Love in the Seventies

By Colleen Sutherland

Sheila pedaled home on her bike, cursing out the bell bottom pants that flapped in the wind, threatening to get caught in the gears. That happened too often. Bicycle clips never worked because bells had too much fabric. Still, she wouldn't be one of those old ladies who wore something that was in fashion decades before, refusing to change with the times. Bell bottoms were in, so she wore them.

The trailer park was at the edge of town, far away from Sheila's job, but then trailer parks are always at the edge of civilization, accessible to the occasional Midwestern tornado. It was where the young started out, where the failed elderly spent their days before going to a nursing home. It was where rednecks drank their beer in old lawn chairs propped against the sides of their trailers so they wouldn't tip over when the beer got the best of them. It was where students lived.

Sheila worked at the insurance company downtown as a secretary/receptionist. She handled claims, too, but wasn't given the title of claims adjuster because then her boss would have to pay her more. If she complained, he would find another student's wife who wouldn't.

She put up with it because she and Bill needed the money so he could continue his studies at the university. There was their future, his education ending perhaps in a medical degree if he could get his grades up enough to get into the state's medical school. It was the cheapest school in the United States, the lowest rated, but maybe even that school might not accept him. If nothing else, he would get a good white collar job, then it would be her turn to go to college.

Meanwhile, they lived in a third rate house trailer in this dusty trailer park. Bill worked as a handyman to cover the rent. When he wasn't busy mowing lawns and repairing toilets, he was supposed to study. Sheila typed his papers for him, sometimes late at night, editing them as she went along to make them fit the guidelines the college provided. Footnotes seemed to be beyond Bill, so she did a little research on her own to pad out the papers to the required length.



She did the cooking and cleaning, too. Even the garbage was too much for Bill to take out once a week.

“Your own fault for marrying such a deadbeat,” her mother said. “In my day, we chose better.”

Her mother's day was post WWII 1940's and 1950's. Sheila didn't want her mother's life either. Her parents had been married for 39 years and hated each other for 38 of those. Her mother's idea of a career was to survive long enough to be a widow.

Sheila had read the Feminist Mystique and was a member of a Woman's Liberation group started at the university. Sheila was the only woman in the group without a college degree and felt the others held her lack of education over her.

“It will get better,” she told them. “I just have to get through three or four more years of this.”

She thought she would like to work on a journalism degree when it was her turn. She talked about it with her friend Emily, two trailers down. Emily and Greg were the closest friends she and Bill had. Emily was supportive, another liberated woman.

Sheila parked her bike next to the trailer and locked it to the hitch. All the trailers had them though none of them had gone anywhere in a decade. Bill's car, a Ford Pinto, wasn't there. He must have a late class. He always drove the car. It was only twenty minutes on foot from the university but he needed to be able to get around, he always said. There were parts to pick up for the trailers, there was research at the public library, there were conferences with his professors. Her time was pretty much set by her work, but he needed to get around on a schedule that changed from day to day. If it rained, he could always run over to the insurance company, throw the bike in the trunk and drive them both home. But that depended on him noticing it was raining. If he was in the union coffee shop, he couldn't see outside.

A mangy old tom cat peered through a break in the trailer's metal skirt. It was Big Red, the trailer park cat. He didn't belong to anyone, but lived under Sheila and Bill's home. He seemed to mark his territory daily so the house always smelled of male cat piss. She caught Bill feeding the tom one day with bits of hamburger.

“I like cats,” he explained. “And Big Red isn't hurting anyone.”

“But we can only afford meat once a week,” she said.

“I do the shopping,” he said. “I'll cut corners somewhere and get him some cheap cat food.”

Big Red was already huge and getting bigger. She soon found out that other men in the court were feeding him, too. The old Tom was always around mooching. When the men guzzled their beer and held confabs, Big Red was there, too, watching for snacks to start falling on the ground as they got tipsy.

Sheila could have joined the women in their kitchens but all they talked about baking cookies and their children. She was too liberated for that nonsense, but not liberated enough for open marriage. She knew certain couples in the trailer park were experimenting with wife swapping. Bill told her about it and kidded her about joining in. “Spread our genes around,” he said. “Darwin would approve.”




Bill roared up in the Pinto. Wasn't he supposed to be in a class?

“Guess what!” He had a small box in his hand, a grocery bag in the other.

A present? He hadn't given her so much as a daisy in months. He handed her the box. She shrieked when it began to shake.

