Graduation and Beyond

My senior year was down to the final month. I invited Evan to the annual junior-senior banquet as my date. He drove down after work from Jackson. The banquet wasn’t anything memorable, but having a date for those things seemed important. We left as early as we could for some private time before he had to drive back.

Class night was fun. It was a night of songs, skits and awards. We were recognized for our academic accomplishments and honors we had received. I won the Balfour award medal for public speaking. On graduation night, I had the major address, and a male classmate also spoke. Evan was there for my graduation. I appreciated him making the long trip to support me.

I had sent out invitations to friends and family inviting them to my graduation and was delighted that everyone who got an invitation sent me a gift. This was better than Santa Claus. I’d never gotten so many gifts in my life. I got clothing items, jewelry, perfumes and many other things. The final days had kept me so busy that I hadn’t stopped long enough to recognize what it meant to graduate.

As soon as the final diploma was handed out, we were hustled back to a classroom to turn in our rented caps and gowns and prepare to leave. It was an unexpected emotional moment which seemed to hit all of us at the same time. Suddenly everyone was crying and hugging each other. Many of us had been together for twelve years.

You don’t always recognize it when a page of your life flips over for the final time. Even now, after all of those years, I have a lump in my throat remembering that moment. Maybe we would never walk through the doors of this building again. I was one of the ones who never did. There were classmates there that night I would never see again. This was like watching the turning of a major page of life on which final lines were written.  

A few of my friends were making plans to go to college in the fall. My family didn’t give me any hopes as to what might come of me when school started up in August. Mom would have liked for me to go away to a Christian college, and she had sent away for brochures and catalogs. I saw my chances of my going away anywhere to college as slim to none, and yet I knew my folks had always hoped I would be the first of their kin to get a college degree.

I did what I usually resorted to doing when I didn’t have the answers. I lived one day at a time and tried not to think about it. When August arrived, something would either happen or it wouldn’t. I didn’t think my parents had money to send me away, and I knew Dad would never dream of going into debt.

Evan and I did some different things on our dates during the summer months. Once we went to a nearby creek and went swimming. That is when I realized Evan didn’t really like water sports. He only did it to please me. He did have a passion for flying, and several times, we drove to the air base in Meridian and had one of the pilots take us up in a training plane. I’d not been up in a small plane since I was five.

I was soon introduced to the rest of Evan’s family. His sister, Helen, her husband, Joe, and six-year-old son, Jimmy, were moving to our town, where Joe planned to start a factory for making church benches. Helen was four years older than Evan and was a non-stop talker.

At our first meeting, she managed to embarrass Evan and concern me when she said, “Evan, are you still having those spells?”  He looked at her like she had lost her mind, and she finished by adding, “He came back from Korea, shell-shocked.” Evan made an excuse to leave shortly after.

Evan quickly assured me that he had no idea what Helen meant by ‘spell’ or ‘shell-shocked’. He admitted to occasionally suffering from a migraine headache. After getting to know Helen and her non-stop verbal nonsense, I came to understand how she might have misdiagnosed a migraine as a shell-shocked spell.

We traveled all the way to Laurel to meet Maxine, the sister nearest his age, and the brother-in-law, Wayne. That night, we attended a demolition derby. This was another first for me. Wayne was a gentle man, in spite of the fact he enjoyed violent entertainment like this, and wrestling matches. I fell in love with the personality of both he and Maxine. She was the kind of sister anyone would love. There was no doubt, she was Evan’s favorite sibling.

The final family member to meet was Evan’s brother, Rhomus. He was two years younger and a couple of inches shorter. We accidentally happened upon Rhomus, who had recently returned from Korea after four years in the Navy. Evan and I were in Newton, having coffee at a local café. It didn’t take long to realize he was more outgoing than Evan and slightly on the cocky side. I decided I liked him more the following day, when Evan informed me Rhomas had said, “I don’t know how you managed to get the prettiest girl in Newton.” Of course, I took that with the proverbial grain of salt, since I’d never won a beauty contest, but who doesn’t enjoy being flattered.

Since I had now met all of the immediate family, many times on Saturday nights instead of going to a drive-in movie, Evan would take me to his house to watch television with his parents. Maxine and Wayne had given them a television set for Christmas. The Hit Parade was usually on, so that became our Saturday entertainment.

I don’t remember marriage being mentioned a lot that summer, but we had only been dating on weekends for seven months when August rolled around. Because we could only be together for a few hours twice a week, this meant we’d had less than 14 dates. Evan recognized I needed more time. It was still a month until I would be 18.

A week before classes started at the local Baptist Jr. college in Newton, Dad informed me that I should register there for classes on Monday. College hours cost $6 per hour. College hours has nothing to do with actual hours. A full course load per semester was 18 college hours. I could attend for $78 per semester plus books if I continued to live at home. My dad could afford that. I was the only student from Newton High school who would go this cheaper route. The rest of the Clarke students lived on campus. Each day, I would be expected to walk to town from my classes and ride home with Dad.

On the first day, Dad let me out on the campus with no idea where to go or what to do. I approached the school with a deep feeling of dread, knowing my dad had never had anything good to say about anyone who attended this school. I asked the first person I saw what I was supposed to do, and suddenly, everyone around me wanted to help. I had only been on the campus an hour when I decided I was in love with the place. I had a lot of cute out-of-town guys wanting to walk me through the process. I had never felt so popular.

This wasn’t going to go over well, if I told Evan what my school life was like, but maybe having weekday friends wouldn’t take a toll on our relationship. After all, I needed to get some boy/girl socializing out of my system before I should be expected to settle down.