Della - Part 1

The topic of this post is a girl I met at Keelser AFB back in the spring of 1973... I'm pretty sure her name wasn't actually Della (once again, my memory fails me), but I recall that it was something unique (a name you rarely hear) and Della is the closest thing I can come up with so that's what I'm going with :-)

But before I tell the story, here's a non-sequitur:
I have absolutely no recollection of how my laundry got done while I was at Keesler... I mean - I was there for 8 months so everything must have gotten washed a bunch of times but I do not remember either taking it anywhere or doing it myself... I do recall ironing my fatigues, but other than that ... nothing... Weird.
I also remember polishing my boots (many, many times - it's a military thing). Yeah - applying the polish is just the first step. After that you put some Witch Hazel (astringent) on a cotton ball and work the surface in small circles until you can see your reflection. You have to be careful not to overdo it or (over time) the polish will become brittle and flake...
And I also recall using Brasso to polish all the knobs and handles in the dorm room (and my belt buckles). But doing laundry? Nada...

And on to the story:

One day Juneau (aka The Grinch) and I headed over to the base bowling alley (which was right across Falcon street from our dorm) and immediately noticed a number of airman milling about one particular lane... The attraction (as it turned out) was a teenage girl with long blonde hair wearing a tube top and "short shorts" (way too tight). She was bowling all alone and oddly enough, none of the airmen approached her. They were all just hanging around trying to pretend like they weren't staring at her...

OK - I feel kind of bad about objectifying her (there was more to her than that) but since the point of this blog is to record my thoughts and memories as accurately as I can, here goes:
If you only saw her face you'd describe her as cute, but not exceptionally so. However, the rest of her was absolute perfection... Nothing too big, or too small - too firm or too soft. Every curve and contour was exactly as it should be...Taken all together it was enough to make you forget to breathe.

So the moment Juneau spotted her he was like "Let's go over and say hi!" and before I could say "Are you freaking crazy???" he was headed that direction. I didn't even have time to get nervous before he introduced us - and much to my surprise she couldn't have been friendlier...

Aside: All the other guys were stunned. They had assumed she was "unapproachable", and then we just walked up, said "Hi!" and started bowling with her... They were all like "Doh!"

As it turned out, she was the foster daughter of one of the instructors (a Master Sergeant) on base. She wasn't around very often because they lived up in Hattiesburg (about an hour away) where she went to high school... Yes, she was younger than we initially though - barely 16. (Once again, I feel compelled to mention that the age of consent in Mississippi was 13 at the time, although that wasn't an issue here)...

Over time we learned that she had been abandoned at a very early age (she fantasized that her mother was a Hollywood actress who would come looking for her one day) and she was on her 12th foster home. (She didn't go into details, but I got the impression she'd had some very bad experiences along the way.) And despite everything she didn't seem to be particularly jaded or cynical. (She was actually quite upbeat.)

I was even more surprised that she had been labeled as "out of control" by the child welfare system. That mystified me... Yes - she definitely did her own thing - smoked and occasionally drank. And she could be a manipulative little "so and so" (no surprise given her background)... But she didn't do drugs, and although she was highly flirtatious she was not at all promiscuous.
The point is that somewhere underneath it all was a really sweet, vulnerable young lady. She just couldn't stand being kept on a short leash (that's when she would run away)... Fortunately, her new foster parents seemed to understand that, and for the first time in her life she was in a home where she felt comfortable.

You know, I honestly haven't thought about her much since I left Keesler. That's probably why it's taking me so long to write this post - none of it has been "processed"...

In retrospect I probably had deeper feelings for her than I realized, but it wasn't mutual. I still remember the day she said to me "You're a great guy, and some day some girl will be lucky to have you for a husband - but I could never think of you as anything but a friend." (If I had a nickel for every time I heard that...)
That's not to say we didn't still make out occasionally - there were times I had to pretend to be her boyfriend so some other guy(s) would leave her alone. I didn't really mind that :-)

Aside: Of the 4 or 5 girls I've ever kissed she was the only one who smoked... Yeah - there's a reason you almost never see non-smokers together with smokers. Nicotine tastes pretty icky...

There are (of course) stories to tell (in the next post), but other than that there's not much left to say... She was at a point in her life where things could go either way, and there were times when she seemed to be trying to prove to herself that she didn't deserve to be happy... I did whatever I could (as did a number of other people) and I often wondered if it was enough... I guess I'll never know...