Miss Route 66

by Michael Lund

  I ought to have kept a neat chronology tracing the fulfillment of a dream for the homemakers of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell's time. A much more efficient kitchen was beginning to emerge in those days of invention and refinement. Women who had had literally to labor in the home began to manage machines which did their work. And that allowed different skills to emerge, new kinds of wives and mothers to appear.

  There were those, I know, who turned most of their newly acquired free time to leisure: in my Mom's generation, more morning radio soap operas; expanded sessions of over-the-fence afternoon gossip; additional episodes of "I Love Lucy" and "The Ed Sullivan Show" in the evenings. But my mother, I would gradually learn, turned her energy to other projects.

  As I drove home in the Rambler, completing the teenagers' regular route across town, I played back a mental picture of my mother coming into Fanny's, greeting me, retreating with Miss Powers. She was slender, fast-moving, purposeful.

  Of course, these thoughts of others faded as I neared home and my challenges for the rest of the day: getting ready, competing, avoiding Mr. Pierce. Two things gave me some confidence at least: the company I was keeping, and the attention of Larry Thornton.

  I know, I'd not found Larry and his earnestness and his science projects terribly compelling thus far in life. He was not part of the glamour, attention, and recognition I thought I might get out of the Miss Route 66 competition, even if I didn't win.

  His brother Paul was older, bigger, and better-looking. He also resided in that more sophisticated world of college, a sphere above and beyond those mundane realms of childhood--neighborhood and high school. So I'd let my fantasies revolve around the elder Thornton.

  But I'd also found myself thinking about Larry lately, how he'd come over to the Circle several times to talk with me. At first I'd thought he was visiting Billy and Mark, but gradually I realized that this was a pretext for seeing me. He'd been pleasant and interesting as he considered the pears in our neighborhood, the remnants of an old orchard. Maybe my understanding of him was maturing just as our local fruit always moved from blossom to fruit to harvest.

  He did seem to have a sense of humor, or at least a capacity for sly amusement, underneath his steady application. And those worms of his, the idea of a worm farm. I'd begun to come around a bit in appreciation of those earth movers, compost makers, soil generators. When you thought about it, the world needed worms.

  Too, worms had sex. Ever since last summer and Randy's "mouth organ" campaign, I had been struggling with how far to go with this sex business. Although it was slimy and entangling, even worm sex could be appreciated, according to Larry. You just had to see it as a natural feature of the animal kingdom.

  I'd loved kissing and cuddling and petting with Randy (when he'd stop there!). But conventional morality restricted my full enjoyment of those events as preludes to a forbidden act. It also seemed possible I could be hurt by that hard lump in Randy's jeans. So I'd turned to a gentler lover, myself.

  And now Larry had asked me out. He was more appealing than Randy had been. Even if he wasn't his brother, wouldn't he likely grow to be more like Paul as we finished high school and went on to college?

  And then there were these new friends of mine, the other contestants for the title of Miss Route 66. I'd gone into the pageant to assert a me who was not just "sweet." But I found that I liked Elizabeth Rogers, whose piano playing encouraged me in my music. And Mary Dunkin--who could swim powerfully, give dramatic readings, tell off-color jokes--had treated me as a special pal, filling me in on the dynamics of such events.

  Even my chief rival, Sally Winchester, exhibited a confidence, poise, and assertiveness that I admired. The slumber party had shown me another side of her character, too, the graceful loser who wanted others to have a good time. And there were more: Jean Templeton, Shirley Bast, Lynn Masingham, and some whose names I'd have to refer to that yellowed program in my briefcase to recall.

  Taller and shorter than I, younger and older, darker and fairer, these fellow aspirants to success came together in a kind of sorority, a sisterhood of lovely and talented young women. And I was one of them.

  I thought of the quadrangle through which I walked on the way to rehearsals and where I would pass by that night. Its different buildings surrounding a manicured lawn represented the varied academic disciplines of higher education--the sciences, arts, humanities. It was a balance of views, a combination of strengths that created the university.

  I didn't fully understand this structure then, of course, as I was a number of months from my own college career. Now, however, I can appreciate this ancient social construct, as old as the buildings at Oxford and Cambridge.

  Were the fifteen girls competing for the Miss Route 66 crown a similar arrangement of strengths and perspectives? They may very well have been. Well, fourteen of them, that is. One girl separated herself from the group. But on the night of the pageant itself the remaining contestants banded together to protect themselves and to preserve something they valued. It was not an easy task, but it may well have made me what I am today.

  10

  Mr. Pierce called me on the phone later in the afternoon, not long after I'd had my conversation with Sandy.

  "Hello?" I'm pretty sure I was alone at the house, my mother not home from Fanny's, my dad still out at the golf course. I would feel pretty alone no matter what.

  "Hello, Susan? It's Mr. Pierce. I'm calling about the pageant."

  "Oh, Mr. Pierce. Hello, sir. Um, I'm not sure I . . . I don't know if I should, um, talk on the phone on, you know, the day of the competition." I looked around the living room, somehow thinking I'd see the reason I should hang up now.

