Joe Anne meets James Reed

Joe Anne returned to live near her mother. At that time, my grandmother was living in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. She always kept the house in Hailey, Idaho but would go to other places to teach during the school year. My grandfather’s parents had moved from Mackay, Idaho to Pocatello, Idaho where they were living at the time my grandparents married. My grandparents were married in Pocatello and returned to live in Mackay. My grandmother was now living in Lava Hot Springs, which is quite close to Pocatello. Pocatello was the family stomping grounds for a few generations.

My mother was a young woman. She liked to have fun! She liked groups of people and dancing. One weekend evening, she was with her friend, Edie, and the girls were looking to have fun. Edie knew some guys and called them up. Three young men arrived and they had already been drinking. The good times were on! They all headed to Pocatello to go dancing. At some point in the evening, they needed more alcohol or cigarettes or something. My mother joined the guys on the drive. The man who would one day be my father, James Reed, was in the front seat with her in the middle. He rested his arm on the back of the bench seat behind her shoulders. She told me she knew he was a nice guy because he didn’t try to touch her or make any moves. She felt comfortable with his arm just behind her.

They returned to the dance scene. My mother was dancing to nearly every song played. In those days, everyone danced with everyone even if they were part of a couple. (That doesn’t seem so easy to do these days, maybe because there isn’t a formal dance step for people to follow which could make dance partners easily interchangeable.) According to my mother, James Reed had imbibed so much alcohol later in the evening that he was barely conscious. Sitting in a booth, he slouched sideways and rested his head on her shoulder. She would lift his head and push him aside to rest against the wall when she got up to dance. When she would return to her seat, he would resume resting his head on her shoulder. She would push him aside again when she wanted to dance. According to my dad, the next day he had been so drunk that he couldn’t remember what she looked like or what her name was. He just knew he wanted to see “the red-headed girl in the pink dress” again. He went asking around about her.

 

James Reed was just out of the navy. He had been in the navy during the Korean War. He had a tattoo on the back of his right forearm of an eagle and an anchor from a night of drinking with his sailor buddies. He was from American Falls, Idaho of the “crazy German family that lived on the hill and made dandelion wine.” When he contacted my mother after the night of drinking and dancing, they met in a park. My mother brought my sister, Christine, who was a year old. My mother said she determined he was a good person to date because he played with my sister and my sister liked him. They dated, many weekends of dancing and socializing while my grandmother babysat, and were married after six months (My sister was age two then). My dad’s employer at the time said it was a good thing he was getting married and would settle down a bit because he was going to kill himself with all of the drinking he was doing. He did settle down. He didn’t like going to the bar after work to drink with the men. He wanted to go home. He got harassed because he helped around the house, for instance, he helped my mother to wash all of the windows. His new job with National Cash Register took them to live in Ogden, Utah, where my brother, Michael, was born. My sister was four-years-old.