©2011 Tom Weathers
Before recounting trips without Brenda I describe a trip with her- this trip being typical of our other trips.
Brenda getting ready. Something she hated.
The big issue was Brenda herself. She was nervous about leaving her collection of cats (12 at that time - all the spawn of Mama Cat who showed up one morning while I was in the Army) and her mother, Isabel, with whom she and I lived in the slowly falling in house on Blanton Street (I, who resented having to live with my mother-in-law did not do a very good job keeping things up).
Brenda worried that her mother would not feed the cats properly, or that she might drink too much and do something.
But more than anything, Brenda simply hated getting ready. She could get ready for work every morning - taking a bath, putting on a slip, fixing breakfast for she and me (when I was at home and not staying at the rooming house in Charlotte), spending 30 minutes applying makeup and fixing her hair - which never seemed right to her - and then finally pulling on the rubber girdle which she didn't really need to control her 105 pound figure, only to hold up her stockings, slipping on a skirt and blouse and getting in her old Volvo and driving flat out down US 74 to the highway department (ugly two story red brick building across from the fairground on the edge of town). She could do that five days a week because it was familiar and she was going somewhere she wanted to go.
What she hated was getting ready to go someplace different. What would she wear? How would she look? What would people think of her? Would she embarrass herself, say or do something undignified? I even drew a picture of her getting ready. She is standing in front of the mirror in the little run-down bathroom on Blanton Street, dressed in pedal pushers and a short sleeve top, her hair still in a net. Her eyes are hollow and her face is tragic. She is cursing - herself, fate, or possibly me (waiting in the bedroom across the hall, feeling my own intestines roil, swearing to myself never again, never again). I don’t depict this, but sometimes she comes out and bangs her slender and otherwise desirable hips with the palms of her hands, telling me she is fat, smiling when I sputter in protest.
But - and this was true for most of her life (even to her penultimate day), if I persisted and nagged, Brenda was OK once she got in the car. That was our salvation. We went out almost every night, to drive-in movies, to drive-in restaurants - or just to drive. Brenda was happy in the car and if Brenda was happy then I was happy.
The trip to Florida was like a continuation of one of our drives. Even before we were married, I enjoyed tracing the first 70 miles or so of my father's route to West Palm Beach. My family had moved there in 1956 after my mother died. We came back to visit Shelby two or three times a year. The last trip had been in June of 1959 when we returned for good. Although not especially happy in West Palm Beach I dreamed of returning with my lovely wife, not only to see the place but so that the place could see me with her. Now after four years of marriage, Brenda agreed to go.
The trip down took two days, with a stop in Daytona Beach. Through South Carolina and Georgia the roads were mostly two lane black top without much traffic. Conversation tended to be sporadic. The driver, Brenda or I, got lost in the rhythm of the road as the little car hummed up long hills, raced down the next hills, swept around curves, slowed though nameless little towns. The passenger often dozed. Warm air billowed through open windows. Both of us smoked and ashes whirled like motes. We stopped at Stuckey's for bathroom breaks and soft drinks.
We spent the night in an anonymous motel in Daytona at the edge of pine woods and scrubby palms just off Highway 1. Initially on leaving the sanctuary of the MG, walking across the gravel parking lot to the designated concrete stoop , Brenda was edgy and suspicious. But after unpacking, we drove out to the beach and she liked that. (The room was paneled in knotty pine and retained the odor of all the people who had been there before. I thought the place had a carnal air; Brenda just thought it smelled bad and added her own smoke to the varied history of the smoke that preceded us.)
Early afternoon the next day, we arrived in West Palm Beach. Nothing seemed quite real to me. It was like a waking dream.
We went over Flager Bridge across Lake Worth to Palm Beach. I pointed out places I knew from before - the Everglades club where my friend Ken's father had been a maitre de, the public beach where my sister Mickey and I sometimes went swimming, the Breakers hotel - which no longer seemed so impressive. Brenda's eyes, bright and alert darted back and forth. She smiled but did not say much. She was trying.
