......by Rosemary Bowery

I met Henry late in the summer of 1952.

The lazy feeling of autumn was already in the air as the hustle and bustle of summer had slowed to a pace. Big yellow vehicles carrying precious cargo would be seen again in the neighborhoods soon.

My best friend and I were enjoying a beautiful Saturday at the Appalachian Fair in Gray, Tennessee. That is how my friend met this handsome guy named, Mel. He wanted to come over to Kingsport the next week-end and take her to dinner and a movie. She agreed ...she was really stuck on him... only if he could bring along a date for me. That is how I met Henry. Marla and I had double dated ever since we met at work about a year ago. Mel lived on a farm and drove a pick-up truck. Henry lived on a farm with his parents but he didn't make his living farming. The fact that Mel was a farmer and planned to make it his lifetime career was the reason he and Marla never made it to the alter. Henry and I made it clear to each other from the beginning that wedded bliss was not for us. I had three older married sisters with babies, he had a married sister with babies and we didn't want to fall into that trap anytime soon.

Henry usually drove when we went out because it was a little too tight when the four of us tried to fit into the cab of Mel's pick-up. It was still summer and the evenings were too warm to get that cozy even for a short drive. Although I don't think Marla and Mel minded one bit because she practically sat in his lap anyway.

Marla was very attractive and very sure of herself. We were both twenty-two. Marla had married her childhood sweetheart when she was sixteen and was widowed four years later when her husband was killed in an automobile crash. She was now working shift work at'Eastman' and taking correspondence courses to get her high school diploma. She had just started dating again but said she was not interested in romance because she had never gotten over Bobby. Now that she had meet this 'Dean Martin' look-a-like she was not so sure.

Henry was overweight, near sighted and wore blue suede shoes. He was always well groomed and looked neat in his dungarees and tailored shirts. He had a great sense of humor and sometimes cracked himself up with his jokes. He lived with his parents on a farm in Piney Flats and worked at Summers Hardware Store in Johnson City. His 1945 Ford convertible looked as it might fall apart anytime. Henry could squeeze a dumpling out of you but he couldn't kiss worth a hoot and when we tried to neck his big thick glasses and my long nose were forever getting in the way. Mostly we ended up laughing, insulting each other, arguing about politics, religion and even music. I liked country, blue grass, rock and roll and the Nashville brass. He liked classical, big bands and swing. Henry liked to dance and said he would teach me the two step and some ballroom dances. He never did.

I was surprised when a few weeks later he invited me to a wiener roast without asking Mel and Marla. He was counselor for the Methodist Youth Fellowship at his Church in Piney Flats. He had planned an outing for them on Boone Lake late on a Saturday afternoon.

After the cook out, all the young people had been picked up by their parents, we sat around, watched the fire die down, re-kindled it and watched it die down again. We talked for hours without realizing it was getting late. The days were getting shorter and when the sun set it was dark already. Henry said he had been working at Summers Hardware since he got out of high school and was saving his money to go to college. He wanted to teach high school Math. I was working in the yarn plant at 'Eastman' and also had hopes of going to college someday. It must have been around nine o'clock when we left but it was only about forty-five minutes to my home in Kingsport.

Henry was full of surprises that night. He took the long way home and we ended up on a dark country road. I had no idea where we were. He knew very well where we were but pretended to be lost. He could tell I was getting uneasy and yet he was enjoying every minute of it. When I realized that he was putting me on I was not uneasy. I was M-A-D. I tried to change stations on the radio and found the knob that changed stations was broken and this made me furious. I said, "Why not let this 'Mancini' fellow take a break so we can tune in to the Grand Ole Opry!" He was laughing his ass off by this time and said, " Miss Rose, this happens to be my car and I'm in charge of said radio. No Grand Ole Uproar this evening and what's more I'll tell you what you can do... if you don't like my music, you can get out and walk." He was kidding of course, and I knew he would not leave me alone on a dark country road but that made me all the more angry.

"If you will stop this rag top bucket of scrap iron and let me out I will be happy to." I had no idea where we were and it was dark as pitch, but I was so angry I would have gotten out right there in the middle of nowhere. Screeeech....went the brakes and I almost hit the windshield. He stopped right in the middle of the road and said, "Bye now". I reached for the door handle to get out and it came off in my hand. I was trying to climb out the window and managed to get one leg halfway out when he started the car and I had to get back in. He hit the brake again and I fell back down into the seat. All this time he was laughing so hard he had take off his glasses to wipe the tears from his eyes. When he laid them on the seat I made a dive for them and threw them out the car window and they went sliding down the pavement and ended up in the tall grass near a ditch.....Now the laughing ceased .... the begging began. He couldn't see his hand in front of his face without his glasses. He was at my mercy. He got out and felt his way around to the passenger side and opened the door and asked me to move the car out of the road since he couldn't see how. I moved over into the drivers seat. I think I would have driven off and left him standing there had I not felt a little pang of pity for him. I moved the car onto the shoulder of the road and got out. He was still pleading with me to try and find his glasses.

"I am sorry, I am so sorry," he kept saying, "I didn't mean to upset you. I thought you could take a joke. I was only trying to have a little fun."

I got the keys out of the car, opened the trunk, found a flashlight and shined it all around. Several cars went by. I finally found his glasses. I had cooled down some and suddenly I was laughing too. We both sat down on the back bumper. He reached for his glasses. I quickly got up and ran across the road. "Now, try that again and you will feel a metal flashlight up the side of your head," I yelled. "My fury was returning in full force. I sat seething in the grass for 10 or fifteen minutes with the flash light turned off. I knew he would never try to cross the road in the dark without his glasses.

"Please, please, just let me have my glasses and I will do anything. I could hear him whining from across the road. "I don't know what's come over you. I thought you were a fun person. Where is your sense of humor? After all the fun we've had kidding around with each other these last few weeks, please, please, if I don't get you home soon your dad will kill us both.

He didn't know it but my dad was sound asleep and wouldn't know what time I came in. But my mother would be worried sick. She never went to sleep until she heard my key in the door and then she would pretend to be dead to the world. She was very strict when I was a teenager but now that I was older she let me travel at my own risk.

I inched back across the road. I was still mad but I wanted to get home. "Okay, John Henry, I'll let you have your glasses as soon as we pull into my driveway."

"Rose, you dizzy dame, the heat from the fire cook your brain? I can't drive home without my glasses."

"I am in charge now" I said, "and we will listen the Grand Ole Opry all the way to Kingsport. So please get in and turn the radio dial to 'WSM', and after I lock these glasses in the trunk, I'll drive us home. Now, I don't have an inkling as to what part of the United States of Tennessee we have ended up, but you are going to give me some directions."

"Idiot, how do you think I can direct you home without my glasses?"

"Aw, come on genius, you figure it out. I better not have to flag down a deputy to ask directions. If I do, I'll tell him you blindfolded me and brought me out here so you could have your way with me,"

"In your dreams, Hayseed!" he spouted. "If I could have my way right now I would slap both of your eyes into one then wring your scrawny neck."

Buck Owens performed the last quarter hour of the Opry before it went off the air at midnight. "It's crying time again_you're gonna leave me"_ I turned up the volume, gripped the steering wheel and put the petal to the metal. When we passed Holston Institute School I knew where we were and I relaxed a little. I now knew the way home. I glanced over at Henry, he had his hands over his eyes. I looked over again in a little bit and he had his hands over ears. I could hear him mumbling. I think he was praying.