Mary loved to be the star of the show and she was to me. She also got her chance in Knoxville Tennessee about 1974. A guy named Nick had picked us up hitch-hiking and we stayed a while at his motel on Clinton Highway. One afternoon we went across the street to Mr. T's Lounge. We had come into a little money and were having drinks. Mary started bragging about what a great dancer she was and how she had taken lessons while she was in grade school for six years. After quite a few tequila sunrises we got her to get up on the stage and try a strip-tease. She was a beautiful, young red-head and she really could dance. I am sure that she had rarely, if at all, ever seen a girl do it, but she was great. It had gotten later into early evening and a lot of good-ole-boys had come in and were filling the tables and drinking beer. Remember, this is in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 70’s so it was, maybe, a rough crowd. Anyway, She got up on the stage and the bartender put something on. I wish I could recall what it was. She started dancing and the boys got quiet. An old man was sitting in a wooden, straight-back chair right at the edge of the stage and he started grabbing at Mary’s ankles while she danced. He made contact once or twice and it was probably pissing her off, but she just grinned, spun around, kicked him right in the head. He went straight back into his chair, fell straight back to the floor, and everyone in the whole place jumped up and started yelling and screaming, some with their hands up, in approval. She was a hit. The rest of the time we were in Knoxville, she was the queen of the stage at three different places around town. Mr. T’s, B&J’s Lounge (Brenda and John), and the Continental Lounge out on Knox Highway. I went with her every time and to every place and they even paid me to run the spotlights at the Continental Lounge… an illegal gambling club up top and a redneck beer bar downstairs… and that’s another story.

Whenever I find the time, I plan to begin telling some of those stories here. There is much more to tell surrounding just this little piece alone. Mary and I hitch-hiked around the US for a couple of years. You could do that back in the early 1970’s. If I was a good writer, the crazy adventures we had could make a pretty good book. Maybe I will when I get older and have the time.

My heart will never, ever let go of her.

Robert Heston - 05/24/2015

10/12/2015:

I had not been thinking of her so that does not explain it. Last night --actually this morning-- I had a dream. I had been stressed out over a school project. I was in a large, spacious room like an attic. I was looking for my notebook from school. Somehow a large, dusty pallet stacked with layers of something --I think past events-- was plopped down on the wooden floor. I was sure my notebook was under it and was trying to look through the pallet to see if it was there. I gave up and sat on the floor and was just looking around. Mary came walking out of the shadows wearing something like yellow silk or chiffon. Her hair was cut above the shoulders and very curly as it would be at that length. She looked maybe in her 20's. She came and sat down next to me and said "let me know if you want to go to the club tonight" and I woke up. I have not been in the habit of thinking about her though I do think of her from time to time. The thought that I could be dead by tonight crossed my mind, but I think time is relative in the dreams sometimes and perhaps the past --or was it the future-- stepped in for a moment to get my attention. I was exited to see her, but somehow not surprised. It pissed me off to suddenly wake up.

I really want to check out the "club," but I'm not in a hurry. I do not believe in heaven and hell in the literal sense, but you never know. God --who or whatever that is-- may just humor the religious and give them whatever it is they believe in. So... we never had a "club" we went to but we were drinkers. I don't drink any more, but if there's an afterlife, they better have a fully stocked bar. There's going to be a lot of folks we haven't met yet but would love to, right?

3/29/2016

I'm taking a Social Psychology class and one of my assignements includes a story with Mary in it.

Journal Assignment 8 – Social Norms – Warner Heston

During the early 1970’s we violated a lot of social norms.  Social norms being what most people considered normal at the time and were the mostly unwritten rules of society about how to behave in every situation, how to dress, what would be considered moral or immoral, ethical or unethical, the assumed template for people to follow as they live out their place in society (C.Sanderson-Sec.13, 2010) (Oxford-Reference-01, 2016). If you wanted to be accepted by the dominant culture of American society, of the time, your life would reflect that template.

There was a subculture that had been growing since the 1960’s that did not agree with those social norms and my friends and I were part of it. In his review on the book “The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics” by Bruce J. Schulman (linked), George Packer describes the attitude of the new generation coming of age in American society (Packer, 2001):

My wife, Mary, and I lived together from 1973 through 1976. We married in 1976 to give our son, who was on the way, my last name and for any other paperwork that made things go smoother. Many from the old culture might call that “shacking up.” You start going backwards on the calendar from there and that starts becoming taboo and the farther back you go, the more it becomes “living in sin” and highly unacceptable in our society. Like George Packer describes, we considered the idea of marriage, at least in the legal and religious sense, obsolete. I cannot say the same thing about having children, especially when it came to my future, first wife, Mary.

We were just starting out and I was working and wanted to wait until we were financially prepared, but unknown to me at the time, Mary would dial the dispenser for her birth control pills to the next day then flush the pill, daily. When she was about seven months into her pregnancy we decided to get married. The only reason we did it then was because of the legalities involved. In spite of our feelings about the “sick society” we lived in, there were laws connected to this particular social norm that made it practical to do the paperwork.

As far as the subculture we were part of was concerned, living together was okay. The members of that subculture would have numbered in the millions across the country and included all our friends. Even though living together was becoming more common, it was still unacceptable to most people in the dominant culture.
Our friends had no issue with us getting married either. It was just a non-issue. Once we were married, our union was accepted by our parents and our son would carry on the family name in the traditional way. Prior to getting married, in some circles we would not be considered or treated as such but it was never an issue
for us.

By the time we were standing in front of the magistrate’s desk for the marriage, she was sticking out pretty far with that baby. The magistrate probably thought I was being forced into it. The last time she had looked like that in front of a government official was a few years earlier. It was a county sheriff that had pulled over where we were hitch-hiking to make sure we weren’t trying to get to a hospital because, unknown to him, that two pounds of marijuana under her maternity top was making her look about the same as she did in front of the magistrate that day. As she was standing only about four of five feet from his car window, we told him there was nothing to worry about because she was only seven months along.

The paperwork was necessary. Dealing with the various institutions of our society would sometimes require their own paperwork which would have places to indicate that marriage. Often there would be some benefit to that, otherwise it would at least be a convenience. Being legally married enabled us to fit properly into society’s forms and add to the formation of, as we saw it, a societal structure based on ignorance and hypocrisy… to put it mildly. We were not going to join or start a commune to drop out of society so with some things we needed to conform. In many other ways, we never did.

References

C.Sanderson-Sec.13. (2010). Social Influence: Norms, Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience. In C. Sanderson, Social Psychology (pp. 248-287). Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Retrieved March 2016

Oxford-Reference-01. (2016). Social Norms. (Oxford University Press) Retrieved from Oxford Reference: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100515327

Packer, G. (2001, June 10). The Decade Nobody Knows - Book Review -of- The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics by Bruce J. Schulman. (The New York Times Company) Retrieved March 2016, from nytimes.com/books: https://www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/10/reviews/010610.10packert.html

Mary's Dance Recital - May 27, 1969 in Gastonia, NC

May 25, 1972

Ad for Her Grandparent's Grocery Store in the Gaston Gazzette
December 21, 1950 - Before she was born, of course.