Thursday, June 27, 2024

I'd Be Her Groupie Too

It was my post on Emily Dickinson that got me digging around my past searching for the girls and women I had crushes on. Based on head to head comparison of the number of serious relationships, including my marriage of 43 years to the number of crushes I can remember, Committed Couplings edge out the Crushes. Doesn't mean the crushes were any less painful to experience.

Some of my noteworthy crushes:

Tall Lois - My first crush. If my family had not moved out of Tampa after I finished fifth grade, who knows, I might be a retired sponge diver with skin cancer now.

Then I guess other than hormone driven lust that takes over pubescent boys, my next big crush was Paula in 9th grade. I had been warned about her and her red hair. Eventually I said something truly obnoxious and she laid me out flat on my back. The boys were some tender for a day or two. Learned that some lessons come hard when courting. Be wary.

More horny teenage lust moments passed until I was in college and on Summer Break. I humped household goods for Advance Storage, a moving company near the campus in Towson, Murland. We moved a high end Executive at Black and Decker from a one huge house to another huge house with a much larger yard, acres and acres with horses larger. They had a daughter. Lets call her Beautiful Yuppie Chick.

When I first saw her the morning of the move, she emerged out of nowhere in the kitchen. She obviously did not, nor expect three black guys and a white hippie to be in the kitchen waiting for moving instructions from the mistress of the house. She came in wearing gym shorts and a very large sweat shirt. Her hair was a mess. Her mom quickly shooed her out.

The moment I saw her and for the next 3 days of packing the contents and then moving them 20 miles north to Maryland's horse country, I was definitely, no doubt about it, in love. Well, that is what I convinced myself I was.

Beautiful Yuppie Chick and I had no real special moments. Any special moments were created in my mind only. Now, I am pretty sure she didn't even know I existed. I was just a worker bee who happened to be Caucasian. Oh, we smiled at each other and exchanged polite niceties, but even in my blind delirium, I really knew it was one sided. Once the move was over, I recovered in a day or so. But I still remember that spike in emotion she created in me by being around her those three days.

Fast forward a year or two. The last real crush I remember was Ruby Starr, a singer with Black Oak Arkansas. They were the third tour I hauled when I was with SHOWCO out of Dallas, Texas. I think both of us knew I was crushing on her. Women always seem to know I think. She made first contact when she saw me smoking a joint outside the motel in Bangor, Maine. We shared the joint and talked. Or rather, we shared the joint and she talked. I couldn't find my tongue. She was too close. I remember her saying she hated the cold even though or because she was from  Toledo. We connected a few more times over the course of the tour, but again I was again destined to be the broken hearted boy.

Ruby is dead now. She only lived 46 years before Cancer claimed her. Besides her solid Rock n Roll career, she managed to marry, bear children, have a home.

There was one final lesson I learned from these four memorable females. They all had red hair. I finally accepted the fact that red heads were not for me. I had much better luck with brunettes.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ................................... 

_____________________

Here is a cover of "Maybe I'm Amazed"  Ruby performed while with Black Oak Arkansas

RIP Ruby

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