  "Oh, it's OK, Susan. Remember, I'm the Senior Consultant, and it's my job to check up on all the contestants, especially right now, to make sure everything's ready for the big show."

  "Well, I'm ready. I've got my outfits, the flute. I'll be there at 6:45, right on time."

  You might suspect I was trying to close off this conversation. His voice had the same odd wet sound it had had on the day he made the Coke glass sing at Fanny's Dairy Delite, and I was still thinking of Sandy's recounting of teacher gossip.

  "That's good. But, Susan, there's something more I . . . shhph! . . . need to tell you about . . . shhph! . . . tonight's performance." In the pauses of his speech I could hear a soft slurping sound, perhaps his tongue running over his lips to gather extra saliva, or a sucking sound, air being drawn in.

  It surely occurs to you, friendly reader living so many years after this event, that I could have just hung up the phone at this point, perhaps even banged the receiver onto the base. Just because this man had called didn't mean I had to listen, did it? Unfortunately, it did. In those days it would have been hard for a girl to hang up on any male, man or boy.

  If a man called, a young girl would assume he wanted to talk to her father. Or perhaps a tradesman or a repairman would ask to talk to the "lady of the house." In either case, the daughter would request politely for him to wait while she called out for the parent involved.

  If neither mother nor father was at home, she'd have to let the caller deliver a message, probably searching around on the phone table for a piece of paper and a pencil to write it down. All this etiquette made it difficult for me to think that I could take control of the situation, that I didn't have to let Mr. Pierce continue until he announced the conversation was over.

  Had he been a younger caller, another set of rules would have applied, but they, too, required me to stay on the line. Girls waited for boys to call and ask them for dates in those days. We didn't ever phone boys, of course, to see if they'd go out with us. We could decline an invitation or accept, but we had to listen to the entire request and any related explanation.

  So, even though I knew I didn't want to hear what this man had to say, I stood essentially frozen in our downstairs hall with the telephone held to my ear.

  "I wonder, Susan, how much do you want to win toni
ght?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "The pageant. You do want to be Miss Route 66, don't you?"

  "Well, yeah. I mean, that's why I entered."

  "That's what I thought. Every girl wants to win a beauty contest. Or at least be a finalist, right?"

  I slumped down into a sitting position on the hall rug. My back rested against the wall, and I jacked my knees up to my chest.

  "I . . . I'm going to do my best, Mr. Pierce. I know all the girls will."

  "Yes, of course. Now, Sally really is the favorite. She was first runner-up last year, and she's got a terrific routine. That little baton of hers climbs all over her body!"

  In addition to the many spins, twirls, and tosses of traditional routines, Sally now moved the baton by twisting, arching, stretching her body. It slid across her shoulders, rolled down an arm, bounced off her thigh onto a hip, rested on the upper curve of her backside. All with no hands.

  I heard that sucking sound again in the earpiece but didn't say anything. What could I have said?

  "So, Susan, I don't know how you could beat Sally, it being your first time in the competition and all. But first runner-up, now that's a possibility. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

  I wrapped part of the phone cord around my finger and stared at the wall opposite to me.

  "I . . . I'm just going to do the best I can."

  "Have you ever . . . shhph! . . . eaten a dreamsicle?"

  "What?"

  "A dreamsicle. It's kind of a cross between a fudgesicle and popsicle, but different flavors, one on the outside and one . . . shhph! . . . inside."

  A picture appeared in my mind: the single shape on a stick--like a fudgesicle or Eskimo bar--but not chocolate. It was fruit-flavored with a pale core. (I would later learn it's orange sherbet over vanilla ice cream.)

  "Sure. They're very good."

  I heard a licking sound on the line again.

  "I'm eating one right now, Susan. It's delicious. It's the cream inside that's so good, don't you think?"

  "Mr. Pierce . . . I, uh, I think I have to get ready. Don't you have to get ready?"

  "A lot of people are put off by the idea of a dreamsicle, the flesh-colored outside. They don't realize how good the cream inside is. You just lick enough . . . shhph! . . . to get the good stuff to come out."

  Somewhere along here I began to feel flushed, queasy, almost sick to my stomach. All sorts of bits and pieces of information were coming together into a complete picture, a finished scenario. I thought of Randy's frustration on dates, remembered Larry's worms suddenly exposed to light, pictured Paul's rigid, hip-riding slide rule.

  "Anyway," continued Mr. Pierce, with suddenly more energy. "Here's what I think we can do. I know the judges; I've worked with them for some years now. They're good guys. They'll listen to suggestions. Suppose I 'suggest' they pay special attention to the flute player, the one with the . . . umm . . . nice flat . . . shhph! . . . tummy."

  I heard the wet sound again.

  "Aren't they going to pay attention to all of the girls?" I asked tentatively. "We all have to perform and wear the outfits."

  "Yes, of course, but they'll listen to me; they'll know I'm making a sort of recommendation. You know, I've recommended the last three winners of the pageant, the last three Misses Route 66, and two runners-up."

