Nancy Wilder was the oldest of seven sisters and that was a big deal in her suburban neighborhood of Eastern Massachusetts in 1969. Today, the family would probably have their own reality show, maybe entitled, The Wild Wilders or something like that. Nancy was the oldest. It was a position meant for a strong person and she lived up to it.
It was a chaotic home, as is the case when nine relatives live together and more than one of them has yet to be potty trained at any given time. But The Wilders were a tight-knit, Irish-Catholic family who set pies on the windowsill to cool, spent summers helping neighbors mow their lawns, played stick-ball in the lot behind the corner market, did well in school, and pulled it all together with clean hair and hand-me-down gingham dresses for an hour in church on Sundays when the congregation would remark:
“How impressive the Wilder Girls are.” And, alright, a lot of this was thanks to Nancy.
Both of Nancy’s parents worked which was necessary for a family the size of a baseball team. Mrs. Wilder was a nurse. She became a mom in 1952, right in the Leave It To Beaver era. There were high behavioral expectations of one’s children in those days and this was especially true in the Wilder household. Partially, because Mama Wilder ran an impressively tight ship. And also because Mr. Wilder was a police officer working his way up the ranks. With his army-issued buzzcut, neatly pressed uniform, and a handgun that had actually seen action, mostly their kids stayed in line.
So Nancy studied hard, stayed out of trouble, and took on outsized responsibilities with her outsized family. It was Nancy who made peanut butter sandwiches, fed the baby in the middle of the night when her mom was on shift and Nancy who changed a diaper in the middle of the day. When she got her driver’s license, it was Nancy who carted the kids to the park or the reservoir on hot summer days. And it was Nancy who turned 17 and got really sick of it all.
While lounging on the shag carpet in the bedroom that she shared with her next two oldest sisters, listening to Neil Young’s Crazy Horse on repeat, already wearing down the vinyl grooves in the just-released record, Nancy mused that there was going to be a big party that coming Friday. Now, these girls confided in each other, secrets sworn, pinkies crossed in an allegiance that was held in the deepest regard. There was one thing about being all girls. They could have turned on each other, the Wilder’s split-level 50s home turned into their own version of Bridgerton, but no, the sisters had always banded together, decided to be there for each other, and make sure no one saw that end of their mother’s belt, which, truth be told, she’d been too tired to take out since she gave birth to number four. The party was a big deal, with rumors of a keg and out-of-town guests swirling about Bonneville High School.
The guy throwing it was Rodney Michaels, an all-around good guy, maybe a bit of a trouble-maker, and the Quarterback of the football team. His parents were going to Coco Beach, Florida for the week. Side Note - As Nancy got older, she learned that there were rumors swirling in their small town about the Michaels parents being swingers but she didn’t know that then and, to be honest, she wouldn’t have even known what that meant. It was a wild time, a changing-of-the-guard, culture-wise, and this small New England town was catching up to its metropolitan neighbors. But, it wasn’t quite there and the Wilder sister’s life was something of a sheltered existence. Even with all the freedom that they enjoyed in their parent’s home, Rod’s party was not going to be an easy invitation to accept. It was in a neighborhood that was strictly off-limits to the Wilder sisters. And you can’t blame the parents.
Mr. Wilder had landed a job with the police department after he returned from his military deployment in WWII. He’d been stationed in Eastern Europe, seen real combat, and had come back to a town that was in desperate need of its soldiers. The mills and factories were run by the women left behind but the Industrial Revolution had run its course and the large plants that used to make steel or car parts were now shells of empty buildings, providing no value to the community except as a shelter for teenagers to get into trouble. Mr. Wilder didn’t like the calls he got from that part of town and certainly did not like the kids who he busted there.
He’d married Elizabeth Stevens, worked hard, kept his gaggle of girls mostly in line, and was well-liked by the community. But when he made a rule, he meant it, and Rodney’s house was in a strict no-fly zone for his daughters. He’d arrested too many n’er-do-wells, by the block of abandoned homes by the railroad tracks. He didn’t like the men in their 20s who seemed to spend their days smoking something that did not smell like cigars and playing music that did not sound like something that a regular guy like himself would be able to dance to. And Nancy knew this. But she also knew that she was about to graduate high school and was so very close to being an adult.
