Who would believe going to a couple of basketball games could change a person's life? Well, it sure changed mine.
St. Anthony's did not have a boys high school but that didn't stop the Franciscan Friars from looking after their boys when they left grade school and they provided activities to keep them occupied in constructive ways. There was a bowling alley downstairs from the girls school and the gymnasium was used as a roller skating rink on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday nights.
There also was the boys basketball team with a coach, being one of the young men from the parrish and one of the young priests, Father Cloud, was involved with the team. Some of the girls from my class dated some of the boys on the team so I was familiar with some of these players. Sometimes Father Cloud would arrange for the team to rent a bus and take the team, including some of the interested girls, to Washington, MO to play St. Francis Borgia's team. The Franciscan Friars (Monks) also served as priests at St. Francis Borgia.
One fateful (LUCKY) day I received a telephone call made to my next door neighbor's home. We didn't have a telephone at that time and Mrs. Schott was kind enough to let us use her phone for messages. It was Father Cloud and he told me that they were going to Washington, MO and he knew that my sister was a nun teaching school there and invited me to come along. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance but I can't even remember seeing my sister 'cause all I thought about was that bus full of boys, boys, boys, and of course, some of my girlfriends who went along too.
On the way back to St. Louis I sat in the back row of the bus with umpteen boys from the team. I sat next to a guy nicknamed "Botts" but didn't notice another one of his friends who I definitely would notice later and this came about a couple weeks after this trip. It happened one night after attending a girls' basketball tournament at Marysville College. Joan Hohner and I walked over to the gym to watch our school's team play. Also watching this game were some of the boys that were on that fateful bus trip to Washington, MO. We noticed them but then directed our attention to leaving and going down to Bailey Farms Dairy to get a chocolate malt.
This is where fate definitely stepped in. Who was at the Malt Shoppe when we got there? Yep, it was quite a few of the guys from the basketball team. They waited till we ordered and left and then followed behind us. Knowing they were following us, Joan and I decided to do some stupid things like jumping over fireplugs. Now how stupid is that?!! Those days in the 1940s were innocent times compared to the 1990s and 2000s. I'd hate to even imagine what 15 year old girls would do to try to get and keep the attention of boys a few years older than them.
To get back to this story, we didn't go the shortest way home but decided to travel a little further out of our way so we could pass by the guys' hangout, which was called Schott's Confectionary. Most of them stopped following us at this point except for two of them; Botts and this cute blond young man that I didn't know. They followed us to my house but stayed across the street standing there watching us and this is where it gets good as far as I'm concerned.
My friend Joan was known as "boy crazy" and the boys were definetely crazy about her. As for myself, I was the shy one or at least I thought I was. Joan lived about seven blocks from my house and I'd usually walk her half-way home and then head back to my house. Sometimes my mom would walk with us and we'd walk her all the way home if it was very late. Joan said that she was going to head home but didn't want me to walk half way home with her this time. It didn't take a brick wall to fall on me to know why she didn't want me to even walk down to the end of our street with her. She wanted these guys all to herself as she believed they would then follow her home. I walked her down the block anyway, said goodbye. Of course, Botts and the other fellow walked down the block too but stayed on the other side of the street. Joan jaywalked across the intersection and headed toward her home. I turned around and headed toward my house.
Something unexpected happened. The two young men turned around and followed me home and came across the street to talk to me. Botts introduced me to Harry, as his friends called him then but I was warned later by some friends to never call him that in front of his mother if I ever met her. I never did; that is, call him Harry in front of his mother. That night with Botts' help, Harry asked me on a date to the movies.