With all the talk in town about our new Senior Center I am reminded of the old ladies’ home in the town where I grew up. Perhaps it had an official name — I’m sure it did — but everyone including its residents called it The Old Ladies’ Home. These were not destitute elders but genteel matriarchs living in a grand old mansion in the historic part of town once home to the carriage trade. In my youth, those days were long gone and many of the Victorian-era houses had either been torn down or converted to boarding houses with less-than-desirable transient tenants. But not so The Old Ladies’ Home. It stood proud as it had since its prosperous heyday.
My best friend and I would go to visit the ladies on occasion. At 16 and 17, we spent inordinate amounts of time tootling around town with our newly minted driver’s licenses. Among the many things we shared was an affinity for old people. I spent most of my growing-up visiting my grandmother in her small Southern town in the summers. Hers was a house with a never-ending revolving front door as ladies with bluing in their hair, baked goods in their hands, and gossip on their tongues sailed in and out by the hour. I loved their gossip, that notorious small-town chatter where every bit of daily life was minutely observed and commented on.
My friend — her name was Pam — had a far more proactive appreciation of the elderly. Her father was a politician and as a youngster she accompanied him on his campaign stumps all over the state. Pam excelled in glad-handing and working the crowd who were like as not retired and free to attend the whistle-stop speeches. So off we would go on many a Saturday afternoon to the home for a drop-in cup of tea and chat with these other-era elder women. We loved them and they seemed to love us.
Pam and I had big dreams about the exciting lives ahead of us. It should be remembered that in those days, the early ‘60s, America was made up of two distinct places — New York City and the rest of the country.
We were determined to head for New York as soon as we could. Fame and fortune as only New York could provide became the goal. It would be theater for Pam. She was a born actress and fearless when it came to showing off her talents. Pam and her father used to recite Shakespeare at the dinner table — he Julius Caesar or Shylock or King Lear, she Cordelia or Lady Macbeth or Viola. And mind you, this dates to when we were 13 and 14 years old.
I was less sure about a calling but I certainly knew all about city glamour and romance as we devoured such late-night films as “Old Acquaintance” and “All About Eve.” Who knew what heights were in store for us. We would see it all, do it all, and when we were elders ourselves and done with all that glory and success, we promised each other we would come back home and book ourselves into the old ladies’ home. Friends for life, we declared — no matter what.
New York City, 1965. We both made it that far into the dream. While I started a catch-all service business called Supergirls with another good friend, Pam made the acting rounds, landing some TV soaps plus summer stock. At one time she had five commercials running on TV. Does anyone remember “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride?” That was Pam in the shower. Or maybe she was brushing with Pepsodent after being a wallflower at the dance. They were all much the same — disastrous wash loads, discouraging blind dates, small children running amok in the park — each calling for an actress who could be goofy and pert all at the same time. Tina Fey comes to mind and like her, Pam was fine-boned, dark-haired, pretty but not glamorous — and a great comic.
So where am I going with this?
Pam died when she was 28. My age, too. And now I am that age in reverse. Those who were living in East Hampton some 50 years ago will remember the ill-fated flight of The Free Life, a hot air-helium balloon that was launched one fine September day from a field in Springs with three young balloonists aboard. Pam was one of them. The Free Life was attempting to be the first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean. It was 1970 and Pam, her newly married husband, and their pilot captured the spirit of the times that day — three young adventurers and a romantic dream. The flight lasted only 30 hours before a rogue storm caught the balloon and brought it down in a stormy North Atlantic. No trace of The Free Life or its crew was ever found.
The story of that flight has been written about in book form and in numerous news and magazine articles, notably many times in The Star and once in East Magazine. It’s been documented in film and most recently set to music in what the composer calls a “pop opera.” The Old Ladies’ Home is of course long gone, replaced by a luxury campus for its seniors — more a resort than a home. I doubt that “old ladies” can ever be used as a form of address anymore. A shame because for me it has a certain charm and maybe a coziness to it that certainly “senior,” “elderly,” “geezer,” “crone,” “fogey,” and the awful “golden-ager does” not.
As for myself, I think of my age now as Late Youth, a term I landed on after a recent run-in with all things medical. Doctors, nurses, indeed all those caregivers, appeared to be alarmingly young. The world has grown young around me even as I remain stationary. Yet, I haven’t forgotten that promise made so many years ago. . . . And I wonder about those two girls roaming about town in search of adventure and finding it in The Old Ladies’ Home.
—
Genie Chipps Henderson has lived and worked in East Hampton for the last 45 years. She is a novelist whose most recent book, A Day Like Any Other, captures life on the South Fork during the Great New England Hurricane of 1938. She also manages the video archive of some 20,000 shows for LTV.