There is nothing more that can be added to the title of this chapter. I was now 29 years old, still living at home, working,and dating as much as I could. However, there just was something missing.........oh ! I know,.....a wife. Once upon a time, I met this Swedish girl. Nice looking, smart, easy to talk to but untouchable since she had a French boyfriend, at least that's the information I had gotten from some of my friends. I had transferred from Indoor sales at SAS to the passenger service department at JFK. I kept in touch with my good friends and supervisors at head office and would often call or visit them. One day, I noticed something new sitting in my seat of the reservation department. A sweet looking blue eyed, blonde with a touch of a Swedish accent. OH MY!!! I immediately had to know where the other 10 people were that was hired to take my place and more so, what they knew about this young lady. That's when I learned of the French Pierre. I was advised to stay away from her, even to the point that my ex dept supervisor told me that she would never go out with the likes of me. Come again??? now that phrase made me more determined to act. I tried some idle talking with her and she seemed receptive to conversation but put the brakes on for any more conversation than that. Maybe, just maybe my friends were right. So I decided to leave well enough alone (for the time being).
One night I had to call reservations to get some information regarding the booking for one of the outgoing passengers. Low and behold, who did I get on the line. You guessed it. After I got the information I was looking for, I reminded this young lady that this was St. Patricks Day and the tradition was to go out and drink green beer. After several minutes I convinced her to take a chance, meet me after work and we would have some green beer. She told me that she got off work at 11 PM and I could meet her at the front door of the building, not knowing I still had a key to that door. I was there at 10:30 just to make sure I did not miss this chance.
We ended up across the street from the head office and as promised had our green beer. The conversation was very warm as we told each other as much as anyone would say on a "first date" even though we agreed it was not a date. That night ended by me driving her to her apartment in Manhattan, getting a nice thank you and a hand shake at her door to the apartment house (not even at her apartment). On the way back home to Long Island I kept thinking of my next move.
Some weeks later, after calls to her at work, I was about to leave on a round the world trip with 3 of my friends from that office, another guy and 2 gals, I learned that "M" had broken up with her boyfriend, but I never let on that we were out together. I Sent postcards to her and ended each one with "Hope to see you on my return" On my return, the dating began to get more consistent, the telephone calls more frequent. I remember bringing her to my home one night for dinner with my parents. My mother notice that she had the beginnings of a cold and at that point "M" was told that she was to stay at our house in our spare room and my mom would nurse her back to health. One thing you never do in an Italian family and that's to go against the wishes of mama. There she stayed for 3 days with mama keeping tabs on me and taking care of "M". As the weeks and months went by, the dating became almost a daily thing even to the point that I could feel that my parents were calculating the time for me to be moving out-----finally now that I was 28 years old.
During this period of dating, M and I decided to take a short week-end trip to Puerto Rico to get some sun. Well, being a good Catholic boy, I simply could not come to terms to tell my parents,.....so.....as far as they knew, I was going down alone but M would pick me up at the airport on my return and bring me home. The weekend was terrific, sun, sand and beach......me with a beautiful tan .......M like a little lobster. Arriving back home though was something else. I remember my moms first words,,,,, "you look so good with that tan, Vito" " you know M, Vito was in Puerto Rico" " why are you so red, dear, do you have a rash" WHAAAAA????? could mom be that naive?
Now, I know in the eyes of my mom, I was HUNK of the year......she was constantly trying to get me to date daughters of her friends. I did once. The girl was nice and had the largest breasts one could imagine in those days. One night I decided to ask her to come down to the bowling alley, the SAS bowling club used. When she walked in half of the club just followed her like they would their bowling ball just before it hit the pins. When she walked over to me, I immediately became the hit and the envy of all the guys. They all came over to compliment me on picking up a 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 spare( even though I carried an average of 225) just to get a closer look at her purple cashmere sweater. The only thing going against this gal was her family was only bidding 3 chickens, 2 ducks and 1 sheep of her dowry for my last name.
Another time, while working at JFK, I checked in a nice gal from Tombstone, Arizona. We talked and she invited me to visit her someday, since I was so interested in Tombstone and the famous shootout at OK corral. A month later I had heard from her and I made the trip out for a week-end. Now, in all honesty, this was totally platonic, She and I visited all the sightseeing things, had pictures taken with the town's sheriff and Miss Kitty, the saloon owner etc, etc, etc. I stayed ALONE at the hotel, the only thing is I was afraid to tell M about it since, at that point,.....We were only dating......but things were going well between us, so I told her I had to work a charter flight in Chicago......dumb mistake!..... M who had a friend that worked AA airlines reservations were talking and my name came up in the conversation. M told her girl friend that I was working a flight in Chicago and her friend offered to find out flight arrival time since M was picking me up at the airport. Well, I guess it came as a surprise, how well American Airlines Sabre reservation system was so advanced to be able to track me ......not to Chicago........but to Tuscon......even to my hotel room......where I confirmed my booking from. Needless to say, the day I arrived back to JFK, M was there to meet me and asked how the charter went wwwhhhhyyyy do you ask in that tone.......honey? She indeed told me why!!!!!!! what promises I had to make. WE WERE ONLY DATING!!!!!!!
