Friends of My Youth

(The photo is from a Halloween party held at my house in about 1957. I'm second from the left, with the black top, looking up)

I was looking at the photo from the graduating class of 1956, the Photo of the Day for yesterday and for today, and remembering things about many of my fellow classmates.

Judy Lucchesi was my best friend. We had a friendly rivalry over Stephen Calegari, who was my neighbor. When I spent summers with my cousin Peach, Judy and I would write letters to each other ending with "he's MY boyfriend," each of us trying to make the "MY" bigger than the other's.

Janet Wilhelm's father was the manager of The Emporium, the huge department store downtown. They lived in Sausalito, which even then we a sleepy little artist's colony, but not the tourist trap that it has become today.

Eddie Garaventa was the class hunk. I once hosted a Halloween party, where my father made great decorations all throughout the house and we danced on the concrete back yard. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when Eddie asked me to dance because nobody had danced with me up to that point. But I didn't really know how to dance and all he said to me was "do you always step on people's feet?" and he left me before the end of the song. I was mortified. That's the only thing I remember about Eddie.

Marie Davilla's mother was our Brownie Scout leader. She was Japanese and Marie had been born in an internment camp at Tanforan race track (which, we joked, explained her love of horses). I remember that Marie could play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the piano and we always begged her to play it. Her mother was the housekeeper for a big Victorian mansion, now torn down and replaced by an apartment building. It was all dark wood with a grand staircase. Probably not as grand as in my child's mind's eye, but whenever I read something that talks about a mansion, this is the place I envision. I remember the yard had tiny pink roses growing in it.

Mrs. Davilla did great activities with us, like baking cookies in the kitchen and making a recording of our voices on some machine that recorded us on 78 rpm records.

Marie, Vickie Handley and I were the three from that class who ended up at St. Vincent High School, where we did not really maintain our friendship.

When we got into Girl Scouts, Michele Cicerone's mother, along with Judy's mother, were our leaders. Michele's mother had some theatre background and so we put on variety shows every year. It seems like we rehearsed forever and performed at some little building in San Francisco. I went on vacation for a weekend with Michele's family one time and I remember her father hit a dog when we were driving home and I cried because he wouldn't stop for it. Michele and I were also obsessed with "Spin and Marty" on the Mickey Mouse Club.

Shows what the sign of the times was. I cringe to think what pain we must have caused her, but we all thought of Patty Leone as a "bad girl." She was non-Catholic, for one thing, she had red hair and freckles, and she had ... gasp! ... pierced ears! Only "bad" girls had their ears pierced.

Dominic Manzone's family must have been rich. Richer than mine, anyway. Whenever we had drives to raise money for the "pagan babies" in Africa, Dominic always contributed the most, so he always got the "good" prizes.

You still see trucks in San Francisco with "Servedei Service" (or something like that) on it. That was Sandy Servedei's family. They lived in the Marina, a block from the yacht harbor. Sandy was, I think, the shortest in the class, but very sweet.

Gayle Tarzia and I walked to school every day, since she just lived two blocks away. She was the one who first told me the plot of A Star Is Born and changed my life. I wrote about her earlier this year, on her birthday.

What I remember most about Eugene Sarlotte was that his baby brother had long curly hair that hung in ringlets much like my own did when I started kindergarten and his mother hadn't had the curls cut off even as he approached 5.

When you are with the same people every day for 8 years, it's very strange never to see them again...and it's kind of sad to think that, 50 years later, I have hardly seen a one of them since graduation, 1956.

(to see the full photo, with identification, check the original entry)