Jan and Helen

I just remembered an incident that hadn't crossed my mind in decades. Funny how blogging will do that... It involves Jan - the sister of my classmate Drew - and her best friend Helen. They were both students at Sacred Heart (where my sister went) and I think they were about the same grade level as Peter Paolucci and me...

The incident happend at the Polo Park Mall out on Portage Avenue... Now, I don't remember a whole lot about the mall but I do recall that it was the site of my loudest belch ever. (Who could forget something like that?)... Peter had the misfortune of being right next to me when I uncorked it... I recall that he ducked, covered his ears and yelled an obscenity... People a long distance away stopped to try and figure out what the hell it was... It was awesome!
I also recall that there was a restaurant called Caesar's Palace in the mall that had gourmet and 1/2 pound burgers. Those were a novelty back in 1968... And they were also awesome :-)
And I guess the mall also had stores and stuff too...

So - Peter and I were hanging out at Polo Park one afternoon. No particular reason - just something to do... And after a while we caught a glimpse of Jan and Helen off in the distance... We started trying to catch up with them and before too long it became obvious that they were avoiding us... Now - we used to run into them from time to time and they'd never tried to ditch us before so we got really curious as to what was up... Over the next 5 or 10 minutes that initial bit of "cat and mouse" evolved (or devolved?) into a full-blown tactical battle: "You go that way - I'll go this way - we'll head them off at the pass!!!" We ended up running through stores endangering unwary shoppers... It's a good thing there really wasn't any real mall security back then :-)

We finally caught up with the girls at one of the doors to Sears (I think) near the front of the mall ... We were all gasping for air and the first thing Jan said was "Don't tell Drew!" (That's her brother who was our classmate.) And we're like "Don't tell Drew what???" Apparently they weren't supposed to be there... They wouldn't say why - it was weird... So we said "Hi" and "Bye" and all went on our way... Yeah - that was fun :-)

And I may as well continue on with the Jan and Helen topic...

Jan was certainly a nice looking girl but she didn't strike me as "model pretty"... So I was a bit surprised when I found out that she was going to be in a fashion show at the "The Bay" department store in downtown Winnipeg. So, or course, Peter and I had to go...

Sidebar:
The Bay hired "The Logan Avenue Comfort Station" to provide background music for the show. They were a reincarnation of "The Shags" and featured guitarist Greg Leskiw who later replaced Randy Bachman when he departed The Guess Who...
But the thing that amazed me about LACS is that they were playing jazzy stuff - very well - and they were playing it quietly... You can't appreciate how hard it is to sound good when playing at a low volume unless you've tried it... I was seriously impressed! But I digress :-)

So Peter and I were at the fashion show... And we were like "OMG!!! Is that Jan???"... Up until then I had no clue how much of a difference makeup and hair (and a little padding) could make. Add in the heels, a short skirt and the 'runway strut' and she was quite a sight to behold... It definitely changed how I looked at her :-)

I suspect that one of the reasons I never really paid much attention to Jan is that she was usually with Helen, who was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen... Yeah - she had long red hair and blue eyes... (How did you guess??) ... I could barely breath when she was around... I had such a devastating crush on her :-) So did the other guitar player in my first band - he ended up marrying her... It didn't last long... I've only heard one side of the story but apparently there are a couple of morals involved:

"Be careful what you wish for" and "Looks aren't everything" :-)