DRIVE FASTER!
     My grandmother made one of those Henry Jamesian "life-
mistakes" when she married my grandfather.  She was young and
beautiful and erotic, then living in America's oldest city, St.
Augustine, Florida.  She'd moved there as a girl from Fall River,
Massachusetts, notable only for Lizzie Borden.  The way my
grandmother tells it my grandfather was not a particularly
handsome, romantic, or interesting man, but he had a convertible,
and he lusted after my grandmother.
     The summer they courted was the hottest she ever remembers,
out of many sticky St. Augustine summers.  There was no air
conditioning then and the only way she could cool off was driving
with my grandfather, the top down, the sea air burning her bright
blue eyes and wreaking havoc on her waist-length auburn hair.  Up
and down those cobblestone streets they drove, my grandmother
singing Mills Brothers' songs like "Paper Doll" while my
grandfather looked straight ahead and said nothing.
  
     [I'm gonna buy a paper doll to call my own,
      A doll that other fellas cannot steal]

     And so the summer went, the routine punctuated only by walks
on the beach or malts at the drugstore.  My grandfather worked as
a teller at the bank, and my grandmother would show up before lunch
and plead with him to "take me driving, take me driving.  I can't
stand it.  Take me driving."  He would, not wanting to get in bad
graces with the bank manager, reluctantly agree, and my grandmother
would sometimes stand up on her knees in the front seat and open up
her blouse and let the air cool her chest.  But he wouldn't even
look over, only grip the wheel tighter and admonish her to be
careful, that 'people get hurt that way'.

     [And all the flirty flirty guys
      With their flirty flirty eyes]
     "Oh, Al.  Don't be such a poop.  It's fun.  And it's sooo
muggy."

     Then, in the car:
     "I like your hair, Miriam.  I like how it blows around."     
"Oh, Al."

     [Will have to flirt with dollies that are real.
      When I come home at night she will be waiting
      She'll be the truest doll in all this world
      I'd rather have a paper doll to call my own
      Than have a fickle-minded real live girl.]

She was anxious to leave behind her girlhood, and she tried every
trick she knew on my grandfather, all that St. Augustine would
allow.  It was the twenties and it seemed to her that there was
something different in the air, some kind of feeling that was
exciting and sexy and new.  She felt it when they drove in to
Jacksonville to watch the talkies that were just coming out.  She
felt it when she and my grandfather would sneak the bottles of
bootleg whiskey that her own father had learned to make, that
eventually killed him.  She thought her own mom must have felt it
too, because she wore these huge pinafores all the time: she was
'always with child'.
     She graduated high school in 1920.  She took thirteen subjects
that year.  All A's.  She said she would have gone on to college
but there was no way her parents could afford it, even with the
bootleg whiskey.
     She wanted to be a Charleston girl, or better yet, Clara Bow--
the "it" girl, but not because she was famous or talented, but
rather for the reason Dorothy Parker gave('She didn't have *it*. 
She had *those*.')  She loved to sit in the theater with Al, lean
her head on his arm, and watch this wonderfully-shapely creature. 
    One special day, before they went driving, she poured a whole
bucket of water over her head and then got in and had my
grandfather drive along the beach.  When they finally pulled off
onto an obscure dirt road she pulled off all of her clothes and
begged Al to "drive faster!  Faster!"
     He took her virginity in the car then and she married him in
1926.  He became impotent shortly after my mother was born and they
slept in separate beds the next fifty years.