SUMMER JOBS(2): STATE HOSPITAL 1962

A gang of guys that had been high school friends found each other one Friday night in June. We just happened to meet at the corner of Liberty and Third Street by the bank. I had come to town looking for some fun on my first weekend after coming home from my freshman year in college. It was great to be home. I had only been home one time, over Christmas, since the prior September when college started. The bus ride home had been too far to come often.

When I walked up the street and spotted the guys, they were gathered around next to the bank. Some were leaning back on the heavy metal bars that ran along the side of the bank. As I approached, my old friend Mac called out, “Hey, Billie! Good to see you. We’re holding up the bank.”

Another old pal, Ronnie, chimed in, “When did you get back? Great to see you. Look at you. You look like you grew another inch taller!”

We had fun talking about how our past year had been, and what we were going to do for summer jobs. As we were joking around, another one of our classmates came walking down the street. It was Barbie. She and I had been in a lot of classes together and had become good friends. She joined the group, and after we had visited for a while, I asked her if she would like to go across the street and have a Coke at Kresge’s soda fountain.

As we sipped on our Cokes, Barbie told me that she had a summer job at the State Hospital.

I said, “Wow, that’s great. I got a job there too. Now we’ll have to go to “Monkey Wards” and buy some white painter’s pants to wear to work.”

I had been up to the State the day before. Neither of us had any experience in a hospital, but the local kids knew it was a good place to get a job. It paid a dollar an hour to be what they called an “attendant” who was just someone to help on all the wards. Barbie and I were both excited to have our summer jobs. We were both looking forward to the new experience. She was going to work Monday morning. I was to report on Monday for the night shift.

*******

Barbie and I didn’t talk again until after my first two weeks at the State, when I was to switch to the day shift. I called her early that Saturday afternoon and asked her if she would like to get together. The weather was nice, and she said she would like to come up to the Eddy and go swimming. I told her I would pick her up in an hour.

She lived in an old neighborhood in town, in an old, stately house. When I pulled up in front of her place, she came running down the porch steps and jumped into our Jeep. On the way back up the Eddy, the wind was blowing through the open doors of the Jeep while we talked non-stop about all the things we had seen during our first two weeks at the hospital.

Nobody was home when we got to our house. After we changed into our swimsuits, we walked along the river through the grass in front of the other cottages up to the island where we waded and swam across to the downstream tip of the island. It was early summer, and the river was still cold. There were two huge, old sycamores at the edge of the woods that covered the island. We walked upstream past them along the gravel shore by the riffles on the far side of the island. As we walked, a great blue heron flew away from where it was breaking open and eating one of the many mussel shells that lived there. There were tracks of ‘possums and ‘coons in muddy places along the shore.

When we got to where the upstream rapids calmed down in deeper water, we swam across to one of the huge sandstone rocks that lay along the far shore. Then we climbed up on the flat top of the rock and lay down on the soft green moss that covered it. The moss was warm in the sun and felt good on our skin when we lay down.

We lay there in silence for a few minutes, looking up the steep hillside at the trees in the National Forest above us. The trees came down to the rocks and the water’s edge. Then we started to share our experiences from the past two weeks at the State Hospital. I told her about some of the things I had seen in the locked tower unit for the criminally insane.

Barbie hesitated a little. But then she looked straight up into the sky and said, “I have been taking care of a woman who is locked in a cage-like room. She just sits there holding a doll and constantly mumbling. And there’s another woman who is kept in a locked room. She has severe depression. She cut her wrist and almost died.”

Barbie seemed to be having trouble making any sense of it.

We lay there talking for almost an hour before we decided to go back to town. We both stood up and jumped off the rock, back into the fast-moving, cold water. We paddled downstream to the tip of the island, on through the fast moving shallow-water riffles, and all the way down the river to our dock.

After we dried off and changed clothes, we drove the Jeep into town where we both enjoyed warm burgers and shakes with old friends at Candyland which was a popular hangout for local kids.

*******

It was the Fourth of July. I went into town around the middle of the day to find a good spot to see the parade. We always had a big parade for the Fourth. There were always bands from regional high schools. Drum and bugle corps. Lots of fire trucks and floats. And marching units from veterans’ clubs. The Marine Corps League always had a drill team which was applauded when they passed. They were all Korean War and WWII vets. They always had a sad and serious look on their faces, as if marching made them remember the War.

I ran into Barbie at the Civil War Memorial near the VFW. We talked for a couple minutes about our work. She didn’t seem to like talking about it. When one of the drum and bugle corps was marching past and playing a Sousa march, I asked her if she would like to have some fun and go to the Dairy Queen after the parade. She did. So when the last float of the parade passed, we drove the Jeep east through town, crossed the river, and had shakes at the Dairy Queen.

It was then I asked her if she’d like to take a ride and see the Kinzua Bridge. That seemed to brighten her up so we drove up Route 59 past where they were building the Kinzua Dam. When we got to the railroad bridge, we walked out on the high tracks. It was over three-hundred feet high and considered a marvel of engineering, the tallest railroad bridge in the world, when it was built in 1882.

There was a nice breeze blowing when Barbie and I walked a thousand feet out to the center of the giant span. As we stood there looking out over the hills and down at the Kinzua Creek below, I told Barbie the story of a woman who had died there.

I said, “Barbie. Did you ever hear about the lady who jumped off this bridge? They found her down in the mud at the bottom of the creek.”

Barbie grimaced as she leaned over a little to look down at the creek below. She answered softly, “No. No. Let’s go back in.”

*******

As the summer went on, Barbie seemed to lose interest in having fun. On one occasion, I got her to go out for dinner at the Blue and White Restaurant. She seemed down and didn’t want to talk about her work at the State.

A couple weeks after that I called her, and she said she didn’t feel like going out. Next day, when I was in town, I drove up to her place and knocked on the front door. Her mother came to the door.

I was polite enough when I asked her if Barbie was home.

“Hi, Mrs. Thornton. Is Barbie home?”

She had a guarded look on her face and replied curtly, “Yes. But Barbie doesn’t want to come out.”

I was kind of stunned by the rejection. As I was backing off the porch, I replied quietly, “Oh. OK. Well, would you tell her I was here. Thank you.”

*******

I didn’t hear anything from Barbie over the next couple weeks. It was a Saturday afternoon when I went into town to pick up some medicine. My little sister had an earache and had been to the doctor. When I went into the drug store, one of our high school classmates was working behind the counter as a pharmacy assistant.

We she saw me coming, she came from the back of the store with my sister’s meds. She was wearing a beautiful smile as usual and greeted me with, “Well, hi there, Billie. How long have you been home?”

I knew she was thinking that I should have called her. We had been friends from the first day of school in the first grade when we rode the school bus together. The school bus picked her up on the main road every morning when she walked down from a high rocky place they called “Stoney Lonesome”. We had gone to our senior prom together. With her dark eyes, black hair, and soft, brown skin, I thought she looked more beautiful than ever.

“Hi, Victoria. I’ve been here working days and nights at the State all summer. How have you been?”

“OK, just putting in long hours here in the store. Did you see the paper this afternoon?”

“No. What’s in the news?”

She reached down the counter and grabbed a local paper off a stack. She flopped it down on the counter in front of me.

The headlines read, “Local girl found dead.”

Her smile faded. She looked me straight in the eyes and said grimly, “Barbie jumped off the Kinzua Bridge last night. They found her in the Kinzua Creek this morning. Barbie’s dead.”