“Don't open it out here!” Bill grabbed the box and together they went inside. She opened the box there to find a kitten. “It's purebred Siamese,” he said. “My prof had one left. He says they are so rare in this county. He figures we can breed her and sell the kittens. Nice money-maker, he said. Look, she has papers and everything.”

A cat. Like they needed a cat. But Bill was convinced they could make some money and as he said, he liked cats.

“If you take care of it...and that means taking care of the cat box...OK,” she said.



And for a while it was OK. The kitten was cute, of course. She shredded the curtains but those had been in the trailer since it was new, over a decade ago. The hot Midwestern sun had already started the shredding process, the kitten just sped that up.

It was the cat box that soon became an issue. Where could one put a cat box in a small trailer? Sheila put her foot down on having it in the tiny kitchen. Bill first placed it in the bathroom, but that began to stink as he began to forget to change the litter. Finally, it went into the second of the bedrooms, the one she used as an office when she typed his papers. Typing in the living room area meant he couldn't watch television, so she shared her space with Meow Shuo Hui, the name Bill gave the cat. It meant “shiny brightness,” he said. Sheila gave up, changed the litter herself, and kept the windows open, at least until winter came. Then she tried not to breathe. It got worse as Meow Shuo Hui got older. Whenever the smell got too bad, Bill went for a walk, he said, though that usually meant visiting some others in the court. He especially liked to talk to Emily when she was baking, he said. Her kitchen always smelled so good.

The odor in their trailer became intolerable. “Horrible!” Sheila screamed at Bill one day in March. “I can't take it any more!”

His solution was to let Meow Shuo Hui outside where she could run around the trailer park pissing and pooping wherever she wanted which sometimes in children's sandboxes. Sheila certainly heard about that from the parents. Nobody ever complained to Bill. It was a woman's lot to hear complaints, she thought, and mentioned that to her feminist group, who gave her no sympathy.

“What a jerk,” was their usual comment about Bill.

Meow Shuo Hui was turning into a fine female Siamese, with long whiskers and lovely brown and beige coloring.

Then came a summer day when the men were sitting around drinking their beers just outside their screen door. Bill was in the middle of them, talking about women's liberation and how that just meant more sex and income. Sheila, looking out the office window, noticed that Big Red wasn't among them. He was sitting on top of the air conditioner looking in at her. Meow Shuo Hui was meowing plaintively at him. Mid-sentence, Bill went over to the trailer and opened the door to get a beer and the cat flashed out past him.

“Stop!” Sheila came running out of the trailer but it was too late. Big Red had Meow Shuo Hui, biting her neck and humping her with everything he had. The men cheered him on.




The three kittens were the ugliest Sheila had ever seen. It took her months to find homes for them, since Bill was against taking them to the pound.

“Enough is enough,” Sheila said. “When she goes in heat again, I want a purebred Siamese tom here to take care of it. Talk to your professor.” By the time the spring semester rolled around and Meow Shuo Hui was once again in heat, they were ready. They drove to Yankton to pick up the tom, with the promise to the breeder that they would pay him $75 once they sold the kittens.

Meow Shuo Hui had been yowling her loudest Siamese yowl for two days, making sleep impossible. The tom took one look at her and was ready for action but Meow Shuo Hui ran from him and hissed. “Stay away from me, you fool,” she seemed to be saying in her expressive snarls. She climbed to the back of the couch and swatted at him. Behind her, on the other side of the window, seated on top of the air conditioner, was Big Red.

“Scat.” Sheila pounded on the window, but Big Red did not move. Sheila scooped Meow Shuo Hui up and put her on the floor, holding her in place. The tom knew what to do and took care of business.

For two days, Sheila was there to round up the female for her rape by the tom, watched passively by Big Red who was always on top of the air conditioner, always watching through the glass. Meow Shuo Hui was not a happy cat but her yowling finally stopped. She settled down and the tom lost interest.

Bill put the tom in a box and drove him back to Yankton. He wasn't gone long when Meow Shuo Hui suddenly began to pace around crying to get out. Sheila was firm. “You stay put!” But when Bill got back two hours later and opened the door, Meow Shuo Hui flew out and there was her true love to meet her in a tangle of fur and paws.

In the following weeks, Bill took bets from the men around the trailer court, taking a ten percent cut. “See,” he told Sheila, “I knew that cat would make money for us.”

Then Sheila's mother got sick. Her father paid their airfare to go to Connecticut to take care of her for a while, leaving their pregnant cat with a friend in Sioux Falls. They were gone for three weeks. Everyone at the trailer park wondered not how Sheila's mother was, but how that other mother was faring. There were some that wanted to drive to Sioux Falls to find out, but with the Arab oil embargo on, no one could afford the gas to make the round trip.

