The Invitation

April 1984. I was about to graduate from High School.

My friend Jolene aka "Jo" called me to ask if I would go to Maine with her for the summer. Her cousin, Tammy, wanted her to come take care of her baby boy for the summer, and said if Jo wanted to bring a friend, they would find a family for her....uh....me.

I never expected anything like this to happen to me. I am not someone who dreams of big adventures and world travels. I am simple. I am content. I am a homebody. I am......boring.
But what an opportunity! I was still employed at the Dairy Queen/Corner (a whole other blog topic) and had been since I was a freshman. Not that I was super important there....but I am pretty loyal and didn't want to leave them in a bind.

It was my last year of eligibility for 4-H so it would be my last year to show horses and my last fair....but I hadn't competed the year before because of horse issues so it wasn't terrifically important to me...but was another thing I had to weigh on the decision to stay or go. I had a great boyfriend, John, but we didn't really see each other a whole lot in the summers because he was working and I was working and we lived 30 + miles from each other....so even though that was probably the most difficult thing to overcome - you know when you are a teenager, a couple of months seems like a lifetime - in the end.....there was really no great reason not to go to Maine. My parents consented, a little too easily if you ask me, and the plans were put into motion.

Tammy had a friend, Susan, with two girls who were 7 and 10. Susan was interested in a Nanny and she called to phone interview me and also sent a letter and pictures. As I got more information I got more excited. Susan decided to offer me the position and since school went into mid-June there....we were scheduled to arrive in Maine on June 10th.

I told my boss at the Dairy Queen/Corner one evening when I was at work. I said, "Kent, I need to give you notice that I will need to quit for the summer by June 1st because I got a job in Maine as a nanny". I picked June 1 because my older brother, Tim, was getting married the first weekend in June and I wanted some time to relax and hang out with friends before I left for Maine. Kent....laughed and so did the other kitchen drones. They thought I had made the whole thing up. I don't know why. Maybe because I had been there for so long and I rarely ever asked for any time off because...well....I barely had a life. Not sure. But it took a lot of convincing to make them understand that I was totally serious. Finally he got it and seemed to be a little sad, which made me feel a little sad. I had learned a lot of good lessons and had a lot of fun flippin' burgers at the DQ/C.

McMillan's, Jo's family, and I left on June 9th and drove to Omaha to stay the night. Jo and I would fly out the next day from the Omaha Airport. We stayed at the Holiday Inn and went swimming and then we all went out to the movie theatre to see a show and we car shopped for Jo's older brother Tommy. We saw parking lot rage at the movie theatre, a car was waiting for another car to pull out and when it did, a car coming fast from the opposite direction whipped in there and stole the space. Loud, bad words ensued. I don't know why I remember that....but I do.

I had spent a lot of time with McMillan's over the years so it was very comfortable to be with them. Jo and I had shown horses together in 4-H and had been friends since elementary school. She and Tommy were the ones that I went to the Milburn Dam spillway with and did dumb and dangerous things off the bridge. I had many great memories of times spent with Jo and was sure this summer would only add more.

I wrote to my fella, John, all summer long. At least a letter every day or two. When we got married, we had each kept all the letters we had sent each other over the years. In our second year of marriage, we lived in a house in a canyon east of Wellfleet and had no TV, little radio, and since I worked three 12 hour shifts at the hospital in North Platte and John worked all day everyday, I had a lot of time on my hands to do "stuff". One thing I decided to do was to reread all the letters from Maine and put them into journal form minus all the mushy stuff. So....in the next few months I will move them into my blog. It will be fun to relive that time in my life.....
The Summer of '84.