We went to a dance in Red River. Beer. Music. I danced with a tiny little girl. I was smitten, she was a gorgeous freestyle hippy, having fun and dancing with gay abandon. How old ARE you? she asked when I told her I was repeating matric for the third time. Well, she had asked what I was doing and I’d said Senior in High School. Again.

Eighteen, I said.

I don’t believe it, she said.

And you? I asked – I was suddenly getting good at this wooing stuff. Makin’ small talk, I was.

Twenty seven, she said. What? No way! I do not believe that, says me.

She whipped out her drivers licence: 1946. She was 27. I didn’t even know you got people that old.

I was still smitten.

Come round to our place in Arroyo Hondo tomorrow, she invited. It’s an adobe house right on the road to Taos, you can’t miss it, she invited.

We were there like a shot the next day! Me and Jeff in his blue Willys Jeep. Talk about me being young: Jeff was fourteen. We’d only got back to Granma’s cottage in the wee hours, so it was after midday that summer day when we found the house that looked about as my new focus of fascination had described it.

Sitting on the mud wall of the porch watching the daily non-stop broadcast of the Nixon Watergate hearings on a small black and white TV was a fella with long hair and a scraggly beard, with a fag hanging from his lips. He was filing away at a flywheel. We learnt a few minutes later that it was a Chevy flywheel and he needed it for his old Ford. Or a Ford flywheel and he needed it for his old Chevy. It was too big, so he was filing away one tooth at a time. When it fitted he was going to move on.

But first we said Hi! Is ___ (I really should remember her name for a love story like this, should I not!?) around?

‘Ah, she went thataway about eleven this mornin,’ he said, flicking his head over his shoulder indicating the road South to Taos. ‘Said she wanted to catch a concert in Cali.’

California!? Where . . ?

‘Some rock concert.’

How . . ?

‘She threw her thumb out and somebody gave her a ride.’

Heartbroken, we drifted back to Red River. Took me ages to recover. About as long as the romance had lasted. Hours.

But hey! it’s 47yrs later and I can still remember how she felt and smelt dancing, and what the top of her head looked like, so there was true love involved too.

~~~oo0oo~~~

~~~oo0oo~~~