JIM SETTERS’ FIRST TIME TO KISS A GIRL
Vickey Setters, Jim’s sister-in-law, sent him this picture and she, with a tongue in cheek approach, said I may know who the young lady is, in between my mother and Auntie.
It was Peggy Wills, the girl I was dating heavily when I went into the Marines.
She was the only daughter of the Doyle Wills family and she overpowered me when Raymond Proctor and I were working at A&P on 8th avenue South, in Nashville. Peggy, who lived only a few blocks from the A&P grocery store, in a single day would make numerous trips to our store and it soon became obvious to all, what and who she was after. Of course, I was smitten, who wouldn’t be. Peggy after several days of visiting the store, finally attracted my attention and we pursued a normal boy/girl relationship.
A&P was the Walmart of its day, and although a difficult job, paid teen aged boys fifty cents an hour, which was top hourly pay for young men in 1944. The fact that the store manager and his wife, rented the upstairs apartment in the Wills two story home, gave me an additional edge on any competition I might have. After Peggy became part of my love life, she also became my mother’s pride and joy and, after we began dating heavily, spent a lot of time with my mother.
Peggy at one point became the first girl that I had ever kissed. That first kiss was at night, I was walking her home, from one of our first dates at the movies. I think I could still find the very house where we made lip to lip contact on the sidewalk in that block. My very first time to kiss a girl. It was in the 800 block, not very far from where she lived.
One night, after we had been seeing one another for a few weeks, we were heavily involved in our kissing and such and I looked up and there was a guy standing there at the open door protected by only a screen door, (very few, and only the rich had air conditioning) watching us. I yelled at him and quickly went outside and tried to find him in the darkness but fortunately, was not able to make contact with him.
One of the classes I chose at the Howard High School was typing. Months later, when I was in the Marine corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, the drill instructors (we called them DI’s) would stand us at attention, out on the hard asphalt parade field in formation for hours at a time. I would use my toes to type Peggy letters, just to keep myself alert so I would not pass out, while standing at attention.
The DI’s (Drill Instructors) could not see my toes wiggle inside my boon dockers, (combat boots) even if they were watching.
Those letters were never mailed of course, but Peggy, way back in Nashville, unknowingly, kept me from passing out while other guys were falling to the parade field around me. There is a picture of us in the Howard High school 1945 yearbook, sitting on top of a little doghouse with our hands over our eyes in a long -distance type stance. I was the art director of the yearbook and personally put the picture into it.
One night, when I was through singing at the Hollywood Palms Night Club, I had stopped on my way home (then living in an apartment my mother and I had rented from the Wades) and visited with Peggy. I was waiting for the Glenwood Bus when three sailors (who were stationed at the Thompson Lane separation center) came by as I stood waiting for the midnight bus. They were drunk and one of them hit me in the eye with his fist without any cause. I was trying to be friendly and did not see his fist coming. I was knocked down and nearly out but, was able to get up and run away from them. I boarded the bus a few blocks later.
My mother told me that I had probably smarted off to them, but I had not, and had to sing with a big black eye at the club the next night. That had to have been a new experience for most of those Hollywood Palms Night Club Patrons, watching the band vocalist with a black eye, singing “Sentimental Journey”. A few days later, those same three sailors came in one night to the club, I confronted them, (I still had the black eye) they stood up as if to fight me and a bunch of Air Force (then Army Air corps) officers came to my rescue. They escorted the Hispanic sailors to the front door and out of the club, and fortunately, out of my life.
So there, you think those first kisses in the life of a teen-age boy are not something? I’ll scan the Howard High school yearbook page and send you that picture. I still have that Howard high yearbook seventy-six years later.