The exhilarating week of Boys’ State was over. Going head to head with some of the best and the brightest high school students in Connecticut gave me the confidence that I could compete in their world, if I applied myself. And the glamour of dancing with Bethani at the Governor’s Ball was the Lincoln Dairy whipped cream on the top of a great week.

But I quickly came back to real life. Bethani and I went our separate ways as soon as we got back to town and I was suddenly back in the decidedly unglamorous kitchen of the Dairy, by myself, washing dishes.

That’s when I first saw Annie.

It was just after a busy lunch hour. The temperature in the Dairy’s kitchen was approaching 90 and every bit of available counter space was filled with dirty dishes and silverware – half-eaten hamburgers and leftover egg salad holding them together like cement. I scraped the food and ground-in cigarette butts off the plates into the garbage pail. Then I sprayed the rest of the gunk off with water so hot it could melt plastic before putting them in the pre-war dishwasher that sounded like a helicopter taking off.

Washing dishes after a busy lunch hour at the Dairy may not have been hell, but it was almost as hot.

After loading and starting the dishwasher, I stuck my head out the small window through which we bussed the dishes for a breath of the air-conditioned air of the restaurant.  I saw Lana, one of our waitresses, sitting on the last stool at the end of the counter, taking her break. I couldn’t see the face of the girl sitting next to her, but seeing her from behind as she was statuesquely perched on a stool, I could tell she was definitely worth a closer look, from the front.

Even though I had just bussed the entire restaurant 15 minutes before, the lunch rush was over and there were just three customers in the place, I came streaming out front as if we had just been visited by every little league team in town.

I pretended to be doing something – checking the condiments, checking the salt and pepper shakers – though I was really doing nothing. Then I stopped to talk to Lana with a practiced casualness, who introduced me to her friend, Annie.

Annie was gorgeous in a big way.  Big blonde hair, big blue eyes … and a figure like a 1950s movie star. When she entered a room – even our dimly lit, pre-World War II high school auditorium – people noticed her. Immediately. And she had thick, Jane Asher (Paul McCartney’s girl friend at the time) lips in those pre-collagen days.

Normally, I’d have been tongue-tied in that situation. But this was a perfect no-pressure opportunity because Lana and I were buddies: We liked each other as friends and knew we wouldn’t spoil it with a relationship. We could get a laugh-out-loud conversation going at the drop of a hat, mainly because Lana was a great conversation partner with an enthusiastic and infectious laugh. So it was a great chance to seem funnier than I actually was.

I worked that conversation as hard as a quarterback works the two-minute drill in the Super Bowl. But I knew, inevitably, the clock would run out on me. Because I knew the truth. The absolute babes were interested in guys who were absolute hunks. It was nature.

Intellect never seemed to factor into it. And even if it did, I wasn’t headed to the Ivy League. So after a few minutes, Lana’s break was done, Annie left and I went back to the dishwasher, the dirty dishes and my dreams.

I spent the rest of the afternoon fantasizing about Annie, knowing we would never be together. The radio was blasting the Doors: “Hello. I love you. Won’t you tell me your name?” But while it might work for Jim Morrison, Annie was out of my Darwinian range.

The heavens, however, moved and the universe shifted. Overnight. Because Lana called the next day to tell me that Annie wanted to go out with me.

Hello. I love you.

So we started going to movies, to the summer dances and, eventually, the back corners of parking lots, where the floodlights didn’t reach. When I showed up for those dances with Annie at the old auditorium – this is how I know she made heads swivel in large, dimly lit rooms – all the other guys went crazy, making faces and those obscene gestures teen-age boys make behind good-looking, well-built girls’ backs.

They were jealous. They couldn’t believe I was dating her. Bethani was very pretty, but she had an intellectual bite that added to her beauty and made her a knockout in my opinion, but most 17-year-old boys weren’t interested in adding up a girl’s attributes. They usually were interested in only one attribute.

What was great about Annie and probably why I had a chance with her was that she had no idea how attractive she was. And it didn’t hurt she lived in one of the biggest houses in town on the Main Street.

“You know that big house on Main Street?” That’s all I had to say.

