CATEGORY: HIGH SCHOOL
PHOTO: HAROLD

In my Junior and Senior year of high school my boy friend was Harold Arstel.  I always considered him an “older man” although he was only 21.  His uncle owned a garage in Moro and he was working there as a mechanic until he decided what to do with his life.  He had just gotten out of the navy after a four year hitch during the war.  He was over 6 feet tall, and very good looking.  Since I didn’t know how to converse with a man, it seemed to matter how good looking they were.  He was also a good dancer and took me to all the dances in Moro.

Much later at an All Sherman County reunion, a woman whos name I have forgotten, came up to me and said, “Aren’t you Jean Zevely?”  When I said I had been, she asked, “Didn’t you used to come to the dances with that handsome Arstel boy?”  Again I answered in the affirmative.  She said, “The two of you made such a good looking couple!  He was so tall, dark and handsome, and you so tall, blonde and pretty.”  I was flattered, and that made me realize that one of the reasons I went with him for two years was because of that very thing.  He flattered my ego.  He made me feel like a princess on the arm of a handsome prince.

Yes, Harold was handsome, but after I met him, he decided to grow a mustache.  I hated it.  I never said anything about it while I was going with him.  In fact, I never said anything about it ever, but after I left Moro and went to Portland I did something about it that I very much regretted later.  He wrote to me after I moved, and it was clear that he considered me his girl.  On one of my visits home to my sister Grace’s, she gave a party and invited Harold.  I was cool to him.  I wanted to let him know I was not HIS girl.  I wasn’t honest enough to be straight forward, so I was devious.  I wanted to shock him .  I wanted him to think I had moved to the city and become—OH SO worldly.  So, first I drank a BEER!–right in front of him!  It was the very first beer I had ever even tasted, and was actually the last because I could barely gag it down, especially with the aplomb I wanted to convey.  I discovered: woof!–just like that!–I hated beer.  But the worst thing was that I, and a woman friend of my sister’s who was over six feet tall, took Harold down on the floor and shaved off half of his mustache!  I never heard from him again.

Afterward I was very ashamed.  Then, when I was living in Port Townsend, I started a program of clearing out bad things from my conscience by making amends or counteracting them in some way.  My sister told me that Harold was living in southern California and gave me his phone number.  I called him and apologized.  It was over 20 years after the incident.  He accepted my apology.  Then he told me that he was living a miserable life.  He said he had gained so much weight that it was hard for him to get around.   He had tried everything he could to reduce and couldn’t.  I felt terribly sorry for him.  We said good bye on amicable terms.  It feels really good to clear out the garbage.  TRY IT!!!!!