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Elephant's Memory

Rowdy with color and big round letters, the “seriously fun”cocktail menu was a busy place for my one-track mind to wander through.  I had no clue which drink I wanted to get serious with at this moment, on this date, which really wasn’t a date.  The invite for the meet up came from me under pretense of a night filled with reporter talk and live music. It’s mid-1977.

I looked up.  She was sitting across the table from me scanning her menu. Very matter-of-factly, without looking up, she asked, “How about an Elephant’s Memory?” 

I hadn’t noticed that one, too focused on the menu’s braggadocio on unique in-house liquor.   

“Hmmm. What’s in it?”  My question was slightly flirty.  I tilted my head a bit and looked at her.  There was a hint of a nod and she looked down at her menu.          

During daylight hours she was a radio reporter whose voice I often heard during news breaks on the country music station where she worked.  This particular evening she read from the menu in that voice she used in her radio reports, looking up at me after each ingredient, “151 proof rum.  Tia Maria.  B&B.”  

My interest in the particulars of the drink, of course, had everything to do with hearing her voice – her inflections, the soft drawl she was trying to lose. It wasn’t a full-blown crush, but I definitely felt drawn to her and eager to pursue a friendship, not knowing exactly what that might have in store for me.

My new friend had recently graduated from my alma mater, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and her job was reporting on local government stories for WBAP, which covered the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. 

My assigned beat for the ABC television news affiliate – WFAA-TV – was Dallas County, specifically the five-member Commissioner Court and the Sheriff’s Department.  I already had at least four years of news reporting under my belt at that point and was feeling pretty darn confident. See for yourself with just one click.

  

“Remind me what the B&B stands for,” I said.  

Reminders, of course, are a way of gathering information without confessing outright that you don’t know the answer or you kinda think you know the answer but don’t want to get it wrong.

She looked at me as if she knew I was dancing around like that.  I shrugged and smiled and focused on her hair, tight curls and a soft, brownish red.  I would learn that the curls arrived at the early age of seven or so, when her mother insisted on routine beauty shop permanents that she continued with into adulthood.  

 “It’s French brandy and benedictine, a proprietary blend,” she said before looking into her purse and poking around for something that apparently wasn’t there.  I took a glance.  She was cute, a bit of southern charm, nice smile.

“Well, let’s try that Elephant’s Memory,” I said, hoping for a conversation that, with the  lubricating effects of alcohol, might reveal a more personal side of her and inform my quest to know her better, and in a deeper way.   I continued to fiddle with my pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes, set on the table after sitting down. 

I pulled a single cigarette from the fresh new pack and lit it with a white BIC lighter.  She leaned across the table as she brought one of her favored menthol cigarettes to her lips.  I was eager to give her a light and gently flicked the BIC.  

As her lips rounded the cigarette filter and she drew in a breath, my cupped left hand kept the lighter flame steady and protected from the soft errant downtown winds shapeshifting into Andrew’s Bar & Grill from outside, every time the door opened.

At the time — oh, those late 70s in Dallas — plenty of women like us were twenty-something professionals practicing the adult enjoyments of drinking and smoking, part of the territory we were traversing.  The cigarettes offered a bit of sophistication, a notion that was slowly fading as the decade drew to a close.  We also liked the way the booze made us feel – boldly sure of ourselves. We could drink a lot and still get up in the morning and go to work, with success most of the time.  Our first morning cigarette was the one that got our heart to start beatin’, or so we thought, if you can imagine that.  Youth gave us the stamina and self-assuredness that we later would discover, did not last forever.  

One of the first few times I met up with this newbie reporter while I was covering a story was when she showed up and joined a cluster-fuck of reporters jamming their microphones as close to the target’s mouth as possible. They wanted to ask this particular commissioner why he spent taxpayer money to have a vinyl roof added to a Ford Thunderbird purchased for county business.  

