For some strange reason this set of memories was not preserved when I recalled others from my Kent State period. In re-reading those entries almost three years later, I am surprised they were concealed from active recollection back then. The event involved a picnic, during the early spring of my Senior year at KSU. The gathering of a select group of DU brothers met on a small beach frontage on the eastern end of Lake Erie, near Ashtabula. The property was owned by the family of Paul Timms, a fraternity brother who liked to party. He invited us to spend the day on the beach, with a focus on a wiener roast, a feast of the highest magnitude for young adults, even back then.
Roasting hotdogs and burning marshmallows are among the highlights of my memory, some six decades later! Fortunately, there are also some old photos of many of us crowding around a bonfire, wondering if the results of the open flames were ready for consumption. After all, semi-cooked hotdogs are edible, especially for twenty-somethings.
The day went well, until the afternoon rains arrived. They provided our only opportunity to get wet, since Lake Erie is too chilly for swimming before late summer. Fortunately, the Timms family owned a small, nearby cottage, an excellent place to drink beer while attempting to stay dry, or dry-out for those of us who had been caught in the sudden rain. Karen was one of the latter. She had not brought a swimsuit, knowing, I suppose, the unlikelihood of taking a dip in the lake. Of course, most of the DU guys did have trunks, since jumping into cold water proved one’s masculinity in some mysterious way. For some reason, Karen’s blouse was completely soaked; she made do with a lightweight jacket she had brought along. This outfit was fine until a little bit later, on our drive back to Kent.
Our ride to the picnic and our way back to the campus involved Dan Patridge, a close fraternity brother, and his girlfriend, Lillian, who was the sorority sister who had introduced Karen and me at the beginning of that school year. For some reason, it was suggested we drive back from Ashtabula to Kent by way of Niles. My hometown was, geographically, on the way. It made some sense, since this would give Karen, as well as Dan and Lillian, a chance to meet my mother for the first time.
The interaction of Karen and my mother proceeded well, with one major exception. Karen’s blouse had not yet dried. She wore her tan jacket with only a dampish bra beneath it. My mother kept insisting Karen should remove her jacket in order to be more comfortable in our overly heated house. Karen kept refusing, much to my mother’s inability to comprehend why she wanted to remain with the jacket. We made an exit as soon as we could and had a laugh-filled drive back to Kent State. It was years later that Karen finally explained to my mother why she remained in a zipped jacket the first time they had met.