When Bill and Sheila flew back, they took a side trip with boxes to pick up Meow Shuo Hui and her brood.

They arrived at the trailer court that evening. The neighbors came pouring out of the trailers like sardines out of cans. Big Red came out from under the trailer, pacing anxiously.

Sheila sighed. She plumped Meow Shuo Hui out of the back seat of the Pinto. Big Red sniffed her over. Then came the box...with the five ugliest kittens anyone had ever seen.

Bill gave his friends their winnings, though none of them won much. Almost off of the men had been betting on Big Red. They sat with their beers and lawn chairs late into the night, petting Big Red and smoking the cigars Bill bought with his pool earnings.

The next day Sheila had a miscarriage. Toxoplasmosis because of the cat litter, the doctor said.

It was just as well. Somebody had to pay the bills.

(Note:  These Decade Love Stories are very loosely based on my own life.  Some of the events happened though not always to me.  Every one has been fictionalized. My intention is to follow each decade to the present with stories.)  --  C. Sutherland)

The Magic Ball

The ball is glass and blue and purple and pink. Ellie runs all around with it, around all the grown-ups, around all the lawn chairs, around all the bigger kids. She runs into the garden and points it at a flower.

"Brrrring! Flowers unite!" she says.

She runs to the next flower.

"Brrring! Flowers unite!"

She runs to a pot.

"Brrring! Flowers unite!"

She runs to the patio.

"All right," she says, "Lets go!"

She runs past me, and has to stop because Uncle Jeff is carrying something heavy and is blocking her. I reach out for the ball. It's slimy from Ellie's hand. She pulls it away

"Hey! You can't have it unless you know Princess Haley's secret name."

I think Princess Haley is from another station, one our TV doesn't get.

"Do you know what her secret name is?" Ellie says.

I feel stupid. If Mom and Dad let me watch the show Princess Haley was on, I'd know. I'd remember. Ellie is starting to laugh at me. I shake my head.

"That's because it's a secret!"

She runs away, waving the glass ball in the air. She's going to break it. I want it before it breaks. My tears start in my belly and rise up until they spill out through my eyes.

"Lexi, what's wrong?"

Aunt Tara looks at me like grownups do when they want to help.

"Ellie won't share the ball."

"Did you ask her to share?"

If I tell her no, she won't want to help. I need her to help because she can tell Ellie what to do. It would be best if I could get Aunt Penny to tell Ellie to give me the ball because she's her mom. Ellie would have to listen to her, though she never does. I don't know why. I wish I didn't have to listen to my mom.

"Ellie said I had to know Princess Haley's secret name, and I don't know it."

"Tell you what, Lexi, let's go see if we can guess it."

Aunt Tara takes me by the hand and we find Ellie dancing around a tree. She sees me and Aunt Tara coming and she stops. Aunt Tara will get the ball for me, because she's a grown-up and she's got a big ugly nose. Ugly grownups are better because they look more mean.

"Ellie, is that your ball?" Aunt Tara says.

Ellie shakes her head yes.

"Can you share your ball with your cousin?"

Ellie puts the ball behind her back, but doesn't say anything. She shrugs.

"Is it magic?" Aunt Tara says, "Is it Princess Haley's magic jewel?"

Ellie shakes her head yes.

"If Lexi and I can guess her secret name, can she have a turn?"

Ellie looks over at the older kids and shrugs.

"What do you think it is, Lexi?" Aunt Tara says.

"I don't know," I say to Aunt Tara, "Princess Pea?"

Ellie shakes her head no.

"Cinderella?" I say.

Ellie shook her head no. This was going to take forever. Then Aunt Tara winked at me.

"Ellie, is it Sparkle Blossom?" she say.

Ellie doesn't look at us. Her face is all mad, and her lips are all scrunched up. She holds out the ball to me. I grab it. It is all shiny and slippery and warm. It makes my nose look big and my eyes all googley when I hold it up close.

"Remember to give it back to Ellie when your turn is over," Aunt Tara says. She walks back to the other grown-ups.

Ellie grabs the ball out of my hand when I'm not looking.

"Hey!" I say.

"It's not fair," Ellie says, "Aunt Tara knew the name and you didn't. You cheated."

She points the ball at me.

"Brrring! Evil witch be gone!" she says, and runs away.