Driving to the south end of Palm Beach, beyond the rich section of the island, we got a room in a pleasant but modest hotel.
Then we went back to West Palm Beach to revisit old haunts.
We proceeded with funeral slowness past Palm Beach High school, a Moorish style structure presiding over the only hill in this part of Florida. (Hiding in the library on the third floor I had been able to see the ocean across Lake Worth and Palm Beach.) The school and surrounding neighborhoods were sometimes featured in my dreams. I did not tell Brenda about the dreams, just that here was where I went to high school to which she replied yes it is a pretty place.
We went west out Okeechobee Road to Belvedere Homes, a development of two and three bedroom concrete block houses on the edge of town just beyond the dog track near the Air Force base. (I had been able to hear the crowds at the dog track through my open bedroom window. Once a Word War II vintage B-24 bomber missed the runway and crashed not far from our house. I went to see that. Usually I only ventured out to school and movies, and to drive my father's 57 Chevrolet as fast as it would go down the empty roads beyond Military Trail and sometimes on A1A through the northern part of Palm Beach .)
Belvedere Homes still existed as did the little house on Pine Street. But Okeechobee Road no longer skirted the edge of the Everglades. Now there was a Ford dealership and what appeared to be 500 stucco houses. I tried to explain to Brenda how it had looked before, how going to and from Palm Beach High I had imagined the expanse of swamp and grass to be a savanna and the palms in the distance to be the edge of a tropical jungle. A place of adventure. Peering at the pastel-colored houses with distant eyes, Brenda nodded and said yes she could see it. She was doing her best.
That night, I had no favorite restaurants from before to recommend for supper. Brenda was adamant about not going anywhere fancy. She would be embarrassed. After driving around for a half an hour and not finding anything suitable we ended up in a pizza place on Highway 1 in the southern part of West Palm Beach. It was a modest establishment in a modest neighborhood of small houses and small businesses. There were not many people and the pizza was disappointing. Traffic could be heard marching up and down the highway. I had hoped for something better. Brenda did not say much.
Back at the hotel, Brenda stayed on her side of the bed and said that she missed her cats. She watched the Late Show until the test pattern appeared and then searched the channels for something else. The next morning I said that we would return to Shelby, leaving that day, after breakfast. I said that I was disappointed with West Palm Beach, that the development along Okeechobee had spoiled it for me.
Brenda was sympathetic and said she was sorry it had not worked out. We ate on the patio of the little hotel and looked out over the ocean. Brenda enjoyed her cheese danish pastry. It would become her favorite breakfast food. She seemed happy. But when I suggested that maybe after all we could stay another day her face darkened and she said no lets go on. Safely in the car she was interested when I pointed out the Merriweather Post estate.
We drove straight through without spending the night. Every time it came up Brenda said let’s keep going. The heat seemed worse than before. The sky was intense blue. The car was like an oven. We did not talk much.
About 280 miles north of West Palm Beach Brenda was driving when we got turned around in Jacksonville and went across the bridge twice. I laughed. Brenda laughed.
At 1:30 in the morning of the next day, driving through a small town in South Carolina, the throttle of the MG stuck open and in order to make a curve I had to speed through a service station parking lot surprising a man who had stopped to check his tires. Reaching down, while steering with my left hand, I freed the pedal and the car was OK for the rest of the trip.
We pulled into the gravel driveway at Blanton Street at 3:00 AM. Isabel got up long enough to welcome us back then returned to bed. Brenda seemed to drop right off to sleep. My hands and feet would not stop tingling and whenever I shut my eyes I could see the endless uneventful road.
Forty five years later, after Brenda died, I went back to West Palm Beach. When asked why it took so long I told people what I had told Brenda and what I had said ever since - that the development along Okeechobee had spoiled it for me.
Brenda and I didn't travel much. I probably traveled more in 2010, the year after she died, than in all the years before that.
This story is about a trip that Brenda and I took to Florida in 1965, in the 4th year or our marriage. It sets the stage for other trips.
