Wakefield Girls
Ever heard of the Wakefield Girls? No, I’m not referring to the Wakefield Girls School in England where the movie Bridget Jones's Diary was filmed. Rather I’m referring to a group of six career girls, one of which was to eventually become my wife. They all lived in the house pictured above during the early ’70”s at 1301 Wakefield Avenue in Dayton, a block away from Good Sam hospital as shown on the map below.
The rented house had three bedrooms and only one bathroom, so you can imagine the chaos each morning as the career girls all got ready for work! As I recall, only one of the girls had a car, a VW Bug.
So most of them rode the Salem Avenue bus downtown to their respective jobs. My future wife worked for a bank in its credit card collections department, and then as a legal secretary for a law firm. To this day, they vividly describe one bus stop incident when a passer-by in a car exposed himself to the waiting girls! Fortunately there’s no photo of that incident. Likely he’s now a Hollywood producer or US Senator?
The kitchen in the rented house was never used except to store cold beverages in the frig or maybe reheat some pizza in the oven (before microwaves). And almost every weekend one or two partygoers would crash on the huge couch in the living room. I recall hanging on the wall over that big couch was a roadway sign someone had stolen (who will remain nameless) just like its replacement pictured below. Believe it or not, that sign is as wide as a couch!
Three of the girls were from Ft. Loramie and three from Russia. Even though they were from arch-rival towns, several being cheerleaders for their respective schools, they got along fabulously. On many Wednesday's after work, the girls would pile into their VW Bug and travel to Al’s Place in Ft. Loramie for the bar's notorious hump-night celebrations, then travel back to Wakefield again to get a few winks before squeezing into that single bathroom preparing for another day of work and the infamous bus ride downtown.
At Al’s, I distinctly recall the girls standing on a table above the wall-to-wall crowd most Wednesday's, drinks in hand, looking their best, so they could check out the boys and more importantly be noticed. It worked, as all eventually married local guys. One of my favorite photos is shown below taken in church at one of the girls' 1974 wedding.
They and their spouses have become life-long friends. The photo below was taken at their annual Christmas get-together in 1981. Right to left are Jackie, Linda, Marily, Bonnie and my wife Debby. The sixth girl, Diane, shown in the separate photo, moved to California in 1972 and now lives in New Mexico.
As it turns out, two of the spouses were fire fighters. So during one of our annual Christmas get-togethers back in the disco era of the late 70’s, a candle in a holiday floral arrangement burned down and caught on fire. You’d think the two fire fighters would naturally react immediately to put out the fire, but no, yours truly took on that responsibility, carrying the burning arrangement outside to safely extinguish it. In the process, some of the hot candle wax spilled on my brand new Saturday Night Fever polyester leisure suit, literally melting large portions of the jacket and pants. I must have lost my John Travolta dancing skills that night as well.
The next year, the party was at one of the firefighter’s home, so on our way out, us guys torched his wood pile behind his place to created quite a bon fire as we were screeching away! This year, neither Debby and I nor Diane and her husband could attend the most recent Christmas celebration with the fun-loving Wakefield group, shown in the photo below.
No comments:
Post a Comment