Too Much Tequila, Too Little Sunscreen

We hadn’t found anything to do that blustery Sunday afternoon in March, so we were doing what we usually did, hanging out at the front. The front is what we called Thornton’s new strip-mall with its half dozen businesses including a Millers supermarket, an Italian restaurant, and The Creamery, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor. The Creamery was our hangout and the hub of what little action there was for teenagers in this brand new suburb.

The Silhouettes shouted their number one song, Get a Job through the static of the old Chevy’s AM radio.

We had worn out our booth at The Creamery earlier and were ready to call it a day when these two girls, one a very pretty dark-skinned girl with curly jet-black hair, walked by on their way to the front. Her darker skin was amplified by the brightness of her perfect smile. Even in her big winter coat, you could see she was shapely in that classic 1950s, Marilyn Monroe kind of way. I had to meet this girl, the pretty one, the one with those white, white teeth and that beautiful figure.

My buddy, Pat Luna, knew these girls. He struck up a conversation and invited them to join us in doing nothing. I introduced myself to the pretty one and learned that she was Linda Quintana from just down the street. She joined me in the back seat as we drove out to East Lake, a little country town not far away.

Linda and I talked and talked. All of us in these new suburban developments were recently from somewhere else so we didn’t have any history together. She was from the Mexican barrio in downtown Denver and I was from a small town in Western Nebraska, but we knew many of the same people and had many of the same friends. It was a wonder we hadn’t met earlier. She and her friend Rosalie both went to Thornton’s Merritt Hutton High while all of us guys were bussed to Mapleton High School in Denver. I lived in Western Hills another, much smaller development just a few miles away.

We often went to East Lake to drink beer, to show off how adult we were, and to impress attractive new girls like Linda and Rosalie. I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but I couldn’t stand beer and like everyone else I only drank it around my friends to look cool. In those days you could drink 3.2 beer in Colorado when you were 18. Even though none of us were 18, we knew this tavern in East Lake that would serve us underage kids 3.2 beer without asking for our IDs.

I couldn’t get Linda to take even one sip of beer and her strict Mexican-American upbringing wouldn’t let her anywhere near the tavern so we sat in the car and talked and got to know each other while everyone else went inside.

I got Linda home far too late for a school night. Her mom met us at the curb angry as hell. I didn’t know it at the time but this was my introduction to my future mother-in-law and she wasn’t very excited about meeting me. I later learned that Linda’s dad was in Greenland on an eighteen month assignment and her mother was trying to raise their four teenagers alone. She was counting on Linda, the oldest, to set a better example.

Ermalinda Louisa Quintana

I called Linda a couple of days later to invite her to a concert at one of the major teen dance clubs on Friday. She agreed and we were all set for our first real date, a date to see and dance to a new nationally-known recording artist. I didn’t know then that Linda was a regular at Denver’s Friday night teen ballrooms and danced like the kids on American Bandstand. I was going to have to learn to dance a lot better if I had any hope with her.

We danced, as best I could, to this older-looking, bald guy’s music. Although he had a couple of hit records out he didn’t draw much of a crowd, maybe twenty couples in all. We all gathered up close around the floor-level bandstand and danced in and among the artists. We would never have guessed it at the time, but we got up close and personal with a not-yet-famous, Bobby Darin on our first date.

She wore my letter sweater (which was a really big thing because I went to a rival school) and my class ring and we did everything together. We danced and danced some more, went to movies, picnicked in the mountains, sipped cokes at The Scotchman drive-in, cruised, and just generally hung out with our select but growing gang of Merritt Hutton’s and Mapleton’s cooler kids. Linda keeps in touch with some of the girls from this old crowd to this day.

I left high school in September of my senior year and enrolled at the Colorado Institute of Art. Being an artist and a wannabe beatnik were of more interest to me than another year of high school classes. I wore paint-stained tennies and was trying to grow a goatee, but I thought a beret and bongo drums would be a bit much. The private art school tuition along with pricy art supplies seriously put a dent in my dollar-an-hour gas station attendant’s salary, and with school, work and hanging at the beatnik coffee house I had no time for Linda or any sort of social life.

One morning rather than going to class I stopped by the military recruitment center a couple of blocks from the art school. The Coast Guard and the Navy were my primary interests. I had lived my short life on the dusty and dry plains without ever having seen an ocean. I wanted to party on the beach with Gidget, and I knew that one of these services would take me to California and the whole beach scene. I was depressed when the Coast Guard and then the Navy told me they weren’t interested in me because I hadn’t finished high school. I was on my way out of the building when I passed the Marine Corps’ offices. They welcomed me with open arms and they could care less if I even went to school. I signed up and made a date for a recruiter to come and get my parents’ approval. I was only 17.

Linda and I, her best friend Lou and a date, and Al and Candy danced the night away at the Valentine’s Day Sweethearts’ dance at Merritt Hutton High. After the dance we came back to Linda’s house and continued to party. Barbara and Al joined us and Pat Wright stopped by later. We partied knowing that this was my last day in town. Tomorrow I fly to San Diego and begin my adventure with the marines.

The following morning Mom, Dad, Karen and I joined Linda and her parents at the Denver airport. None of us had ever taken a commercial flight before and we were all in awe of the hustle and bustle of the airport. I climbed up on-the-tarmac staircase to the DC-3, turned and waved to those seeing me off from the top of the stairs.

I wouldn’t see Linda again for nearly six months.