I chase her around the trees, the picnic table, and the older kids. She runs through the grown-ups at the fire pit, but they make me go around. Ellie looks back at me and laughs. She laughs and shouts her magic words at me and runs and runs. She runs right into Uncle Jeff and falls on the cement. She screams really high when she sees her hands had blood on them, but I don't think it's that bad. Maybe she's afraid they'll put alcohol on it, because that hurts worse than falling down. She screams loud and fast, like a police car. Uncle Jeff is going find her mom. I find the glass ball under a bush.

I hold it out to a flower.

"Brrring! Flowers unite!" I say.

Nothing happens. I say it again and again. I try holding it different, try saying it to different flowers, but it doesn't work. Ellie broke it.

I go back to the grownups. A bunch of them are around Ellie. I want to cry, but I don't because if I start now the tears will be all gone when I find Aunt Tara.

Love in the Sixties

by Colleen Sutherland

Years later I would say to the kids, “You missed the Sixties” with pity in my eyes. Yet if it hadn't been for the 1960's, I would never have married their father.

We met in a corner bar on Clark Street. I was trying to avoid the neighborhood bag lady who wandered in and out of local establishments. She smelled of oatmeal and booze and sweat. She wore all her clothes on her back, which worked in the winter but was not so good an idea on a hot spring day.

I made the mistake of doing something socially responsible once after I'd been to a lecture at Hull House. We were supposed to care for the poor back then so I helped carry her filthy bags down the street. After that, whenever she spied me she trailed me to talk to me about my lack of morals. All that winter she showed up wherever I was. When I took my wash to the Surf Street laundromat, there she was, staying warm on frigid days. For extra warmth, she stuck her bum into a warm dryer whenever someone had just finished using it. I took to taking a bus to the next available laundromat.

She was a communist, she said. Back in the days before photo IDs were required, I would see her patiently waiting at the library polling place to vote. The poll workers tolerated her whims, because after all, what was one or two commie votes? She was crazy but they left her alone.

It was fine for them but whenever she spied me, she was after me, talking about the loose morals of women in their mini skirts and tie died shirts and lack of bras. Back then I didn't need a bra. No droop, no point to it.

That afternoon, I saw her coming down Fulton Street and ducked into the bar. I was close to my apartment and I sure didn't want her to know where I lived or she would be pressing my buzzer over and over, day and night.

“Give me a lemonade,” I told George, the barkeep. Back in those days, I wasn't a big drinker. Pot was cheap and available so why wreck my liver on booze unless some guy was paying the tab? Times change. Laws change. Highs change.

I was sipping and reading the notes taped to the bar mirror when I smelled the oatmeal, booze and sweat. She slid on to the bar stool next to me and started a mumbling rant against the establishment and demanding a drink.

“You buying for her?” said George.

I shook my head and turned my stool to the right. Two stools down, there was a guy reading a newspaper, looking at the want ads.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“Not much.”

I slid over next to him and started to flirt, leaving George to deal with the crazy woman. That was his job, not mine. My social responsibility phase was over.

That was how I met Bill. He was unemployed and hairy, but he was wearing peace beads and his body looked OK and I didn't have any one else to do that week. We arranged to meet at another bar that night, but a better offer came along, so I didn't show.

The next day we ran into each other again at a peace rally. He bopped me with his Make Love, Not War sign. The war was a boon to guys on the make. Politics and sex were a good mix.

“Where were you?”

“Here and there,” I said, ducking behind him to avoid the bag lady, who was ranting about the war at the edge of the crowd and scrounging for free food. At least there, a communist fit in. We protestors wanted the draft to end but she wanted the North Vietnamese to win. Our wants intersected, so she was tolerated.

Bill sussed the situation. “Want to blow this rally and go down to the lake?” He handed his sign off to another protestor.

The day was sunny and the wind gentle and steady. On the way over to Lincoln Park, we stopped at a store and bought cheap kites. Back in those days a kite was ten cents and a ball of string fifteen. There was a stone wall to sit on and Lake Michigan could be counted on for a strong enough wind. We got the kites up with no trouble.

I found out he was unemployed except for a part time job at a McDonald's. He found out I worked for a big firm in the Loop. During the week I pretended to be a big time capitalist but on the weekends I went where it was happening and that meant being a hippie. Bill had spent the previous year at Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, but now he was crashing in a flat with a bunch of protestors. I had my own apartment. We were just beginning to getting to the point of kissing with a bit of petting when there she was again. The old bat had followed us.

“Whore! Jezebel!” She sure had read enough of the Bible for a communist. Too much Bible study can drive some to godless anti-capitalism.

