Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: PHOTOS and/or SOUVENIR(S) (vacation) (07/16/15)
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TITLE: The Time of Our Lives | Previous Challenge Entry
By lynn gipson
07/22/15 -
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The summer of 1966 suddenly came to life as I sorted through the pictures, taken oh so long ago, when I was just an innocent young girl who had never traveled further north than Atlanta, Georgia. New York City was a wonderland of historical sights and merriment.
The first picture I saw was of my best friend, standing in front the Statute of Liberty, brown eyes shining and beautiful face smiling as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Joy beamed from her as surely as the sun shines on the ocean.
The rest of the pictures, ten of them in all, reflected our friendship as it was. We were happy and excited to see the Empire State Building and victorious in our climb to the top. The Manhattan Beach found us brown and so very alive. We were two teenage beauties with hopes and dreams of the future. Little did we know what tragedy the future would bring.
One year later, that stunning young woman would be senselessly murdered. Her zest for life cut short by her own father, who then turned the gun on himself. The why of the action has never been answered.
Coming from sheer poverty, I was awed and amazed at the New York City apartment where her uncle and aunt lived. The professionally decorated rooms in their home seemed to go on endlessly. There were also relatives in Brooklyn, New York, who lived in an old but well-kept building that had a cage type elevator. One picture was of the both of us pretending to be locked up in jail.
Another picture showed us gliding through the New York Harbor on a day cruise, the beauty of that day I cannot describe. We both wore matching two-piece pink swim suits, quite scandalous for that day and time, but we were daring that way. Boy, did she fill hers out. Mine was a mite saggy in places.
We ferried out to Staten Island and had lunch at a deli. I learned to love kosher hot dogs, pickled tomatoes, and Boston Crème Soda. Did I mention how much we ate? Her father was convinced we had tape worms. Ah…. Her father, the man I also had adopted as my own father, who one year later would commit what law enforcement termed a murder/suicide.
One night, her uncle took us out to dinner at a fancy New York restaurant, the likes of which this country girl had never seen. I find a final photo of this place as she and I were standing outside. She wore a classic red A-line dress, and looked more gorgeous than ever. I wore a drab pantsuit, but the smile on my face made me shine.
That was the night we ventured into the men’s restroom by mistake, found urinals on the wall, and had a giggling fit. Just about that time, two men walked in, and we startled them with our screams of fright as we ran out the door. The confusion on their faces was priceless.
As I sorted through the pictures a second time, smiles and tears mingled together on my face. The happiest time of my then miserable life. My best friend in the whole world, and her father, the father I never had. Two people I loved most in the world, and a year later, they were gone. Bang, bang… just like that.
My friend is gone, but not the photographs. They were found in her dresser drawer after the funeral and given to me by a relative I met the previous summer in New York, and for a while on a lonely Saturday night, she came to life once more.
Those two weeks of that summer were like a fairy tale with someone I loved and trusted more than anyone else in the world. For two weeks, a little Jewish city girl and this little southern Baptist country girl lived, and we had the time of our lives.
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The photographs are a reminder of happier times.