2.25 The Great Pretender

Betty

1956 • San Jose ~ Betty was part of the older crowd and on Saturday nights she and her girlfriends ice skated at the El Camino Skating Rink. All the cute boys were there, circling the arena, showing off to the girls and skimming across the frozen floor backward to the music of “Rock Around the Clock” and “Blue Suede Shoes.” Claudia, at thirteen, was too young to tag along. In late January, on one of those Saturday nights, a boy caught Betty’s eye, and as they were all leaving the rink, she invited him over after church the next day. Writing our address on a scrap of paper and slipping it into his hand, she turned to his friend Bobby and said, “you come too, you can meet my sister.”

At noon the boys showed up on our doorstep. Claudia, lowering her long lashes on meeting Bobby, was smitten, and he with her. They soon spent a lot of time together. They didn’t really date, they mostly rode around in the back seat of his friend’s car holding hands and necking while the radio crooned “The Great Pretender” and “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.” Bobby was a blonde, baby-faced Southerner, polite and charming. He was also four years older than Claudia and a lot more experienced. He was on liberty from the Navy, stationed at nearby Moffett Field. He’d enlisted at sixteen but told the Navy he was eighteen so he could get in. Bobby was fun and she liked how he sounded, but Claudia didn’t speak Southern drawl, so couldn’t understand half of what he said. He said he loved her. He said he wanted to marry her. He said if she loved him she’d… and it didn’t take long. Claudia told Betty that they’d had sex, knowing that Betty would give her the right advice, and Betty, who at fifteen knew everything, said, “Oh great—now you have to marry him.”

Claudia, seeing no other choice, arranged to run away with Bobby. Betty went along. Mom found out they cut school when they didn’t come home. She and Ray found them in the early evening on a side street just as the girls were crossing a supermarket driveway near the house. Betty and Claudia, after sneaking around town all day, ran right into them. Mom made the girls get in the car and packed them straightaway to Juvenile Hall. She’d show them. Except my sisters told the Juvenile officer about how Ray and his friend were always coming onto them, about how Mom and Ray were always drunk and fighting and trying to kill each other, about how Mom was a terrible mother, and how they didn’t want to go back home. Mom was furious, and now couldn’t get them released.

Claudia

Betty was in her element at Juvenile Hall, playing the guardian angel, listening to everyone’s story, giving the other delinquent girls advice. She took under her wing a poor seventeen-year-old whose parents had died and was now homeless. This girl didn’t belong at Juvenile Hall but had to stay until she turned eighteen. In those days, when you had no family to take you in and no other place to go, they put you in Juvie. Betty wanted to bring her home. Claudia just sat at the other end of the table, cupping her chin and shaking her head, snorting to herself, oh wonderful, Betty and another stray cat.

After three days there, Betty, who was not afraid at first, realized they were in a bad place with some bad kids where bad things could happen to them, and suddenly home looked good. So Betty went to the warden and said they had lied, that they’d made the whole story up about Mother, and begged him to please call her to come get them.

When the girls were back home, Mom had a Come-to-Jesus meeting with Bobby and threatened to have him shipped overseas. Bobby promised not to touch her daughter again until she was old enough. Yeah, sure.

to be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
All rights reserved.

Bobby was stationed at Moffett Field (the west coast’s largest Naval Air Transportation Base), located northwest of San Jose.

Left jet: Lockheed TV-2 Seastar Navy trainer; on right: Grumman F9F-8T Cougar Navy trainer. Tested at Moffett Field April 1956