The novice reporter was not tall but managed to squeeze through the cluster of big men with video cameras and stuck her microphone right in the commissioner’s face.  “Why was it ok to do that?”  I watched, heard the question and saw she had some chutzpah.

Since then, my quasi-crush was working diligently to establish herself as a hardworking journalist in town, and I suspect the fledgeling reporter sought me out as a mentor.  Sensing her interest in learning from me, I was quick to signal a welcome. And I was a good choice for her to make.  I was aggressive in my reporting.  Also, I was a bit of a maverick.  

For example, there was one time I sneaked into the county jail without identifying myself as a journalist, and visited with an inmate accused of murdering her parents.  Much to my delight I was escorted to her cell, talked with her, wrote some notes and then, much to my dismay, was identified by a sheriff’s deputy, not handcuffed, but taken downstairs to  Sheriff Thomas’ office where he declared I had violated policy and therefore, for an undetermined period of time all journalists would be denied access to  prisoners.  My bad.

This new friend liked that mavricky part about me, I would bet. She was also a feminist, but in a properly-mannered Southern way, more like Feminist Lite.  She was still conventional and didn’t care to buck the system, which I found a complete contradiction (and the very reason the patriarchy has remained so intransigent). 

Regardless, she and I were ready to lasso our dreams and crack those damn glass ceilings.  It was 1977 for crying out loud!  The world, and the workplace, should be better by now.  Civil rights laws had been updated to protect employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on gender, among others.

However, the truth of the matter was — and still is now — that it’s always a slow crawl over a mix of pea gravel and glass shards to make any progress with women’s rights.   Men seem to constantly lob shit at women and make up ridiculous — yet darkly demeaning — rules meant to keep us contained.

A waiter arrived at our table, took the cocktail order and then asked about food.  We probably ordered “Randolph’s Artichoke Nibbles,” and if it wasn’t that, it was the “Snack Tray” of cheeses and crispy vegetables.

Acoustic guitar strums, a chord here and there, the flutter of a harmonica floating down from a small balcony on a tall wall not far from our table. It was an airbrushing of chords and notes that provided a background for conversation, a separation of realities.

I looked up and saw my husband strumming the acoustical guitar he adored, sitting on a chair, his usual style when playing.  It was a situation that pleased him and was flexible.  His deftness with the strings, the heart he put into the tunes he played and sang reflected his values of peace and love – whether in a song by Bob Dylan or Simon & Garfunkle.  

Hold your horses!  Let’s slow down here for the obvious question.  What in the world was I doing getting a bit tipsy with a quasi-professional semi-crush while my husband was looking down from a balcony, making music, his sweet self on display?   

He looked over at me with his soft smile and I waved.  I nodded to the woman across from me that he was up there.  She turned around, waved and smiled too.  I had let my husband know earlier that day that I invited my friend to come with me for his opening night at Andrew’s near downtown on McKinney Avenue. 

It was interesting that I selected a table so very much in my husband’s view.  But maybe not.  On some unconscious level, I was giving him clues, but still didn’t acknowledge to myself – or anyone else for that matter – that he and I were moving apart because I was coming out. 

A sensitive man, he may have already been aware, figured something was amiss, while I was playing clueless by staying in the moment, not considering the consequences when the path we were traveling diverged. I was disconnected from that deepest place of feelings and emotions.

So, I defaulted — to my career as a journalist and my new interest. 

My friend was happy to come along each and every time I invited her to Andrew’s Bar when my husband sang and played his guitar. It was an interesting courtship, and I developed a major crush on this gal.  When I saw her at a news conference we were both covering my attention got diverted. I soaked up her energy and engage in conversation with her whenever I saw her on the job. It was puppy love stuff. Must have been glaringly obvious.

She and I each took sips of our Elephant’s Memory and started a conversation about a Dallas county commissioner dipping into road and bridge funds to pay for new carpet in his downtown county courthouse office.

“How did you know he was dipping into those funds?”  She flicked ashes of her half-way gone cigarette into the decorative plastic ashtray next to the condiments.

………..to be continued