I’ve lived! I’ve lived!

2009-11-17

By Lois Wyrick

  One of my favorite movie scenes comes from “Auntie Mame” starring Rosalind Russell. She has a secretary, Agnes Gooch, played by Peggy Cass, and Cass gives a terrific performance.

Mame is a free-spirited woman and lives a life that some of us would envy but never practice. She realizes Gooch has a dull existence and Mame encourages her to get out of her lifestyle and live as Mame would live.

Mame’s motto is “Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.” She says this to Ms. Gooch and sends her out on a date. Gooch is very late returning from her date and as she struggles up the stairs Mame asks her where she had been and Gooch answers, “I’VE LIVED--I’VE LIVED!”

It isn’t too long before the household realizes how she lived and a baby is on the way.
I suppose one of the reasons this scene made such an impression on me is that when I was a teenager I was completely devoted to having a different life than I was living. I wanted to live movie style.

My very best friend lived across the street from me, and we spent every possible hour with each other. We were 14 and spent a good bit of our time on her porch swing.

We used this time to plan our future. We decided after we finished school we would go to New York City.

We weren’t sure what we would do there but we would make lots of money, buy a white convertible and return to Webb City and impress everyone with our success.

We planned our apartment, and it looked like many apartments we saw in the movies.

None of our plans came to pass. At least in the way we planned for them to be. One of the events that happened to us was our marrying brothers.
My romance was a script that was more Hollywood than Hollywood could have written.

I don’t know about the dreams of today’s teens. It seems to me that they live a Hollywood life already. Most of them have their own car while I didn’t even have my own bedroom.

Their clothes are designed for them while my clothes could have belonged to my grandmother--except for the bright colors. Many of them have their own bedrooms while I didn’t have my own clothes closet.

Some of you know that my dream was to have the life of Ginger Rogers. I copied what I could but her clothes and dance steps were beyond me. I thought to live the life I wanted would take a miracle.

However, the romance did happen, and I forgot about the rest of my dreams.

I did get to New York but not in the way Midge and I dreamed would happen.

I arrived in Grand Central Station after flying to Atlanta from Miami.

I was using a company pass which wasn’t easy during WW2 and I had to finish the trip by train.
Here I was at the age of 20 and was in a world I knew nothing about. If I had taken time to think about it I would have been stunned at what was happening. I had no travel experience other than visiting my grandmother and aunts in Pawhuska, Okla., which was 160 miles from Joplin, Mo.

I had never seen an airliner and here I am traveling on one and a husband who is, now, a pilot for Eastern Airlines.

I arrived in New York City and the only person I knew east of the Mississippi was Ed. I was pregnant (I apparently had lived) and we had very little money.

The furnished apartment didn’t look like Hollywood and there was no white convertible. We had to sell our car to pay for the birth of our baby. Our insurance didn’t cover preexisting conditions.

Beth was five months old when we went home by train. Midge was in Salt Lake City, Utah with Bud who was in the Army Air Corps. We had very little money but neither did many of our people.

Midge and I agreed that our lives were really better than the dreams we had while swinging on her front porch. Midge ended up living in Kansas City and we only saw each other when we were on vacation.

I didn’t regret that the script of my New York life had nothing to do with that teenage dream either. My life was turning out to be even better than that dream.

I just want Auntie Mame to know that my life has lived in ways she couldn’t imagine. If she were to ask me about it my reply would be, “I’VE LIVED--I’VE LIVED.

Wyrick is a Sharpsburg resident and a regular columnist for this newspaper

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