Memoirs

The Trip

Jackie and Ladybird beamed out at the raucous crowd through the television screen as signs of Kennedy for President bobbed up and down in front of them. Their husbands waved and grinned like the Cheshire cat in Alice's Adventure. Reruns of the night before continued to be the news of the day, as the scene flickered past on the little black and white sitting on a shelf above the lunch counter.

I was grinning, too, but with delight, not mischief. It was the summer of 1960, and I was what I preferred to call 'almost 16'. Near our destination, Aunt Dorothy and I sat on red vinyl stools at a little drugstore lunch counter on the main street of Suffern, New York. I think the sign said Lafayette Avenue. I tried to eat my grilled cheese, but food stuck in my throat at the moment. We stopped here because Aunt Dorothy said guests should not arrive hungry.

Driving north a little over three hours, the landscape changed from the flat corn fields where we lived in Delaware to the rolling hills leading up to the Catskills and down to the Hudson River. Suffern was sandwiched between the two, just over the border of Pennsylvania in New York State, thirty minutes from The City, and unlike anything my smalltown eyes had ever seen before. I strained to listen to the people around us with their funny accents as Aunt Dorothy asked for specific directions to her friend's home.

We were on our way to visit a real artist. I had studied the portrait Arlene had painted of Aunt Dorothy. It hung prominently in my aunt's livingroom, a focal point of color and light. I yearned to paint like that as only a dreamy-headed sixteen year-old can.

Back in her Ford Fairlane we headed toward the outskirts of the small town. Off the main highway, we turned into a park-like setting with rolling green hills, little creeks flowing from higher up, white birch trunks jutting this way and that, some huge homes scattered throughout with one sporting a cannon in its front yard. Cautiously, we navigated a wooden bridge wide enough for only one vehicle. And then, we were there.

Arlene lived in a converted barn, a huge two-story structure painted gray. She emerged from the side door in a flowing yellow and red kaftan, her lustrous long black hair shinier than a Breck shampoo ad. Her arms opened wide in greeting as she clasped each of us in a tight bearhug. If I had a picture in my mind of what an artist should look like, she personified it perfectly. I was in heaven, hugged by a real artist who had nothing but praise for my up-to-now unknown attributes. It was the beginning of a vacation of firsts for me.

During the week of our visit I had my first English muffin, my first pizza, my first swim in a pool fed by a mountain stream, my first Martini. Yuck, I could have done without that. My first play, off Broadway, but still exciting, my first visit to Chinatown where I ate my first Chinese meal, that old standby sweet and sour pork. Would you believe the only souvenir I bought was an abacus? I could not help gawking as we drove through the streets of New York City amazed at how tradesmen pushed racks of clothes amid the vehicles, paying no heed to what I saw as imminent disaster.

When we ate at the 'artist's retreat', my secret name for the barn, Arlene served our food outside, al fresco, on a glass-topped table with a blue flower arrangement tucked underneath. I remember a wedge of iceberg lettuce with dressing slathered over it as it lay beside a huge grilled steak. Everything seemed so exotic to me.

Arlene painted her oils in the loft area of the barn, only accessible by wooden stairs from the outside. Not everyone got to go up there, but we were exceptions. She called it her expensive hobby. I called it god-like. Her rent-paying job was as a window dresser in Nyack where I watched her artistic skills transform mundane products into fairy tale scenes.

The mountain swimming pool was icy, even in July, but worth every shivering moment as I gathered memories to report to my friends back home. I could float on my back and be swept from the top side to the bottom in a matter of seconds. And what lay underneath that dark water no one knew.

We weren't there long before Aunt Dorothy and I discovered Arlene had what we suspected to be a 'live-in' boyfriend. Teddy appeared seemingly out of nowhere, comfortable in his surroundings and somewhat possessive of the artist. Even in my youthful naivete, I suspected him to be at least ten years younger than Arlene. Could this get any better? Giving credit where credit is due, he did not spend the nights while we were there. I decided he slept in his car and felt just a little bit guilty, but remember, this was 1960. My Aunt Dorothy would not be encouraging him to room in in my presence knowing my big mouth would be reporting all this back home.

About halfway through our week's stay, Arlene decided I needed a "date night". She volunteered Teddy to be the date, and he suggested The Wizard of Oz at the drive-in not far away. My poor heart started doing flip flops. Teddy was a little old in my teenage mind, but he wasn't bad looking. After all, Arlene was drop dead gorgeous. I do not remember much of the date, only that Teddy was a perfect gentlemen. I, not unlike Judy Garland, was in an Oz of my own. I hummed Over the Rainbow for months afterward.

When it was time to leave, only the thought of sharing my adventure with my best friend kept me from downright misery. I wanted to be just like Arlene when I grew up. But teenage life intervened and my dream faded in the bright light of more important teenage pursuits. I never saw Arlene again, but now, years later, I wonder what happened to her. I searched her name on the internet getting back nineteen Arlene Hoffs in the U.S., but none fit any of the facts I knew. And my Aunt Dorothy passed away long ago without my being smart enough to ask any questions. For now, Arlene, the artist, will remain a mystery, and perhaps that is how it should be.