It was easy for me
to make friends and, before the summer was over, I had collected several. One was Dave Daniels who lived further down
Kauffman Avenue and shared my keen interest in aviation. He and I made innumerable model airplanes,
some for show and some to fly, during the next year or so before his family
moved away.
Another (temporary
because he quit school that fall and joined the Army) was a tall, lanky,
curly-haired fellow with a big grin. I
met him on Kauffman Avenue one afternoon when he was strolling along tossing a
football from one big hand to the other. His name was Rex Lester.
We played catch
with the football for a while in a vacant lot then Lester invited me to come
along and see a nice girl he knew just down the street. I told him I did not want to horn in on his
girlfriend, but he insisted that she was not a girlfriend because she was too
young. He stated that the girl’s mother
always had cold Coca Cola in the refrigerator.
That sounded fine and that was how I met my “first love” in Vancouver who
drove thoughts of the Ozark girls clean out of my mind.
We walked down to
13th and Kauffman. The
H&H Tavern was on the lower floor corner of a big wooden apartment
building. It was painted a nondescript
gray. We went past the tavern to the
rear ground floor apartment. She was
sitting out on the concrete steps leading to the apartment door and I knew at
once that she was, by far, the prettiest girl I had yet to meet. Turned out she was not quite thirteen years
old and was just finishing the eighth grade, but she was tall and slender. Long glossy black hair framed a beautiful
young face that had a radiant smile. Her
name was Patricia Cross.
Rex
Lester was right—there was Coca Cola in the refrigerator. Patty got us each a bottle and we sat on the
steps and talked. Her voice was not high
and nasal like most of the Ozark girls and when she laughed I wanted to reach
right out and hug her—which, of course, I could not do right there in public
and in front of Lester. The fact
remained that she was nearly three years my junior and not even in high school
yet so that precluded any serious dating even after Rex Lester left for the
Army. I was strongly attracted to her,
however.
Even
after school started and I began to get acquainted with and started to date
pretty girls near my own age, I continued to go often to see Patty. Sometimes, when her mother (who was divorced
and worked at the Evergreen Hotel restaurant) would allow, I would take Patty
to a matinee movie at the Kiggins Theater.
My
mother did not approve of my seeing Patty as she sort of looked down her nose
at Pat’s mother who had a gentleman friend that used to come and see her at the
apartment. When he was there, Patty and
her brother Albert would have to stay outside somewhere until the friend left.
My
mother’s objections were not all that strong and I saw Patty off and on right
up to the time I joined the Navy. She
blossomed rapidly into a tall young woman and the only blemish to her beauty was
slightly protruding front teeth that could have been fixed easily if her mother
could have afforded braces. She was one
person in whom I could confide and with whom I could discuss problems. We were just very good friends and no matter
what sort of school “romance” I had going I frequently went back to that little
apartment on Kauffman Avenue.
The
nearest Patty and I ever came to “romance” was one warm summer evening,
probably in 1939, when we climbed the stairs and went out onto the roof of the
apartment building to watch the stars and talk.
It was not too warm to cuddle so I held her close and finally delivered
the first truly passionate kiss of my young life. I remember that Patty sighed and said, “Conrad
Frieze, if you ever kiss anybody else like that, I’ll scratch your blue eyes
out!”
