Pioneer Pride: Part 8-Bus Ride

R and I attended grade school together at Mt. Pleasant, but I have no recollection of her or any of our interactions during that period, other than I thought she was beautiful, unique, and had more than a crush on her.

I do remember one interaction with her, our only one in fact, and it occurred a few years later in the fall of 1978. I was a ninth grader at Gardiner Junior High and and R was a ninth grader at Ogden Junior High, another school in the Oregon City district, the one where my father taught and coached. R must have moved at some point and thus we didn’t attend the same junior high school, a great blow to me.

In the next couple of years, I would see R when Gardiner traveled to Ogden for football and basketball games. I don’t think she was a cheerleader. But she was in the stands and perhaps we even said hello. All I know now is that she transfixed me and I wanted to meet her again. There was something in her look that was totally different than the look of the girls I was attracted to at Gardiner. I liked it and didn’t know why.

So I got out the phone book and dialed every number with her last name. It worked! We talked on the phone a couple times and she agreed to come see one of my football games. We were playing an afternoon game at Rex Putnam High School, not far from where she lived.

We massacred Rex Putnam and it turned out to be the best football game I ever played. I scored three touchdowns, one receiving, one running, and one on a long interception return.

R saw it all, sitting alone half way up the grandstands. On the sideline I waved to her and she waved back. I think we talked briefly after the game before the bus took the team back to Gardiner.

We talked that evening on the phone. She congratulated me on my performance and we set up a meeting at her house in Gladstone. She would be alone.

The next Saturday, I rode Tri-Met bus #33 down McLoughlin Blvd. to Roethe Road, where Wendy’s stood. I may have told my mother I was going to the library. I know I walked to the bus stop. It was a nice day.

I got off the bus and started walking up Roethe Road with the directions to her house. I really had no idea what was going to happen with R but wanted something to happen. It already had because here I was walking to her house and she was alone.

The directions were sound. I knocked on the front door. R opened it and I beheld a young woman with hair straight her to her ass, wearing flared blue jeans and a white macrame halter. She wore no makeup. She looked like an adult.

R led me downstairs to some kind of carpeted den full of trophies. She put on a 45 record, Dr Hook’s “Sharing the Night Together.” I think it played on repeat for the next half hour while we talked. What we talked about I no longer recall. Her voice was raspy, husky. It was unlike any female voice I had ever heard, then or now. It was a late night FM radio DJ voice and she 14.

She lit a cigarette. I’d never seen anyone smoke and I liked it. I think she offered me a drag but I declined. She smoked and we kissed. We made out and she took breaks to finish the cigarette. Then she lit another one. Dr Hook kept on playing.

There was more making out and some touching over the clothes here and there.

And then that was it. I said goodbye, walked out to catch the bus, and rode it back to Oregon City.

R and I never met again. I don’t think we even talked on the phone after the encounter. I barely remember seeing her in high school the next year. She might have dropped out.

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