***The Times Are Out Of Joint-Susie Roberts' Curse

The 1960s were an unusual time, unusual in that the normal certainty of life that every person, every teen-age person, kind of came to expect out of life in the red scare cold war night, go to school, get a job, get married, get ahead, pay attention a little to the news but keep it mainly at arm’s length came crashing down on the land like some mighty Jehovah storm to lift up and shake out almost every kid who was breathing and alert. The story of what did, and did not, happen between Susie Roberts and Jeff Brigham is a small snapshot sketch of what the big shake-up was all about. In another time, say the 1940s and 1950s of their parents’ time, they would, or would not have come together, dated, got married, had three kids and two dogs and been done with it. But a different wind blew in their time and the Susie Roberts of the world had to adjust or move on.    

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We know all about Rick Roberts, Susie’s older and only brother,   and his struggles growing up in the 1950s coming of age really by 1960. We know for instance that he used that transistor radio that his parents had given him one Christmas to shut out his parents’ and their poky music. Late one Sunday night he wound up discovering the blues coming out of Daddy Bopper’s Midnight Blues Hour from WMEX in Chicago learning about Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Son House and a whole brood of guys that came out of the Mississippi Delta hungry and lean and sick and tired of being sick and tired of one Mister James Crow and his evil ways. And that made something snap inside of him. So it was no surprise, no surprise at all in very white bread Clintonville (with zero black people) when Rick went to downtown Boston one Saturday afternoon when he was a senior at Clintonville High and joined in a picket of those protesting in front of Woolworth’s in support of those sitting-in down south to desegregate the lunch counters. It was also no surprise when Rick had crossed another line, maybe not as scary as the Jim Crow line but just as strong in the Clintonville high school ethos of the time where such things were not done, when he actually dated Julie Murray from North Clintonville High after they met in the mostly abandoned Clintonville Memorial Park one autumn afternoon and found they had a lot in common. That “lot in common” would later include the pair heading south when the desperate call for volunteers to help with civil rights work came.     

Susie Roberts, Rick’s youngest sister, however, faced a very different if more conventional dilemma. See Susie was stuck. No, not stuck in some car stuck place on some desolate road looking for sir galahad to show up and rescue the fair damsel, pulling might and main to win her favors. And, decidedly, not stuck on some Clintondale High Math class Pythagorean Theorem math problem looking for the square root of some distance from point A to point B. She had Lenny Linsky for that, and for any other math/science/history/english problem that she needed resolved. Yes, Lenny was that way about her. As were a few others, a few hopeless others, not willing however to join Lenny in the slave quarters. Everyone, hopeless or hopeful agreed, that while Susie was not up to speed in the mechanical or smarts departments she was cute (not knock-down drag-out beautiful but pretty enough, pretty enough not to have to worry about thinking about mechanical problems or math either now, and probably ever), tall, blonde, real blonde if you can believe that in this day, this 1966 day in age, pert, and miss personality. And in the final analysis isn’t that what you want in a high school honey even in the worst of times?

That though is exactly where Susie’s stuck problem came in. See she was stuck on a soda jerk over at Doc’s Drugstore in North Adamsville. (The segregated line that brother Rick and Julie had broken over “mixed” dating had disappeared like so much bad hubris and silliness in the Jehovah continental youth nation storm a-brewing so much so that Susie was not even aware of the taboo when she eyed her soda jerk) And Susie did not have eyes for just any of Doc’s five jerks (yes, I know soda jerks, but let’s just shorthand this thing as jerks, no slander intended, okay) but Jeff Brigham.

Yes, Jeff Brigham the big time politico, North Adamsville student body version, who had his picture taken with Robert Kennedy at some Northeast anti-war student conference where they were mapping out ways to end the war in Vietnam. And that is really where the problem came in. Jeff, bright, agile, good-looking Jeff, these heady days has no time for Susie, well, Susie no brains, although not really no brains but more no political brains. And see Susie does not understand why a sophomore, a good-looking sophomore girl in the year of our lord, 1966, have to care about war, about black civil rights, about whether Red China should be in the United Nations or not, or about which way America should be going just to keep up to speed with a jerk, although a good-looking jerk.

Something is out of whack and Susie can’t figure an angle to get to Jeff. Hey, any other time Jeff would be so much putty in her hands. He would be jerk proud, like the others at Doc’s were, just to have Susie come in and talk to them. But, damn, Susie muttered under her breath they aren’t Jeff. And as many signals as she has given Jeff when she played Doc’s juke box, played it to perdition, and tried to interest him in talking about songs like The Temptations’ crooning My Girl; Otis Redding’s be-bopping I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Barbara Lewis practically begging her man to take what he wants on Baby, I’m Yours; and when she turns the volume up for Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman he just smiles his non-committal smile and starts talking about whether Robert Kennedy should, or should not, run for President in 1968, or some such thing. And then Susie fumed under her breath, the times are damn well out of joint as she plans her next moves.