I took over the part, she told me I was a natural talent. Did I mention she was our hot-to-trot Enriched English & Social Studies teacher and her first name is Cinnamon?
Wanna know who showed up to try out for Okla-homo!—I mean, Oklahoma!?
When I walked into the auditorium that afternoon in March ’86, I seen none of the kids I expected to see. Instead, there sat Pee-wee Herman’s #1 fan, Charlie Richardson, and the slightly overweight stringy black-haired girl I mentioned before, Tuesday Gunderson.
“You slumming or something?”
Outta nowhere, the only person I recognized as being remotely acquainted with appeared, her bright red locks falling past the bottom of her purplish pink striped sweater.
“Hey,” I said, happy to see Audrey Wojczek for the first time in my life.
We may seem like pretty good pals now during Senior year, but at the time, I barely knew her. I mean, we went to junior high together and all, but we weren’t exactly friends, you know what I mean? Audrey only transferred to Webb during Freshman year, after spending 2nd thru 8th grades at St. Mary Magdalen’s. Judging from the mouth on her, you’d never know it!
“What the fuck are you doing here, Dayton?”
Audrey served as treasurer of Drama Club. She also played the mother in The Skeleton Walks, the fall play first semester. Her performance came as a bit of a surprise to me when I seen the production, but as the recipient of the Class Clown mock award, I guess Audrey has never been much of a wallflower.
“I’m trying out for the play,” I remember telling her. “What do you think I’m doing?”
Back at Webb, me and Audrey constantly fought whenever we found ourselves together. She loved picking on me, saying my hair would fall out someday just because our Health teacher, Mrs. Strong, said that most redheaded men eventually go bald. Shit like that.
“The word is auditioning” Audrey corrected. “And it’s a musical, not a play.”
Whatever…
The spring play—I mean, musical—that year, like I said, was none other than Oklahoma! You know, “where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,” and the “shiny little surrey with the fringe on the top.” By the guys who wrote The Sound of Music, Rogers & Hammerstein. Well, I never seen it before, but I knew the movie version had the mom from The Partridge Family in it, who happens to be the real-life mother of my very first crush ever. No, not David, but Shaun Cassidy.
Growing up, we never had much money. Evidently, James Dayton didn’t make a whole lot working as a cop in Troy while getting his degree in Physical Education from Wayne State. And once Laura Victor married him, she gave up the job she had since turning Sweet Sixteen working as a secretary in the tissues and pathology lab at Detroit Osteopathic Hospital to stay home with me and my sisters, Janelle, Nina, and Brittany.
Yet every so often, Mom found a little extra cash stashed somewhere. Her (quote-unquote) mad money, she liked to call it. I used to think so because she spent it whenever Dad made her mad, which seemed a lot more frequent the longer they stayed together and the older me and the girls got…No wonder their marriage ended in D-I-V-O-R-C-E in 1983.
I’ll never forget this one time my parents were out bowling on their bowling league…
After we put on our footie pajamas, me and Janelle gathered in front of the television with our babysitter, Sheryl Killian. Nina and Brittany must’ve both been in bed because they were still babies. I’m pretty sure I was in 1st grade at the time, so they were like three and two.
“Ooh, he’s cute!”
I’m sure I thought it first, but Janelle beat me to saying it out loud. After all, she is two years older.
“That’s Shaun Cassidy,” Sheryl informed us when The Hardy Boys came on channel 7 at 7:00 PM. “Isn’t he a fox?”
At the time, we were living in Center Line. The Killians lived down the block from us on Sterling, and Sheryl went to high school at St. Clement’s. I remember her being very glamorous in her bell-bottom jeans with her long blond Bionic Woman hair. Me and Janelle liked to sit on the back of the couch and braid it for her while we all watched TV.
“Is he your boyfriend?” I asked, feeling a tad jealous that Shaun Cassidy just might be.
Sheryl laughed. “I wish!” Then she told us, “He sings ‘Da Doo Ron Ron.’”
How could I not know that? I loved “Da Doo Ron Ron”! Except I always thought it was “Da Doo Run Run.”
Every time we took a ride somewhere in Dad’s car, me and Janelle would hear it on CKLW, so we knew all the words by heart. Boy, did I wish my name was Jill!
Thus began our weekly ritual…
Every Sunday night while our parents were up at Pastime Lanes, Sheryl would pop the Jiffy Pop, melt an entire stick of (“Everything’s better with…”) Blue Bonnet on it, while me and Janelle waited patiently in the family room, counting the seconds till show time.
From the moment Frank and Joe appeared in twelve-inch black and white, we sat glued to our seats, not even getting up to pee unless we absolutely had to. This was back before they invented the VCR, you know what I mean? And even if they’d been around, the Daytons certainly couldn’t have afforded one.
Wanna know what I remember most about The Hardy Boys, other than how cute Shaun Cassidy looked in every episode?
That creepy music from the opening montage! And all the various book covers appearing one by one: The Clue in the Embers, While the Clocked Ticked, The Hidden Staircase.
Back then, I didn’t know the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were literary characters that had been around for fifty years, but oh how my 6-year-old heart skipped a beat when Shaun Cassidy began clapping his hands high above his head, wearing that groovy striped sweater with the scarf draped around his neck.
My favorite episode of all time had to be “The Last Kiss of Summer.” ’member, the one where Joe got married? I’ll never forget when I first heard about it, I was devastated. Joe Hardy couldn’t have a wife. It would ruin the show!
Sure enough, the scene opened with Joe and that girl, Jamie, driving down the coast in Joe’s convertible, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes, the wind blowing both their long blond hair while that romantic ’70s song played in the background.
“If a picture paints a thousand words…”
After Joe and Jamie professed their undying love for each other and shared a passionate kiss, they walked along the beach, arm in arm.
“If a face could launch a thousand ships…”
I remember thinking how beautiful Jamie looked in her cutoff jean shorts and blouse tied in a knot in front, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Shaun Cassidy’s smile. I remember wanting to press my face against the tiny screen—and kiss it. Imagine how confusing that must’ve been for a 6-year-old boy. Especially one who spent so much time surrounded by his sisters, he sometimes felt more like one of the girls.
“Joe Hardy is sooo cute!” I gushed, scootching closer to the TV set.
“I like Frank better,” Janelle decided, even though I couldn’t understand how she could think such a thing.
Obviously Sheryl Killian didn’t realize how things worked in the Dayton household. “Joe is a boy,” she took it upon herself to point out. “You can’t think he’s cute, Bradley.”
I turned to Janelle.
She turned to Sheryl. “It’s okay…Sometimes Brad thinks boys are cute.”
To Janelle, it was totally no biggie. She even let me play Barbies with her.
And then tragedy struck.
I knew there’d be trouble the second Joe and Jamie got into their car after the wedding rehearsal