicago and fourteen people around the University of Texas shocked a nation not yet inured to the mass shootings that would come decades later.
I had just turned eighteen that summer and needed to make up a failed algebra course in order to enter freshman year at a local college. The course was given at my high school, all-male at the time, though girls also went there in summer to make up failed courses. After three years of school with no girls, it was refreshing to see them in the classroom once again. I noticed Kyleen only minutes into that first day of class in late June. She sat in the front row, while I sat a row behind, a few chairs to her right. I was careful to listen for her name when the teacher did rollcall, then quickly jotted it down after her hand went up.
Her sweet brunette looks, her hair set in long pigtails, her slim body wrapped in a sleeveless form-fitting green dress, gave me pause. Drop-dead gorgeous she wasn't. Exceedingly cute she was. She possessed the sort of subtle good looks that drew one in gently. She went easy on the makeup, applied just enough to give her natural beauty a little pizzazz. To quote the 1960 hit by the Safaris, she was the "image of the girl I hope to find."
I noticed her; she didn't notice me. Of course, that's the way these things normally play out. Mutual attraction happens, of course, but it's the exception, not the rule. My attraction was a distraction. I should have paid more attention to the teacher and those equations he chalked on the blackboard. Instead, my focus stayed glued to Kyleen, the way she crossed her smooth, bare legs, pulled on one of her pigtails, raised her hand and scribbled notes. She was left-handed, I noticed.
What could I do to get her to notice me? I needed an opening line: 'Do you live around here? Did you hear about The Beatles calling it quits on touring? See any good movies lately? Can I borrow your notes on simultaneous equations?' Or, the ultimate, no pretense, no BS approach: "Look, I find you irresistibly attractive and hope you like what you see also.'
See, that's the thing. No line, however glib or clever will work if the spark isn't there on the other side. And I wasn't anybody's idea of a teen heartthrob back then. More Tom Hanks than Tom Cruise, if we're using contemporary celebs to draw comparisons. Your average white guy next door, in other words. Not bad. Not great. Just average looks with perhaps an above average physique, though some would have called me overweight and some did, those envious of heavily muscled, iron-trained bodies, I figured. "Girls like guys built like rock stars," a friend told me. Skinny, he meant, and at five-foot eight, close to two-hundred pounds, skinny I wasn't.
Classes were from eight-thirty to nine-thirty in the morning, five days a week. Like me, some students had summer jobs that we reported to afterward. I worked at my dad's appliance store. I wondered where Miss Stonehammer went after class. Which, when I thought about it, could be another opening line. I had opening lines aplenty, just not the nerve to try one. During that first week of classes, I'd kick myself, letting her slip away after class. We'd walk out the door at about the same time, then head in opposite directions. Where did she live? How did she get to school?
Then, one day during the second week of classes, she began walking toward Memorial Stadium, a convenient and legal place to park when there were no baseball games. The lot was huge; it had to be to accommodate the hundreds of cars parked there during Orioles games, and it was across the street from the school. Other students parked there, too, so there was no reason for her to think that I might be following her. Still, I played cautious, kept my distance. If I recall, she wore shorts and sandals that day. An inner voice kept telling me to talk to her: 'Here's your chance - go for it!' Still, I didn't budge. When I got to my car, we were on parallel paths, several yards apart. Glancing to her left, she said, "A Mustang. Cool."
The red convertible '65 'Stang was my dad's, not mine, though he let me drive it during the week while he took his big Buick. She walked up to it, grinning, admiring the white interior, especially the transmission. "And it's a stick, too, I see. Really cool."
"Thanks. You're Kyleen Stonehammer, right?" So much for clever openers.
"That's me. And you're...you sit behind me in class, I know, but your name escapes me."
"Marvin Marion Merriweather."
She hesitated, kept her pretty mouth half open, staring at me with amused skepticism. She saw me grin. "Somehow I don't remember our teacher ever calling that name," she said. "Care to try again?"
"Wayne Liebermann." I was through trying to be "funny."
She nodded. "Now, that sounds familiar. I'd never have you pegged for a Marvin Marion Merri...whatever. Not the way you're built."
Now we're getting somewhere, I thought, wondering how to take this further. A Beatles lyric came to mind: "Baby you can drive my car..." I didn't sing that, though it might have been relevant given her kudos for the Mustang. We talked on about class, about what a bitch algebra could be and our plans for college come fall. She worked retail part time at E.J. Korvette and was waiting to hear from colleges where she had submitted applications. The conversation drifted into our music preferences when she noticed my 8-track tape player. That led to our mutual love for The Beatles. Then she almost floored me with this: "So, do you think the group will really stop touring or is it just a rumor?" She'd stolen my line—without knowing it, of course. I told her it was probably just a rumor. The group's millions of fans wouldn't stand for it. She agreed.
Before parting ways, I learned that she too drove her parents' cars, her mom's '64 Plymouth, and sometimes her dad's '62 Olds. But only when they weren't using it, which forced Kyleen to take the bus much of the time. She lived in Medfield Heights, a decades-old, predominately row house, blue-collar community about four miles from the school and only a few miles from Mt. Washington, another decades-old city community but more suburban in look and decidedly more upscale. Like me, she had just graduated from a non-coed high school, the all-girls Western.
I saw her again the following day before class began. She was waiting for the bus on a corner I passed daily on the way to the school. She was holding her books and rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, looking bored and impatient. I pulled over and offered her a lift. She smiled and hopped in. "Thanks, that number ten sometimes takes forever," she said.
The Mustang's top was down and I noticed the way her hair swirled around her face. "What, no pigtails today?"
She laughed. "Mom thinks they look cute but Jake can't stand them."
"Jake?"
"My boyfriend."