  "Really?"

  "A fact. Of course, I'd . . . want you to do me a favor, a little favor, if I recommended you."

  "Have you recommended that they pay special attention to Sally?"

  "Hmm? Well, what I'm talking about here is first runner up, Susan, a great honor. Why, if anything happens to Sa . . . to the winner, you could be Miss Route 66!"

  "I see."

  "What I'm going to do, Susan. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to figure you understand what I'm saying. And later this evening, when Bill Martin is keeping the crowd happy while the girls are changing for your final appearance. . . ."

  "The swimsuit competition?"

  "Right. The judges will be comparing their scorecards and thinking about who should be the finalists. I want you to slip over to where I'm at. I'll be in that little changing room by the back right stage entrance. You know the one?"

  "Yes."

  "You come on in there for just a few minutes. And, after that, I'll talk to the judges."

  "After . . . after what?"

  "After you . . . shhph! . . . try a . . . dreamsicle."

  Volume Four: Harmony. Chapter 1

  As I drove our 1960s Rambler American out of the driveway in the Circle that fateful night, I would have liked nothing more than to pick up Sandy and cruise the town of Fairfield, as if I had no cares in the world. No task to perform, challenge to meet, goal to reach. No dirty old man waiting for me in the dressing room by the back stage entrance of the auditorium.

  I would have taken Highway 00 north to Sixth Street; Sixth east up to Main Street (and downtown); followed Main north to Business Route 66 (also called Kingshighway), which would swing west for a long block, then turn south down to Sixth Street again. It was a circuit teenagers from all over Fairfield and Phipps County took many times in the course of a Saturday night.

  That unvarying trip embodied the comfort of the familiar, although I didn't fully understand at the time how important that was. Most of us had been born and raised in Fairfield, so we repeatedly saw the same familiar landmarks, the unchanging touchstones of past and present events: Phipps Lumber Company, the three downtown drugstores (Dixon's, Rexall's, Ninth Street), the southern edge of the college campus, Fanny's Dairy Delite, The DC (a 24-hour truckers' stop).

  A lot of my friends fretted about our circular route, claiming to be trapped, caged, circumscribed by the limitations of small-town life. But more of them would later come to understand that the pieces of our world, visible out our car windows, offered a necessary stability, at least for us. We were especially reassured by the institution of family, because just about every rider in the car passed his or her own neighborhood (or the road going into it) on each circuit. And, even though we had to rebel in some ways against their control, we knew where the parents, siblings, grandparents were waiting and watching.

  Things are more fragile today, I think--families, neighborhoods, communities. It's a price of success, our nation's prosperity and technology's grand achievements. We're more an urban nation and a people organized by telephones, computers, global financial networks. But I think individual people live more isolated lives now, straining across longer distances to connect in more fragile relationships.

  On that night many years ago, I needed the reassurance of the familiar, the stable, the friendly. And in the end, they were all there for me. But they reasserted themselves only after a series of startling shocks to my sense of self and of the world around me.

  I will get to take the old cruising route of my home town later today, of course, now that I'm back for this celebration of Fairfield's history. I'll be driving not to the college auditorium, where the Miss Route 66 contest was held years ago, but to the new high school, where wearers of that crown will meet in a kind of reunion. And oh! don't the memories come rushing back as I drink coffee in my room at the Holiday Inn, which sits at the westernmost exit off the freeway, right where old (now "historic") Route 66 disappears into the Interstate.

  When I drive east back toward the high school in a few hours I'll have to avoid regressing to my high school self, the young Susan Bell nervously pulling into the college parking lot behind the auditorium, gathering her flute, her outfits, her courage to compete for the crown of Miss Route 66.

  I knew that night I'd come a long way since the previous summer, when with Sandy Johnson I first saw a flute for sale in Martin's Jewelry Store. I had learned to play, found family support to become a contestant, made new friends like Mary Dunkin and Elizabeth Rogers. But tonight was my biggest test.

  "Good luck!" said a voice as I climbed the stairs to the room where all the girls would spread out their clothes and equipment. />
  "Oh, Larry! Ah, thanks." My classmate and soon-to-be date had arrived behind me and now was turning down the first floor hall to the entrance for auditorium seating.

  "You'll do great," he offered, smiling, and then went on.

  As I watched him stride away, I suddenly thought, is he taller? He looks bigger, more filled out, too. But perhaps it's just the sports jacket and dress slacks, a change from his everyday school self (or weekend worm farmer self!). I wondered if I'd look good to him in my swimsuit.

  Larry's voice was also reassuring in its gentleness, in the straightforward nature of his encouragement. Of course, mentally, I was comparing it to Mr. Pierce's sleazy invitation on the telephone of only a few hours earlier.

  There were other friendly voices echoing inside my head as I approached this great test of my ambition. My mother's encouragement came not only in words, but in music. At times in the last few weeks she'd spoken sharply about my playing, insisting that I practice key measures at a slower pace, play others loudly that I would eventually sound softly, measure the changes in tempo against the metronome. But always she praised the final result.