A Sad Surprise

 Yesterday - for no good reason - an old friend from 50 years ago popped into my mind and I determined to Google her and see how she was doing.  It was already late and we were going to bed so this morning, I went to Google.

Deanna Waulters' obituary was the first thing that popped up.  She died in 2003, age 63, with no cause of death listed nor donations requested.  She died at home, leaving a daughter (I never knew she'd had children) and another woman as her "companion."

Was the companion a longtime nurse of some sort?  Which asked again the question, "What did she die of?"  Or did she go to pitch for the other team and in the Midwest, newspapers use that instead of "partner"?  She was certainly straight when we ran around together.

And run we did.  We were as bad as a female could be without being "bad girls."  I remember ... we used to go to the drive-in in winter with a trunkful of cold beer and a grocery bag of buttered popcorn.  I fell totes in love with James Brown in some kind of documentary; it may have been one of those "Live from the Apollo" concerts.  Any road, when he did "Please Don't Go" and they kept dragging him off of the stage and he kept running back ... I wanted to BE James Brown, no kidding.

Another memory ... we were sitting at the bar and the bartender carded us.  I pulled out my legal but fake driver's license (and this is how I got it - I wrote to Jeff City and complained that an error had been made - I was born in '39 not '40 and sweated bullets for three weeks until the new one came.)  

When it was her turn to put up or get out, she said, "They didn't ask me how old I was when I taught school at (school that taught black children)" and we got away with it! 

Two salesmen types bought us a drink.  When they asked if we'd like to go somewhere else for another, we said "Yes" after grinning at each other.  We knew exactly where we would take them.  Deanna insisted on driving ("Never get in a car with a stranger") and off we tootled in her '58 blue and white Ford convertible.

We took them to the only transvestite show in the Midwest (it had to be, trannies being scarce on the ground there) and when at the end of the show and the performers pulled off their wigs and lifted the bird seed bags out of their bras, we thought these guys would die of shock.  Well worth the hours spent listening to them.

RIP Deanna, truly a boon companion.