There were several built-in problems with the Florida trip. Doing it in August (even to celebrate our fourth anniversary) was one thing. It was hot enough in Shelby and bound to be even worse in West Palm Beach. Going in the small black un-air conditioned MG 1100 sedan compounded the problem. It was even questionable whether the car would make the 1500 mile round trip. Although only six months old there had already been major issues. But in 1965 lack of air-conditioning was not unusual. And although not the most reliable thing in the world the car was fun and cute.The big issue was Brenda herself. She was nervous about leaving her collection of cats (12 at that time - all the spawn of Mama Cat who showed up one morning while I was in the Army) and her mother, Isabel, with whom she and I lived in the slowly falling in house on Blanton Street (I, who resented having to live with my mother-in-law did not do a very good job keeping things up).
Brenda worried that her mother would not feed the cats properly, or that she might drink too much and do something.
But more than anything, Brenda simply hated getting ready. She could get ready for work every morning - taking a bath, putting on a slip, fixing breakfast for she and me (when I was at home and not staying at the rooming house in Charlotte), spending 30 minutes applying makeup and fixing her hair - which never seemed right to her - and then finally pulling on the rubber girdle which she didn't really need to control her 105 pound figure, only to hold up her stockings, slipping on a skirt and blouse and getting in her old Volvo and driving flat out down US 74 to the highway department (ugly two story red brick building across from the fairground on the edge of town). She could do that five days a week because it was familiar and she was going somewhere she wanted to go.
What she hated was getting ready to go someplace different. What would she wear? How would she look? What would people think of her? Would she embarrass herself, say or do something undignified? I even drew a picture of her getting ready. She is standing in front of the mirror in the little run-down bathroom on Blanton Street, dressed in pedal pushers and a short sleeve top, her hair still in a net. Her eyes are hollow and her face is tragic. She is cursing - herself, fate, or possibly me (waiting in the bedroom across the hall, feeling my own intestines roil, swearing to myself never again, never again). I don’t depict this, but sometimes she comes out and bangs her slender and otherwise desirable hips with the palms of her hands, telling me she is fat, smiling when I sputter in protest.
But - and this was true for most of her life (even to her penultimate day), if I persisted and nagged, Brenda was OK once she got in the car. That was our salvation. We went out almost every night, to drive-in movies, to drive-in restaurants - or just to drive. Brenda was happy in the car and if Brenda was happy then I was happy.
The trip to Florida was like a continuation of one of our drives. Even before we were married, I enjoyed tracing the first 70 miles or so of my father's route to West Palm Beach. My family had moved there in 1956 after my mother died. We came back to visit Shelby two or three times a year. The last trip had been in June of 1959 when we returned for good. Although not especially happy in West Palm Beach I dreamed of returning with my lovely wife, not only to see the place but so that the place could see me with her. Now after four years of marriage, Brenda agreed to go.
The trip down took two days, with a stop in Daytona Beach. Through South Carolina and Georgia the roads were mostly two lane black top without much traffic. Conversation tended to be sporadic. The driver, Brenda or I, got lost in the rhythm of the road as the little car hummed up long hills, raced down the next hills, swept around curves, slowed though nameless little towns. The passenger often dozed. Warm air billowed through open windows. Both of us smoked and ashes whirled like motes. We stopped at Stuckey's for bathroom breaks and soft drinks.
We spent the night in an anonymous motel in Daytona at the edge of pine woods and scrubby palms just off Highway 1. Initially on leaving the sanctuary of the MG, walking across the gravel parking lot to the designated concrete stoop , Brenda was edgy and suspicious. But after unpacking, we drove out to the beach and she liked that. (The room was paneled in knotty pine and retained the odor of all the people who had been there before. I thought the place had a carnal air; Brenda just thought it smelled bad and added her own smoke to the varied history of the smoke that preceded us.)
Early afternoon the next day, we arrived in West Palm Beach. Nothing seemed quite real to me. It was like a waking dream.
