As 1969 gave way to early 1970, I felt like my life was nearly perfect--but it was about to get better.
There was no shortage of great comics to read, and I had enough money to afford pretty much all the new comics I wanted. I had gotten to know Mildred Christian, the owner of Liberty Hatworks and Newsstand on Broad Street, who agreed to let the Wednesday afternoon shipment of new comics wait until I could come to her store after school and process them out for her, so I never had to worry about missing a comic--and I was even "paid" with a discount on the comics, books, and magazines I was buying every week.
I was reading a lot more science fiction, and had joined the Science Fiction Book Club for the first of what would be many times.
I had discovered the Mystery Book Club through an SFBC flyer, so I had joined that as well and was discovering the fiction of Ellery Queen, Dick Francis, Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, and others.
I had a driver's license and my parents were willing to let me use one of the family cars fairly regularly.
Oh, and Susan and I were beginning the tentative transition from liking each other to falling in love with each other.
The driver's license was an important factor. Once I got my license, I could drive from Rome to Cedartown to see Susan almost every week. Since my grandmother lived in Cedartown, she was willing to let me spend the night there, which meant that Susan and I could see each other for both days of the weekend if I went down on a Saturday morning and stayed until Sunday. That didn't happen every week, because my parents only had two cars and sometimes they would need both of them on one day of the weekend--but a weekend stay at grandmother's became a pretty common occurrence, which meant that Susan and I soon progressed from good friends to people who dated regularly.
We continued to talk to each other every evening, and we also kept up our habit of writing letters to one another. Both Susan and I were somewhat introverted by nature, and writing came very naturally to us, so it was no surprise that we both felt more comfortable writing about our feelings than talking about them.
I had never actually dated anyone prior to Susan. There were girls I liked as friends, but I had not had a girlfriend since elementary school. I was an oddball--a reasonably intelligent teenager who did well in school, but still loved comic books and spent a lot his spare time writing for these strange fanzines, composing poetry, and drawing. Let's be honest--I wasn't the kind of guy who attracted the attention of the girls at my school.
But with Susan, I could be comfortable with all of that. Even better, I was falling love with someone who enjoyed all of those things almost as much as I did.
Susan also reinvigorated my interest in music. I had been an avid music fan until about the time of Beatles '65; then my growing interest in comics, model kits, monster magazines, and fanzines forced me to make some budget choices. Music fell by the wayside.
Susan, however, loved music. Susan also had a full-time job, which meant that she could afford to buy comics, magazines, books, and still have money left over for albums.
How did Susan have a full-time job? Well, she was older than me by about two and a half years, so she actually graduated from Cedartown High School in the spring of 1969. Soon after she graduated, she got a job working in the payroll department of the Arrow Shirt factory in Cedartown, where she earned (after deductions) a little over $69 a week. Today, that seems like nothing--but to both of us, it was in impressive figure indeed. She meticulously saved $20 a week, contributed some to her family's budget, and still had money left over to buy fun stuff.
I had become interested in the Beatles once again with the release the single "Hey Jude" back in 1968. I owe my mother a debt of gratitude for that; it was Mom, not me, who bought that single because she liked the song a lot. She did not care as much for the flip side, "Revolution," but I played liked it almost as well as the A side. The Beatles had changed in the three intervening years, but the music was still good.
Alas, their 1968 album The Beatles (aka the White Album) was a double album that was well beyond my budget, so I stuck with singles for a while longer. I picked up "The Ballad of John and Yoko" when it came out in the spring of 1969 and liked that one a lot as well. I also bought the double-A-sided single of "Come Together/Something" and liked it a lot.
Susan and I talked about music a lot, and she remembered how much I liked the Beatles. So in late 1969 Susan gave me a copy of Abbey Road as a Christmas gift. I must have played both sides of that album two dozen times during the Christmas holidays of 1969. I asked her what she thought of it, and she told me that she actually didn't have a copy; she couldn't afford to buy two copies of the album, so she had bought just the one copy that she gave to me.
In early January, I cut a few non-essential items from my budget and bought a copy of Abbey Road for Susan. It wasn't a Christmas gift--I had given her a copy of Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land for Christmas. I just wanted her to have a copy, too.
She was surprised and moved by the gift. She said that no one had ever given her a gift for no reason before. As soon as she got home, she listened to the album, and we discussed every song at length. We both loved the album, although we didn't share the same favorites. I loved the medleys on side two, while she preferred "Here Comes the Sun," "Something," and "Come Together."
And I was a Beatles fan again. From early 1970 on, I acquired every Beatles album (group or solo) upon release or soon after. And by the spring of 1970, we didn't have to buy two copies, because Susan and I were spending so much time together that I would just lend her my copy for a week, and she would lend me some of her albums.
Thanks to that album, I told Susan that I loved her. It was a weekend, and we were driving down a country road south of Cedartown, just riding around and talking. I told her how I thought about her every time I heard the song "Something," and that I felt the same way about her that George Harrison felt about Pattie. Susan wasn't willing to let me get by so easily, though, and she replied, "Oh, really? How's that?"
"Well, I love you just like he loves her," I said.
There was a moment of silence that left me apprehensive that I had said the wrong thing.
There was a dead-end dirt road that led into a pasture about a hundred yards ahead. "Pull over there," Susan said.
Not sure what she was going to say, I pulled over without saying anything further and stopped the car. As soon as I did, she took my hand, looked at me, and said "I love you, too."
And on February 7th, 1970, I realized that I had found the girl I really wanted to spend my life with.
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