I took fingernail scissors out of my rucksack and cut the strings. The kites floated out over Montrose Harbor and we took off, leaving the string behind. When we looked back, she was carefully winding it up and putting it in one of her filthy bags.

We ran all the way to my apartment and spent the rest of the day in bed. It was post-pill and pre-AIDS, so there was nothing to worry about that a little trip to the local clinic and a shot of penicillin wouldn't take care of.

It was the Sixties and he was good at the bed thing. We wrestled on my grandmother's antique quilt under the aspidistra, drank herbal tea and ate Swedish limpa bread slathered in cream cheese and honey. Then we smeared the honey all over our bodies and went at it again. When we needed a breather, we shared a joint.

Sometimes, when I wasn't in the mood, he gave me fabulous back rubs, slowly working up my spine till he straddled me, worked his fingers down my sides and played with my boobs until I was in the mood.

In a few days, he had moved in with me. He quit his fast food job, but he managed to find around $50 a week somewhere toward food and bills. He could have been dealing drugs but nobody minded that in those days. I went to work each day, he stayed in bed reading the three Chicago newspapers I brought home each night, looking for jobs. At the end of the day, the want ads were marked, but he didn't seem to get very far on the job search. I didn't mind. My job was good and he was a decent fuck.

We went out to bars where he would could hustle pool players to make enough to pay for his drinks and my Cokes. I cooked at the apartment or we went to protests where food was being handed out. We wore peace beads and fit in with the crowds. We talked politics. He agreed with me on every point then dragged me back to bed.

A week later, he proposed. I refused. It was the Sixties and I was liberated. What was the point?

Perhaps he wore me down. Perhaps it was the Alice B.Toklas brownies he made. Perhaps it was the old woman questioning my morals every time I went out the door. She represented my Midwestern parents who weren't around to nag me. Whatever. I finally accepted.

We went down to the free clinic for our blood tests. Back in those days, the only reason for a blood test was to get married. When he fainted, I found out he was afraid of blood. The anti-war stuff began to make sense. Three days later the doctor called to apologize. One of the vials of blood broke on the way to be tested at the lab. It was his vial and we had to go back. This time, he brought his own smelling salts.

When the blood tests were finally OK d, he met me downtown to get our marriage license at city hall after work. We were there when the news broke that Martin Luther King was assassinated. The riot was already happening, starting on the south side and moving north.

“Go home,” the city hall clerk said, but first we had to go get our wedding rings at Marshall Fields. In those days there was only one, the one downtown. I paid for the rings with my charge card, one of the first issued. We bought two silver bands, $19 each.

By then, the streets were filled with blacks. (They weren't African American for another decade.) We ducked into a movie theater and decided it was probably safer there than on the street. It was an old movie theater subsidized by the University of Chicago that showed nothing but classic film twenty four hours a day. To make it more available to the students, the charge was only 99 cents, but that meant it was always filled with drunks and weirdos instead of kids. Downstairs was a combination of booze and piss. Upstairs was put aside for women only, but the lesbians were going at it up there. We found a spot downstairs, covered the seats with napkins, and watched Marx Brothers comedies for three hours as old men and women beside us mumbled about whatever was on their mind. It could have been a bag lady convention.

I had my own commie bag lady up on Surf Street and finally had enough. We went to the lobby, peered out and listened to glass breaking up and down the street. A Clark Street bus came rumbling. We jumped on board, the only two passengers with a petrified driver. He kept asking us if we wanted to get off at various places so he could take his bus farther north and abandon it somewhere.

We wound up at the same bar where we'd met. George was there, with a shot gun across the bar and a pistol in his hand ready to protect his establishment. We stood outside for a while watching Chicago go up like a fireworks display. It looked like the fires wouldn't come this far north but it was a night to stay awake. Bill pulled a couple of joints out of his wallet and we lit up. After an hour or two, we went behind the bar with George's pistol and took turns shooting rats, laughing with every shot, until a patrol car came up to the front, lights flashing. We dropped the gun and ran down the alley back to my apartment.

We found out later the bag lady had wandered into a riot and got herself killed.

Three days later, we were married at city hall during my coffee break. Friends bought us a wedding pizza sprinkled with pot instead of oregano.

A week later I came down from a marijuana haze and I realized I had made the biggest mistake in my life. Bill gave up giving me back rubs, became a Republican and railed against the deadbeats on welfare. He told his friends that he believed in women's liberation saying he allowed me to continue working. The Sixties were over as far as he was concerned.

I regretted not being nicer to the bag lady that first day in the bar on Clark Street. Funny how a little thing like that can change your life.