We went over Flager Bridge across Lake Worth to Palm Beach. I pointed out places I knew from before - the Everglades club where my friend Ken's father had been a maitre de, the public beach where my sister Mickey and I sometimes went swimming, the Breakers hotel - which no longer seemed so impressive. Brenda's eyes, bright and alert darted back and forth. She smiled but did not say much. She was trying.
Driving to the south end of Palm Beach, beyond the rich section of the island, we got a room in a pleasant but modest hotel.
Then we went back to West Palm Beach to revisit old haunts.
We proceeded with funeral slowness past Palm Beach High school, a Moorish style structure presiding over the only hill in this part of Florida. (Hiding in the library on the third floor I had been able to see the ocean across Lake Worth and Palm Beach.) The school and surrounding neighborhoods were sometimes featured in my dreams. I did not tell Brenda about the dreams, just that here was where I went to high school to which she replied yes it is a pretty place.
We went west out Okeechobee Road to Belvedere Homes, a development of two and three bedroom concrete block houses on the edge of town just beyond the dog track near the Air Force base. (I had been able to hear the crowds at the dog track through my open bedroom window. Once a Word War II vintage B-24 bomber missed the runway and crashed not far from our house. I went to see that. Usually I only ventured out to school and movies, and to drive my father's 57 Chevrolet as fast as it would go down the empty roads beyond Military Trail and sometimes on A1A through the northern part of Palm Beach .)
Belvedere Homes still existed as did the little house on Pine Street. But Okeechobee Road no longer skirted the edge of the Everglades. Now there was a Ford dealership and what appeared to be 500 stucco houses. I tried to explain to Brenda how it had looked before, how going to and from Palm Beach High I had imagined the expanse of swamp and grass to be a savanna and the palms in the distance to be the edge of a tropical jungle. A place of adventure. Peering at the pastel-colored houses with distant eyes, Brenda nodded and said yes she could see it. She was doing her best.
That night, I had no favorite restaurants from before to recommend for supper. Brenda was adamant about not going anywhere fancy. She would be embarrassed. After driving around for a half an hour and not finding anything suitable we ended up in a pizza place on Highway 1 in the southern part of West Palm Beach. It was a modest establishment in a modest neighborhood of small houses and small businesses. There were not many people and the pizza was disappointing. Traffic could be heard marching up and down the highway. I had hoped for something better. Brenda did not say much.
Back at the hotel, Brenda stayed on her side of the bed and said that she missed her cats. She watched the Late Show until the test pattern appeared and then searched the channels for something else. The next morning I said that we would return to Shelby, leaving that day, after breakfast. I said that I was disappointed with West Palm Beach, that the development along Okeechobee had spoiled it for me.
Brenda was sympathetic and said she was sorry it had not worked out. We ate on the patio of the little hotel and looked out over the ocean. Brenda enjoyed her cheese danish pastry. It would become her favorite breakfast food. She seemed happy. But when I suggested that maybe after all we could stay another day her face darkened and she said no lets go on. Safely in the car she was interested when I pointed out the Merriweather Post estate.
We drove straight through without spending the night. Every time it came up Brenda said let’s keep going. The heat seemed worse than before. The sky was intense blue. The car was like an oven. We did not talk much.
About 280 miles north of West Palm Beach Brenda was driving when we got turned around in Jacksonville and went across the bridge twice. I laughed. Brenda laughed.
At 1:30 in the morning of the next day, driving through a small town in South Carolina, the throttle of the MG stuck open and in order to make a curve I had to speed through a service station parking lot surprising a man who had stopped to check his tires. Reaching down, while steering with my left hand, I freed the pedal and the car was OK for the rest of the trip.
We pulled into the gravel driveway at Blanton Street at 3:00 AM. Isabel got up long enough to welcome us back then returned to bed. Brenda seemed to drop right off to sleep. My hands and feet would not stop tingling and whenever I shut my eyes I could see the endless uneventful road.
Forty five years later, after Brenda died, I went back to West Palm Beach. When asked why it took so long I told people what I had told Brenda and what I had said ever since - that the development along Okeechobee had spoiled it for me.
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