I never knew any one named Beverly except for Beverly this client told me as he scanned clouds. The tragic story of a youth slipping away too quickly. At the Real/Unreality Clinic I met Beverly’s husband. Guilford Overhill. Guilford’s plight was trying to except the experience of the real and unreal side of life slipping back and forth like the waters on a beach. It all started on an Airplane.
Guilford Overhill: I was going to Washington DC. I was a lawyer there. I also practiced in Virginia where my family owned one of the largest Marina’s in Virginia. I was being passenger flying in a very modern Air Transport Plane. It was a new kind of modern experience. It was in the 1950’s and plane travel was picking up after the Second World War. When I took the plane from Virginia to Washington DC and back, we were served meals and drinks. On my flights was a Stewardess named Beverly. I took this trip several times a week, sometimes more. Beverly worked on a lot of the flights I took. She was very kind and very beautiful, better than that Monroe gal. Why she was nice to me is still a wonder. I am very large person. When I tipped the scales the arrows. They actually tipped off and never stopped spinning. I never wore a suit when I Plane traveled, only my Marina and farm clothes. My father also owned a farm that he ran after he retired. He always wanted to farm but the Marina kept him too busy to start one. I did not tell Beverly I was a Lawyer for a long time. I had to dress up in my lawyer clothes and take Beverly to my office in Washington, DC. She still thought I was fooling with her for a bit of time.
We, as a family, all worked hard and everyone was family that worked the Marina. People started to work there in the beginning with my father and I. Mostly all stayed and worked up until the time my Father could retire. Then when my father started the farm. It turned into a retired farm. All old and retired Marina workers living on and around the Farm and Marina. We were definitely Southern. Not the Old South Southern People but the new South trying to figure out the times we existed in. No one was sure of anything and a lot of people were scared and that is why we all stayed and bonded together. My good friend owned a Ship Building Yard and I loved to go there and work on the boats to get away from all that Lawyering. The Ship Building Yard was my escape.
I digress. Because I was what one would now call a frequent flier. Beverly and I started to talk more and more to each other. Turns out Beverly was an x-ray technician before she began to fly as a Stewardess. Imagine. Women doing this X-ray stuff. That was kind of a new thing. Beverly parents were of Polish decent. She lived on a block where all her cousins and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles lived. Imagine that a block of foreign Polish people all in one place just like some of the families down here in the South. Beverly knew family. Beverly was happy to be free and away from all that family had to offer. Which was nothing much. Beverly’s clan were mostly miners and railroad workers. My family scratched a different kind of dirt. Mostly Crab Fishing, mooring and gassing up the fishing boats that went from the river to fishing in the ocean. A lot of these fishermen became my clients after I got my law degree. Like most family members they did not pay for my lawyering services with money. I got a lot of caught fish and lobster and crabs and all kinds of swimming sea food. At the end of the month we took all the left over fish and had a big party. Yep! There was always someone there playing music on their guitars, harmonicas. drums and whatever musical weapon they could find. The Beverly family did not know us until they heard the music and wondered what kind of moonshine are THEY on. I would have to tell them. The very best.
I digress. Somehow I fell in love with her. I felt like weevil in cotton. Happy to be there but scared what would happen when the cotton farmer found me. It might not be so good a harvest for the weevil. It was a fictional life that turned out to be very nonfictional and the happiest I could have ever be. Beverly actually loved me. Never in my life. Never in my life……………………..
Some people said she married me for my money and land. Problem is she just thought I was a farmer and her Grandfather was one for a while. I reminded her of him and she said I made her feel safe and at home when she was around me. Unreal that this love could ever ever come into my or anyone else’s life. I wanted to give her everything. All she wanted was my love and my mother to teach her how to cook our monthly southern crab bakes.
I look back and cannot see as much as I used to as my memory fades with aging. She got the Cancer. At her X-ray job. She did not take a lot of X-Ray precautions. Just did not understand the dangers or thought there was no danger taking X-Rays. Nothing sinister. Just people living with new technology. They were very stupid in understanding fully the danger. I got Beverly something kind of new called a Jacuzzi. My ship building friend built one in a Tug Boat. Helped me get one and set the big outdoor bathtub on the back porch. The warm bubbling water helped relieve her pain. Toward the end I would carry her and put her in the big bath tub pool. We talked for hours and laughed for hours. Beverly insisted we would never cry for not one second. I was of very large stature and held it all in like a Southern Gentleman should. After she died I took a long lingering boat ride from the Marina to the Ocean and back. It was a solitary journey. I broke my promise. My tears raised the tide a few feet. Imagine how long we were married. I will not tell you in years. It was the longest happiest life I had with Beverly. Now it is the longest happiest memories that keep her alive in my heart and soul. Corny to some. A good crop of corn to me.
That is my happy story. It would have been a sad one if I had never met and married Beverly. After so many many many years. Whirlpools take a bit here and there and suck away at me. The water remains warm and bubbly like my Beverly.
I recorded Guilford Carol’s story. Not a story I expected to hear. Sad, happy I am not sure.
Session One
Another Chapter without a number.
Recorded by EChumly doing a sitting type of floating in some nice bubbly warm water.