Through High School

This covers the period from 1950 - when Brenda moved back to Blanton Street after her grandmother died until 1958, when she graduated from Shelby High School. It was during this period that the Third Fall occurred, when her father’s business failed and the drinking (both his and Isabel’s) got much worse.

I’ll organize this section by school years - grammar, junior high, high school.

Grammar School Years

I think Brenda was happy enough in grammar school, from 1946 until 1952. She had friends; she played with other children. The only story I know is the one when she was going to Graham Elementary school which was located beside the house on Blanton Street. Bessie, the black woman who worked at her house would walk up from their yard to the playground and admonish Brenda about things. Perhaps Brenda would be out playing without a coat and Bessie would waddle up and yell, hands on hips, (in front of all the other children) “Brendlen Moses - you put your coat on!”. (There are other Bessie stories - like the one about the time the family returned home to hear splashing coming from the back of the house. Bessie, who didn’t have a bathroom, was taking a bath.)

I remember more stories now....

Brenda hated green beans and would hide them under her dress - actually sit on them. I think somebody - maybe Bessie - made her eat the green beans she had been sitting on.

The family had a parakeet named Pretty Boy. He either got loose or was allowed to fly free in the house. Once sitting in a chair in the living room, Brenda felt something beneath her. It was Pretty Boy. Smothered. She shrieked and flung the lifeless bird across the room.

Junior High Years

Things went downhill in the Junior High years, from 1952 until 1954. Her father’s business started to go bad. She became physically mature. Her parent’s drinking got worse. Predatory drunks and sexual deviants started to hang around the house. I don’t know what happened but I am pretty sure that something did and that is scarred her. There is a picture of her sunbathing with her friend Janice in the back yard. The girls are about 13 years old. Both are wearing shorts and halter tops. It looks as if Brenda has stuffed something (tissue paper?) in her top to make her breasts look bigger. Sometime later she scratched angry pencil marks over her breasts.

(It was during this time that we first met - maybe 1952. It was a Saturday afternoon Pete Panther and I were on the steps in front of the Junior High School - near downtown. Carol Moser and a slightly younger girl walked by. Carol, Pete and I were classmates; Pete and I halfheartedly vied for her attention. I am pretty sure the younger girl was Brenda, Carol’s first cousin. I expect they had been to a movie and were walking back to Brenda’s house on Blanton Street. I remember that the other girl was pretty and reserved. If the word had been in my vocabulary I would have said that she was exquisite. When asked years later neither Carol nor Brenda remembered the encounter so I could be making the whole thing up. But I don’t think so.)

Janice lived across the street. She and Sarah Blanton who also lived across the street were Brenda’s best friends. Brenda would accompany Jancie and her family on Sunday afternoon drives. Jancie’s father droved slowly and the girls (maybe just Jancie) would make squealing noises when he went around curves. There was no need to make squealing noises with Curtis - he always drove like a bat of hell.

Brenda said that she hated Junior High School but never elaborated too much - although she did say that she despised gym class - especially the blue shorts and tops they were made to wear (although that might have been in high school). I am sure Brenda did not hate gym because she was incompetent. She had good reflexes and balance and could catch better than I could (although that was not a great feat).

A story from the junior high or early high school period...

A couple times each year Curtis and Isabel would go to big furniture shows in High Point. They left Brenda home with a woman named Mrs. Oleary. During one of these trips Brenda manged to consume nothing but black walnut cookies and a drink called Hemo(?). After a week or so of this she became so constipated that she had to be taken to the hospital (managed then by her Uncle Bob Moser) for an enema. They told her it was like having a baby.

High School Years

Although things were no better at home during the high school years (1954 - 1958), it is my impression that she might have handled the situation better. Then again, maybe not. At least she contrived a style and a way of being that expressed who she was.

I went to Shelby High my freshman and junior years. I remember Brenda from my junior year. She was a weird beautiful girl with short blond hair who always wore black and never looked at anybody. She was at the same time scared, scornful and proud. Once she fell down the concrete stairs at school and bloodied her head. She did not seek help - I don’t know if any was offered. She walked from school downtown to her father’s business. I either saw the incident or imagined that I did - possessed by an image of her blond hair plastered in blood and her face filled with shame and pain. We had no contact at all in that time. Of course everybody knew her or knew of her. I even had some small notoriety due to the James Dean resemblance. Brenda said that she and Janice sometimes walked behind me going home from school and Janice had to be restrained from coming up and saying something to me. (That must have been after my mother died and we living in the duplex that had been created from the old Elk’s club. Sometimes I walked home at lunch to grill a baloney and cheese sandwich.)

Brenda was pursued by various brave guys in school and was eventually captured by one (not me - I was not that brave then). She usually walked home (about 1/3 mile) to Blanton Street, rain or shine and several guys tried to give her a ride when the weather was bad. One of them, David Rose, was at the reception after Brenda died and he told me the story of his encounter with her. Another one was Bob Childers, a dark handsome fellow who drove a James Dean style 1950 Mercury coupe (when I drove at all it was my dad’s 1950 Ford sedan). Brenda grudgingly admitted that she liked his looks - but I am not sure she got into the car with him. David said that she did get in his car bit didn’t say anything. Just sat there. However he did recount that they both were involved in some sort of required/volunteer activity after school and that they did talk then and that she was pleasant.

Although she went out on a couple of dates with Morris Page and Harold Dobbins she was eventually won by Jerry Carpenter. Another darkly handsome fellow, he was a star athlete and a somewhat renown fighter - not a bully but certainly a tough guy. They went together for maybe two years in high school and then for a couple of years afterward. If girls are supposed to marry men that remind them of their fathers then Brenda should have married Jerry. Not only was he dark like Curtis, he was troubled. I am sure that she loved him. She probably continued to love him in the way that we do with people from our past. I don’t know too much about their relationship. He was fully involved in the school and would attempt to drag her along on some of the activities in which he was required to participate. She might have even attended some of them. I believe she actually appeared in a fancy dress as his homecoming attendant. However I don’t think she went the Junior-Senior dance. She told me that they fought a lot, but I got the impression they were good fights. She also said that he looked after her on some of the bad nights on Blanton Street. She went to his house and ate dinner with his family. She said that his mother cooked good little biscuits.

The rest of this time is a collection of odd snippets. She and Jerry double-dated with another football player and Libby Haynes - who was the star beauty of that class. Brenda and her cousin Marlene Moser got drunk and so disgusted Jerry that he left them to their own devices. The beautician who died Brenda’s hair blonde experimented with a new color which left Brenda with lavender hair. Curtis made her walk back across town in this condition to get her hair dyed back to its previous blond color. Brenda said that peroxide was required and that after the procedure her hair was like straw. Brenda, Jerry and some others went to Charlotte to see black rock and roll musicians perform. Brenda told somebody that one of the performers reminded her of Kathleen Crow, the Spanish teacher. Mrs. Crow though it was funny and teased Brenda about it.