Photographs serve as the greatest of memory jags. When I see one I can remember as clearly as I recall yesterday everything that went on before, during and after the the moment the shutter snapped. I can remember in finely etched detail so much more by looking at a photo than merely "remembering".
This is particularly true of the photo above. Yes, that is me. I cannot recall the name of the man I am sitting across, but I remember who he was and how we got there.
We are in Venice. Italy, not the one in California. It's August, 1967. I was on a 4-week vacation generously granted by my employer, Miki Denhof, the Art Director of Glamour magazine. Hired as low-man-on-the-toem-pole two years earlier, I had asked to take advantage of a bargain charter airfare for my first trip to Europe. I will never forget her reply when I asked to take two weeks more of my allotted vacation time. "This is your first trip to Europe? You MUST take four weeks!" Perhaps to justify the generosity, I was given a manilla envelope of papers to deliver to the Conde Nast offices in Paris.
The trip was mostly solo. I went over with a friend joining her husband in Paris. We flew into Amsterdam, were met by the husband and two of his friends. We drove to Paris (in a very small car as I recall), and there parted ways.
By the time of this photo I had traveled by myself from Paris to Rapallo on the Italian Riviera, then on to Florence, and Venice. It makes little sense to have gone in that order, but I did. I continued to Rome and Naples. For a "first trip to Europe" I was certainly concentrating on Italy.
Yes, I was a young woman traveling alone in a 1967 world that had not yet heard much about "women's liberation". And I was in a part of that world where it was a long time before anyone did. I remember being out on the street in Naples and seeing no other women save those standing in doorways waiting for customers.
Back to Venice. I was sightseeing when this young man started a conversation. Back when my steady boyfriend at the time wore long sideburns a la John Lennon and black horn rims like Michael Caine, he looked very clean cut, thus harmless. He appeared to be in his late 20s (I was 25) but looked older on account of a receding hairline. He seemed nice, smart and sincere. I wasn't looking for a fella—that boyfriend back home and I were getting pretty serious—but I agreed to meet him for dinner.
A quick aside for the reason I can file this trip down memory lane under "fashion". The leopard print outfit I'm wearing (barely seen in photo) was a two-piece knit—bateau neck top and slim pull-on skirt—that I bought for $10.99 in Bloomingdale's basement. Bloomingdale's has long been a bastion of contemporary fashion. Once upon a time there was also a basement store for bargains. It was on the subway level; you could enter from the subway without going up the stairs to Lexington Avenue. I sewed most of my clothes in those days, but this was a bargain I couldn't resist. Besides knits were hard to sew on my old Singer.
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| There was a basement under there... |
I was wearing it one day on my job in the art department of Glamour magazine when the editor-in-chief, Kathleen Johnson, spotted me at my workspace, asked me about it, then marched me through the fashion department, telling her editors, "She found this for $10.99. Why can't you bring me clothes that don't cost a fortune?" For many months after I felt those fashion editors eyeing me with daggers.
Back to the story...
The restaurant was on a canal—what isn't in Venice?—and must have been a touristy place as the photo was taken by their roving photographer. We had a pleasant enough dinner. He told me that he was stuck in Venice for a few days as his luggage had been lost in transit, and he needed to wait for it. Obviously those were the times we traveled with a degree of formality as he was wearing a suit.
The conversation turned a little grim. Perhaps he realized I wasn't being charmed, but he proceeded to tell me I was a very independent type person (check) and that I would never find love because of it. Despite my desire to say, "It's not me; it's you" or tell him about the boyfriend back home, I said nothing. The evening ended rather abruptly, but the barb has sat there for a very long time.
It's quite rusty now. In fact I only remember it when I look at this photo. That boyfriend met me at the airport on my return to New York and proposed in the parking lot. We've been married for almost 59 years.
