Thursday, April 18, 2013
Remembering Margie Black - Ken Linville
I met Margie Black at
Highline in 1953 when she and the other sophomores came over to us
from Puget Sound Jr. High. From the first time I met her, we never
ran out of things to say to each other, more often than not, both of
us talking at once if we could stop laughing long enough to say
something. She was so full of life, so much fun to be with, had such
a great sense of humor and, not really at all that bad looking.
We didn't have many
classes together but we both had Mr. Betz for first-year Spanish.
Spanish was Margie’s first period class every day but she never
quite seemed to be able to get her homework done the night before.
Margie knew I got good grades and she came up with a great idea.
She’d get me to do her Spanish homework for her in the morning
before class while we were all down in the lunch room eating butter horns. Being the social butterfly she was, she’d flit around
talking to everybody while I was quickly writing out her homework.
Of course the pastries were gooey with butter and frosting. While
scratching out gerunds, genders and conjugations on her papers, I’d
be dripping butter and smearing frosting onto her assignments while
catching up on all the latest gossip, as well. One day I told her I’d
accidentally ruined her papers with butter & goo so she couldn’t
turn this work in because the papers were so greasy you could almost
see through them and we didn't have time for me to redo them. She
said, “Oh, hell,” (well she usually used a little stronger
expletive than ‘hell’), “Betz won’t even notice the
difference!” She once later told me that Mr. Betz was quite
impressed with her work but suggested she do her homework either
before or after she ate to avoid the food stains or whatever it was
all over her assignments.
Lake Wilderness was one of
our favorite party places. I finally had a car that could get
through an intersection from a dead stop before the light turned red
again and one afternoon we were headed for the lake. I don’t
remember if anybody was with us in the back seat but Margie and I
were in front high-tailing it out to the lake for another party.
Life WAS a party then , wasn't it? There wasn't much traffic out
to Maple Valley in those days and I was probably a few miles over the
speed limit with my left hand on the wheel, my right arm around
Margie, a Marlboro in my teeth, a warm bottle of Oly between my legs,
four totally bald tires and the pedal to the metal. We were laughing
and joking as usual. The needle was headed through about ninety when,
an old rusty pick-up truck pulled out ahead of us onto the road from
a corn field. It wasn't dark yet but I figured I’d better get
serious, got both hands on the wheel, got softly on the brakes to
avoid spinning out and swerved out into the oncoming lane since
fortunately no oncoming traffic appeared to be heading our way. How
lucky were we to get through this one alive? I looked over at her
and said, “Geez, you know brakes just aren't worth a damn when
you’re going a hundred miles an hour.” Any other girl would have
told me to pull over and let her out before I killed us all. Not
Margie. She thought it was hilarious. The only misfortune that
occurred through the whole ordeal was that I spilled my beer all over
the crotch of my Levis. Of course, this was more grist for the
comedy mill and for the first hour at the lake, everybody was asking
if I had peed my pants. “Hey, Linus, couldn’t hold it, huh? Too
much beer?” How embarrassing! As always, the night was spent in
fun and camaraderie and ended all too soon. When we graduated, I
think some of us thought that life, as we knew it, was over.
Later on, after
graduation, Margie had various jobs. She and Donna and Marilyn hung
out together a lot through those first years. Then Marilyn went to
college for a couple of years at Oregon State. I was up at the U of
W. There was a drive-in in those days on Rainier Avenue called the
Rodeo where I’d heard Margie was working. The car-hops traveled
around to and from the cars with their trays balanced precariously as
they went back and forth on roller skates, of all things. One night
some of my buddies and I pulled in there in my car, (we had “That’ll
Be The Day” by Buddy Holly blaring on the car radio as loud as it
would go). I pulled into an open spot and, lo and behold, out glides
Margie on her skates wearing a skimpy cow-girl outfit and a ten
gallon hat balancing a huge tray above her head piled high with
hamburgers, French fries and milk shakes. I couldn't believe my
eyes. She was a good skater. After she delivered the tray to the
car across from us, she came over for our order and I told her to
cool it before she took a spill and busted her ass. I think her boss
had to come out and tell her to quit spending so much time at my car
and start taking care of some of the other customers.
She worked for
Preservative Paints for a number of years and they had annual picnics
at one of the lakes, I don’t recall for sure which one, probably
Wilderness, but I went with her to a couple of those
always-entertaining events. On one of them she and I were in a canoe
out in the middle of the lake and I told her to toss me a beer. I
was paddling the boat in the back and she didn’t want to throw it
so she decided to bring it back to me. I yelled for her to sit down
before she tipped us over and, naturally, over we went, fully
clothed, into the lake holding on to an upside down canoe that we
couldn’t right and laughing so hard we could barely swim to shore.
Finding some dry clothes was another trick which I won’t go
in to.
After almost a year at the
U, I finally did learn to dance and Margie and I spent lots of
Saturday nights dancing and drinking at a place called The Flame up
in Lake City. They had live music and Margie was a good dancer. We
both had fake ID’s so, no problem. What fun! And then I
hardly ever saw her again for over 30 years until we were finally
able to get to Jan and Larry Parkers’ Friends’ picnics at their
beautiful home on the river. We’d been trying to make this affair
for years but I don’t think we ever made until I retired. I just
mention this because Marilyn and I feel so fortunate to have had our
personal association with Margie, this beautiful, exuberant,
fun-to-be-with girl, back when life was a happy, care-free adventure;
back before we all got involved with house payments, car payments,
raising kids, and making a living, dealing with the ups and downs
life presents to us, which we've all had to face, and finding out
that life wasn't really always as easy or as much fun as we thought
it would be.
