Grumpa Joe's Place

Today is a day of recollection. After posting this morning I reread an older post titled From Proms to Dear Johns.That little piece of history concerned my high school love affair. At the end of it I promised to write about Steve Star at some point in the future. Today is the future.

Steve Star

My Grandpa Jim lived a solitary life on his little farm. To kill his loneliness and to make some extra beer money he took in a border named Steve Star, except his real name was Csillag Pista. Translated from Hungarian to English Csillag Pista becomes Steve Star. Steve worked doing labor in the pickle canning factory in Coloma near my Grand Father’s farm. Needless to say this is very seasonal work. Steve drove a very old Plymouth coupé, and drank cheap St Julian wine. He was a classic wino. I used his empty bottles piled high in the sand behind the barn for target practice with my 22 ca. rifle. He put them behind the barn to hide them from my mother who was anti-drinking on her watch. Steve was a drunk, stayed a drunk, and died a drunk. My mother had little effect on changing his habits.

After I got my Dear Joe letter in college I wallowed in a rut, and it showed. My friends began doing me favors by fixing me up with every girl that they could find. I resisted at first, but finally succumbed to my roommates tender of a string of dates from his fiance’s nursing school. It all began harmlessly as a series of letters to the girls suggested by friends that Steve Star take on a date. As a huge joke to myself I took the nom de guerre of Steve Star a hopeless cause. The letters became fodder for the school bulletin board, and unbeknownst to me, Steve Star became a mystery man who wrote stupid funny letters to the girls at Saint Anne’s. Eventually, Steve Star’s identity became known when I made a blind date with one of the girls during Christmas break.

It amused me when I sat in the parlor of Saint Anne’s waiting for my date to come down, and a nonchalant string of young nurses paraded through the room to look over Steve Star. The date went well, we had fun, and I got her back before curfew. I dated several more nursing students after that but not one rang Steve Star’s bell.

Later that year in July I had another blind date with a nurse who wanted to experience Steve Star. She was good-looking but not of model beauty. She stood about five-foot-four inches tall with short dark brown hair, and her waist was slightly thicker than the highly sought after women of the time. Her face was average, but she possessed uniquely sparkling dark brown eyes and a captivating smile. Her shapely ankles blended into calves formed like those of an athlete. She was off for the weekend so I picked her up at her home, and met her parents before she demurely descended the stairs.

Steve Star was a cheap skate and went on inexpensive dates, this time he enjoyed a Grant Park Concert on the lawn. The night was balmy, and the sounds of the cars passing by on the Outer Drive muted the precise sounds of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra. We spent the night sitting on that blanket listening but mostly talking about school, and our families. Her father was dying of colon cancer, and she and her mother provided his care. She was the one who finally told me about the scene the Steve Star letters had on the nurses at Saint Anne’s. She had read all of them, as had most of the other girls in her class. A cool breeze drifted in from Lake Michigan as we folded our blanket to leave. I dropped her off and promised to call her at school.

My luck held out, and I dated another girl named Sabrina. Sabrina had the model beauty men sought after. Slightly taller at five six she had long jet black hair, and big black eyes with heavy mascara and eyeliner above and below the lids. Wow! We went to the movies and a snack.  She confessed to reading Steve Star’s letters, and we kidded about his antics. I dropped her off on the front porch. I said goodnight and turned to leave, but she grabbed my arm and pulled me into the dark foyer for a goodnight kiss. The house was entirely dark and quiet. Steve’s mind shifted to more kissing, but she gently pushed him away and whispered “my parents and six brothers are asleep we don’t want to wake them.” I very quietly got the hell out of there.

Girl number one

In the meantime, Steve had called his first blind date (Girl number one) and was becoming very comfortable talking with her. She with him as well. We dated again, and the subject of Steve Star dating Sabrina came up. Steve sensed danger and dropped the subject quickly; he got the message.

Steve Star dated Barbara exclusively for the next two years until he married her. He remained faithful “until death do us part.”

October 14, 1961

circa August 17, 2003

Filed under: Aging, Biography, conservatives, family, Funk | Tagged: Blind Date, love, Nom de Guerre, Steve Star | 6 Comments »