Everyone knew it. I picked her up one night and was helping her into my 1962 Olds F-85 as Doom went by on his way to the golf course. He smiled and waved. I think he was proud. 

But after a few weeks of dating, I couldn’t help noticing Annie’s one slight imperfection: She wasn’t a deep thinker. To be fair, she was 16 and I was 17. But we often talked about the weather (Should we go to the beach tomorrow?”) or where to go to the movies (The theater or the drive-in?).

After a year with straight-A Bethani, I was used to conversation with a bit of bite. This was 1968. There was much to discuss in between visits to the unlit corners of the auxiliary parking lot at Fern Park. Dr. King had been assassinated in April and Bobby Kennedy in June. It was the year before the Stonewall Riots, but Bethani had already taken up the cause of gay rights.

I was a teenage boy with racing hormones dating a teenage version of Marilyn Monroe. I should have been able to overlook anything. Goodness knows, I tried. A princess complex. Moodiness. Selfishness. Anything. Whatever a teenage girl could throw at me.

Annie had none of these. She was sweet. It was just that there was no depth to our conversations. Oh, I know Bethani accused me of being shallow and not serious. But that was a matter of my youth. I was pretty sure I wasn’t always going to be shallow.

At 17, my conversation was loaded with sarcasm, irony and what I thought were wry observations designed to make my friends laugh. But Annie didn’t seem to connect to any of it.

Easy conversation wasn’t her forte. Long silences were. And those have their place in a relationship, but usually later, when you are comfortable with each other. Not at the beginning and it’s because one of you isn’t connecting. Or trying to connect.

While I found it exciting to look at her, be with her and have everyone think that there must be more to me because I had attracted her, it got very tiring, limiting my conversation so that she could understand me without my having to explain me.

One of the longest and deepest conversations we had was about the function of the vent windows that cars had in those days. It was hot and my car had no air-conditioning. I was trying to explain how to use the vents, or as my dad called them, the “no-drafts,” to cool off. I finally gave up and leaned over her and adjusted the vent as I wanted it. Brushing against her in the tight confines of my small car as I did, my mood changed for the better immediately.

And Annie never seemed to get angry or hold on to it if she did. It could be that she didn’t even realize there was something to get angry about. But whatever, we didn’t bicker. Any problems we had floated away quickly.

So, despite the lack of intellectual nourishment, it was a great summer relationship. Even better, I knew it would end when school started because Annie went to a private girls’ school out of state. It was going to be perfect for my senior year. I would have a gorgeous girl friend that I had no daily obligation to. She could come home for all the important dances and events and holidays and maybe I would go up to her school once a semester. But I wouldn’t have to call every night – maybe just on Sundays – or walk her home or take her to the library.

Then one night toward the end of the summer, Annie called, excited. She had convinced her parents not to send her back to the boarding school. She would go to the other public school in town and then we could see each other every day and talk on the phone every night. And date every weekend. I felt my heart sink.

So we broke up.

It just wasn’t going to work. I liked Annie. But not as an everyday girl friend. It turns out, I hit the panic button too soon and her plan to come home to public school failed.  Her parents had always planned to send her back to boarding school and they did. It was just as well, though. I was not telling her the truth about my feelings.

A few years later, my mom clipped an article from the paper about Annie. Apparently she had been arrested for forgery and writing bad checks. It’s not as bad as it sounds. She wanted some money, more than her parents in that big house wanted to give her, so she wrote some checks and signed their names. They were going to teach her a lesson and had her arrested.

I never saw her again. But I still think of her every time I drive down Main Street and see that big house.

That’s the final episode of “A Boomer Life” for this summer. Thanks for reading or listening or both. I hope you enjoyed the stories.

I enjoyed putting these stories together, but it was work. As a small token of your appreciation you could go to my website and like it and leave a comment. AND you could go to iTunes – or wherever you get your podcasts – and give me a thumbs up and leave a glowing comment there.

My plan, unless I come up with a different plan, is to be back next summer with chapters on high school, the later years; going to college completely unprepared; and then … wandering the country aimlessly for five years.

.Until then … I’ll say what I often say when I’m trying to get out of a situation … Gotta go.