***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

…she thought he was a goof, a silly goof and dismissed him out of hand. He had been in her class, her math class, junior year over at Olde Saco High and he had apparently decided to take dead aim at her. Taking dead aim at her thinking that constantly saying to her “don’t sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me,” a silly song that all the Jacks and Jills were playing on the jukebox at Jimmy Jake’s Diner as a goof would win her heart. And that wasn’t the half of it. He would follow her around the hallways, trying to talk to her, and she trying to avoid him, avoid being seen “talking” to a big gangly red-headed goof. He would follow her home, standing at the gate of her home calling out asking for a date. He soon stopped all of that though, got stopped in his tracks. Got stopped once Jeff Dubois, captain of the school’s Black Bears football team, became her beau, and they became an “item” in the Monday morning boys’ and girls’ “lav” talkfests.  More importantly she didn’t “see” anybody but Jeff once they became that item, as if the whole world was just the two of them.

That was then. After they graduated Jeff went down to Boston to work in the shipyards there and they kind of drifted apart. And of course the war came and Jeff went when his number was called and he said that she should not wait for him. One day she was at Jimmy Jakes with a girlfriend feeling kind of blue, thinking she would never find another love now that all the eligible guys were off to war and only goofs were left. Goofs and, what did they call them, malingerers, when a well-built good-looking guy in an army uniform came walking in standing tall and with purpose, looked around, and headed to the jukebox to  put some coins in the machine. He then headed over toward the booth where she was sitting and said in a slight sing-song manner “hey, don’t sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me,” as the song was playing in the background.  She noticed his close-cropped red hair. She laughed, laughed a little coquettishly, and thought, well, she just might think about that…