Much of the time, when I sit down to write a story, I find that I have chosen a title beforehand, without necessarily thinking about it in great depth. Such was the case this morning when I started to write this piece. The problem was, that this title gave me a split personality.
When I first decided to use it, I planned to write a light-hearted account of my recent trip to the state of Virginia, but my muse went somber on me.
Unbidden, the thought popped into my mind that there used to be (and maybe still is, for all I know) a brand of wine named "Virginia Dare"; I remember seeing the name in magazine advertisements when I was a little girl.
I don't think that I was aware that my father had a drinking problem until I was in my teen years. When friends came over to our house, drinks were served but no one showed any effects from them, at least to my child's eyes. There was a time when my father was embarked on a project to bottle some home brewed beer, but the grown-ups always changed the subject when we kids were around.
Daddy sort of disappeared from our lives when Mother returned to California, bringing my brother and me, about six months after my little sister's death. No explanation was ever given, at least not to me, though I suspect my brother may have known. My mother found work during the war years at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, and, since Bill joined the Army Air Force the day after Pearl Harbor, I sort of finished high school with no definite plan in mind for my future.
I worked at several jobs, and finally decided to join the Cadet Nurse Corps when I was seventeen. I was accepted at Charity Hospital School of Nursing in New Orleans, Louisiana. Since that was about as far away from home as I could get, and my teen-age rebellion urges were as strong as anyone else's, I went there to become a nurse.
But this story is not about my sojourn in New Orleans; that will be for another time. After my return from there, I entered Los Angeles City College, having decided that I wanted to become a doctor rather than a nurse. This was in the fall of 1946. I found a part-time job to help pay my expenses, and I lived with Mother in an apartment out near West Adams and Crenshaw.
My job was as a dancing instructor at Miss Adair's Dance Studio near the corner of 6th and Main in downtown Los Angeles. I rode the streetcar to work after classes every day and walked a few blocks from the car stop to the studio. In those days, downtown was not quite as shabby as it probably is now.
One afternoon, as I was walking along Main, I saw a man coming toward me on the sidewalk, walking in the opposite direction. There was something familiar about him, and I turned a few paces after we had passed one another. Catching up with him, I tapped his shoulder, and when he stopped I said "Pardon me, aren't you Dick Jones?"
He looked at me for a long moment before he quietly said "Hello, Maureen." I remember feeling butterflies in my stomach and wondering what on earth to say next. It had been at least four years since I had seen him. But he took the initiative and suggested I buy him a cup of coffee in the cafe we were in front of.
Our talk was awkward and stiff, and I don't remember it exactly, but it was then that he told me he was a drunk, a drifter, and that he had been for years. He appeared clean and neat, but seedy. His job setting pins in a bowling alley kept him in cheap wine most of the time, he told me, but that day he was a little short, so I paid for the coffee. He did not want me to tell Mother that we had met. I told him where I was working and gave him the phone number for emergencies. He promised to keep in touch.
I was nineteen, inexperienced, and broken-hearted to see my beloved Daddy like that. In those days, setting pins in a bowling alley was dangerous work better left to young boys, not men in their fifties.
We met perhaps three times after that, always when he needed help. And then, just before my marriage in 1947, he disappeared again.
Richard Lawrence Jones was born on November 4, 1895. He drowned in the Stockton channel on July 4, 1949. Today would have been his 99th birthday. My faith tells me that he rests in peace. But my heart still aches for him.