Virginia Twaddell

(“twah-DELL”)

Ginny in ’62.

In December of 1957, when I was 13, soon to be 14, my family moved from suburban south Jersey to suburban northern Delaware.
I was in eighth-grade.
It was because my father had got a new job that paid much more than his old job.
My father could have gone to college. He apparently even skipped a grade in school.
But his parents, my paternal grandparents, wanted him to get a job as soon as he graduated high-school.
He was graduating into the Depression.
His first job was supposedly as a caddy at a golf-course. He also mowed and did maintenance.
Other jobs may have followed, but the first I remember was in a shipyard on the Delaware River in nearby Camden, which is across from Philadelphia.
It wasn’t a large shipyard, like Sun Ship in Philadelphia. They built tugboats and mine-sweepers.
A family moved in two doors from us, and the guy worked in Texaco’s Eagle-Point oil-refinery south of where we lived.
That guy got my father a job in that refinery, and it lasted a few years.
Then Tidewater-Oil (Flying-A) built a new oil-refinery in Delaware, and they were looking for workers.
My father joined as an Inspector.
That was 1956, and required a daily 100-mile commute to get there from our home in south Jersey.
So we decided to move to a new suburban development in northern DE.
The move was traumatic for me. I was being ripped out of a familiar life and friendships.
I would have to start anew.
Northern DE was also perceived as a backwater of the vast Delaware Valley. This was partly because a turgid educational-TV station came out of Wilmington in northern DE.
The educational-TV station was boring compared to the three network TV stations out of Philadelphia.
What I didn’t realize then, but realize now, is I was moving to a better life.
Free of “rumbles” (fights) and hard-rock DA greasers manning switchblades and zip-guns.
The kind of world Springsteen sings about.
It was also free of trollop wanna-bees.
I didn’t move when my parents moved. I stayed behind in south Jersey at my grandparents’ digs in Camden.
I’d take the bus out to my old suburb, so I could continue attending my south Jersey high-school.
This arrangement lasted through December, when I finally moved to DE toward the end-of-the-month.
This was so I could attend the last day of my DE school before Christmas-vacation.
That last day was also the last day my DE school would attend their original school in our district.
A new junior-high had been built to accommodate the post-war baby-boom, and we would transfer there in January.
Previously high-schoolers from our district went to a city high-school in Wilmington.
Our class was among the first to make this change.
A few years later our new high-school was built, and we transferred there.
I quickly learned who all the boys were lusting after: it was Virginia Twaddell.
And she wasn’t much of a sexpot, not like south Jersey.
She was cute and attractive, and recognized she was class sexpot.
But it wasn’t like she milked it as the trollops did in south Jersey.
Northern DE was DuPont-land; our neighbors were mainly DuPont engineers.
It was a much more classy setting than south Jersey, and Virginia Twaddell reflected that.
Virginia was the younger sister of a less-attractive girl that graduated in my high-school’s first graduating-class; 1960.
I and Ginny are Class of ’62, the third class.
My high-school class has been very good at reunions. They hold one every five years.
I’ve been to a few, and so has Ginny.
Ginny was head cheerleader while we were seniors.
Ginny married a guy from the class behind ours, yet continued being the class sexpot.
She seemed a bit put-off by this.
I remember attending a reunion Ginny also attended, but I couldn’t talk to her. She was still the class sexpot, and I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of sexual relations, where no girl would have anything to do with me.
But in 2012 I attended my 50-year high-school reunion, and we visited our high-school, which still stands.
I noticed a lady who looked somewhat familiar, so I asked her name.
Surprise-surprise! It was Virginia Twaddell, and here I was talking to her.
At age-68, she was no longer a sexpot, although I’m not sure she ever was.
It’s just that all the boys lusted after her, including me.
Despite her not being a south Jersey slattern.

• “Zip-guns” were hand-made guns, usually made from car-antennas; the antenna being the gun-barrel. A .22-caliber bullet could be shot through a car-antenna. “Switchblades” were folding pen-knives operated by a button. When threatened, a greaser might flip open his switchblade, grist for Springsteen.
• “Q” stood for Quincy, her maiden-name.