There was a time, some fifty or so years ago, when my grandfather allowed me to go on a date. It was with an upper classmate and he wore glasses. This was a special time in my life for grandfather, for the longest, would not let one of us out of his sight. Thinking back, that must have been very hard on him and my grandmother. They had allowed my older sister to date and the outcome was that he and my sister were married and saw their fifieth.

I guess I was a flighty one. I had many boyfriends, including the one my sister married, but, that was before they started dating.

There wasn't much to do as we lived far out in the country, seventeen miles to town to be exact.

My mother and dad were divorced and we ended up down on the farm, way out in the wilderness.

My grandfather had his standards, though. He had to have known the family, and the geneology, of the classmates we socialized with for a hundred or so years (that's stretching it but, that's what it seemed like). We had to be in by eleven and that was also stretching it, for him. Thank goodness, for my grandmother who was a little bit more flexible.

Jim was nice and had a nice, shiney black car. I could tell he liked me a lot and I liked him. With so little time and nothing to do that far out in the country, we decided to do what all the other couples did and that was to park down at Shongelo and socialize with the ones who weren't too busy. Jim was the type that I bet would have scared him to death if a girl planted a big kiss on his lips. He was the peck on the cheek kind and that was fine with me.

Shongelo was a lake with picnic tables and one could fish and swim there. There was a pier, a diving board and the whole works. Many people congregated there in the spring and summer for picnicking, swimming and whatever but, in the winter, it was crawling with teenagers at night. It was terribly dark since there were no lights and that's the way we all wanted it.

We drove down to the lake from the highway and saw that there were several cars there. We parked a little way from the lake so we could sit on the hood of his car, watch the moon shine on the water and to see who we could see huffing and puffing in their cars. The ones with the fogged up windows, we knew, were into some big time stuff.

Shirley and Alan saw us and hollered. "Can we come over?" Shirley asked. "Sure, come on," Jim invited. We slid off the car and walked to meet them.

I was sidestepping debris and trying to keep from getting

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