My Date With Janice, and Liza- A Tale of "Sturm and Drang"

First off, a word of advice.

If your date wows you with a show that contains a struttin', beltin', diva... By all means, go, and have a ball, but...

Take pause. 'Cos there just might be a few things stirring in the wind.

Anyway, picture this, Summer 1977. Janice and I, a couple of fresh faced 18 year old's, go downtown on a date.

Janice and I were tight high school friends having slugged through Thespians and a severely mauled senior class production of "Our Town" in high school. (I missed my queue which caused us to cut out nearly a third of the show.)

So we decide to go on a date.

It all started well enough. I grabbed my dad's putput Cortina (a beater of a car) and Janice and I whisk off to a night on the town. We are dressed to the nines. I think I was wearing my overlapelled powder blue polyester Homecoming suit with matching platform shoes. Janice bedazzled in her pink chiffon dress and disco sandal pumps.

We were south suburban kids from Midlothian so we head up I-57 to the Dan Ryan up to the Near North Side for dinner at the Pinnacle on top of the Holiday Inn (now the W). It was a wonderful dinner (except for some really sucky shrimp cocktail) in the revolving restaurant overlooking Lake Shore Drive at Ontario. It cost a goodly chunk of my Jewel stock boy's salary but we were livin' it up.

Actually, I was too intimidated to complain about the Shrimp Cocktail.

From there we headed downtown to the Shubert (now the restored Lasalle Bank Theatre). I had landed us some nice mezzanine tickets for the Liza Minnelli's Broadway bound work in progress called "Shine It On", soon to be renamed "The Act".

The show was a dazzler with Liza delivering a whole host of Kander and Ebbs. "Shine it On", "City Lights" and the slightly dirty "Arthur in the Afternoon". I still have the Original Cast Recording on LP. (You can also sample the music by clicking here if my YouTube clip below has fed your appetite.

Also, kids that we were, we were startled to find that her leading man was none other that Mark Goddard, better known as Major Don West from "Lost in Space"! (BTW, did you know he is related to Robert Goddard, the father of rocket technology?)

We had a great time. Post-show we returned to the car as a thunderstorm moved into the area and headed back down the Dan Ryan, Midlothian bound.

As luck would have it. I had just maneuvered the car into the express lanes when strange noises started emanating from the engine. Gradually I note that I can no longer keep up with traffic. The poor Cortina was ailing.

We made it as far 43rd street when the car completely died. In a ferocious thunderstorm, in the inner express lane shoulder, in the heart of the ghetto.

Me: "I need to call my dad to come get us. I'll go up to that gas station and call him."

Janice: "You can't leave me here! I'm coming with you."

Me: "Are you sure you want to do that? It's really a mess out there"

Janice: "Are you friggin' kidding me? You can't leave me alone in the car. What if 'somebody' comes!" She had a point, the ghetto was much rougher in those days. And our suburban white bread breeding screamed we have to stick together.

So together, in the pouring rain we hop over the express lanes divider and scramble across the local lanes to the embankment leading up to the gas station. For those of you who don't know the Dan Ryan expressway was dug down into a trench through the city's south side. We now had to climb up the muddy, soaked, embankment to reach our targeted pay phone.

So we climb, crawl actually, in our respective heels, up the muddy slope and reach the phone.

And so I call and...

There's NOBODY HOME!!!!!! I FORGOT!!!!! My parents were off to the campground for the weekend and unreachable. And none of our friends were home either.

So Janice had to call home and wake her parents to come save us. Not particularly fitting into the neighborhood we decide that they will fetch us from the car. So back down the embankment we descend, slide, and tumble. Back across the local lanes, over the divider, back to the car, dedraggled, drenched and soiled, to await the parental rescue.

And the wait, began. We laughed, we cried. And were the duly retrieved 45 minutes later by Janice's slightly annoyed parents. Yes, they both had to make that trip to see the sight of us! I think, now, they were quite bemused at our failed coifs and muddied garments. So homeward bound we were, slumped in the back seat, as the smells of wet 70's synthetics wafted about us.

Deeply scarred, I rarely ventured again into the dating pool.