Soon she’d be able to buy a beer at Smitty’s Package Store and vote for George McGovern for president in 1972. (There is a joke here - Massachusetts was the only state to vote against Nixon.) She was done feeling like a kid. So, she swore her sisters to secrecy and fabricated an elaborate story, should anyone inquire about her whereabouts that Friday night.
After school on Thursday, she took three of her sisters and her waitressing money to Woolworths, the soda fountain/ everything else store off of Main Street by the single traffic light.
She tried on a pair of bell-bottom jeans that she would have to be sure to hide from her father. The stress, she immediately decided was so worth it. When Nancy slid the stiff cotton dungarees onto her firm teenage body, she knew that the most painful part of the week would be taking them off. She admired herself from every angle in the paisley-printed dressing room, her sisters ooohing and ahhhing, sipping their rootbeer floats from the counter, a bribe to lie to both of their parents about their after-school shopping.
“Those would go swell with this-” Laura popped off the red-patent leather stool, grabbing a striped polyester sweater that may or may not have intended to cover its wearer’s navel. And, like she often was when it came to outfit choices, Laura was right. Nancy was awestruck as she stared at herself in the full-length mirror. With her hip-huggings bellbottoms and almost-see-through sweater, her Farrah-Faucet-inspired haircut and new summer freckles, why, Nancy Wilder had never felt prettier in her life.
She imagined herself walking through Rod’s front door, into his party, laughing, smiling, tossing her flipped-out blonde locks over her shoulder while someone offered her a beer. Nancy had never really done much shopping before. She didn’t know that buying a new pair of pants could make a person feel like a movie star.
Nancy left Woolworths an hour later, both the blue jeans and the short-sleeved sweater packaged in tissue paper and placed gently in a brown shopping bag that Nancy knew she would save in the back of her closet, probably forever. She swung her new duds in the Spring air, feeling a sense of maturity and freedom previously unknown to our teenage heroine. Her wooden clogs echoed across the sidewalk as her sisters ran ahead, buzzing through their sugar high. That pristine feeling, of everything being right with the world didn’t last long.
Because, when she tiptoed through the back door, shopping bag in hand, both of her parents were sitting in their mint green kitchen.
This happened sometimes. Her mother would be done early from the hospital and her dad would be back after working the night shift - getting up in the late afternoon for bacon and black coffee, which is exactly as the house smelled. But this afternoon felt different. The pressure in the four walls built the second she stepped through the door and seemed to grow by the second, threatening to shoot the low roof into the late April sky. Nancy latched the screen door behind her, holding her purchases deftly behind her back.
Her mother stood at the stove, her back to the vestibule. Her youngest babe, Ellen, on her hip, while scrubbing something furiously off of one of the burners. Her father sat at the kitchen table, his brow furrowed into his coffee cup. Mr. Wilder did not waste words.
“You aren’t going to that party.” The bubble that Nancy had been floating on all afternoon exploded like an over-filled balloon colliding with a sharpened nail.
The argument that ensued was one that almost every teenager in almost every place in the world knows all too well. The “You aren’t goings,” and the “But everyone else is,” followed by the “If everyone else jumped off of a bridge…” threat. And it ended the way most do – the adolescent storming off, in tears, and then either slamming or not slamming the door, depending on what kind of behavior is tolerated or how many rooms there are in the household. Maybe, also depending on how heavy the doors are. Anyway, you know the scenario.
It was a predictable scene in the girl’s shared bedroom. Nancy’s two younger sisters helped wipe the tears from her mascara-smeared face. They had a real investment in this situation. For, if the Wilder parents won, it would mean that they, too, would not be allowed at parties in that particular neighborhood and Rod himself had two younger brothers, each better looking than the next. These girls could see their futures and they wanted them to include Friday nights at cute boy’s houses on the other side of the tracks.
“Tell Dad you’re taking us to the movies,” Laura suggested. “We’ve been wanting to see The Love Bug. And I have babysitting money.”
Nancy made a face. Would her parents buy that?
“We’ll tell you all about it after you pick us up. You won’t be able to stay at the party the whole night but at least you’ll get to go.”
Nancy felt the overwhelming urge to smother her sister in affection. Maybe it was the earnestness of the younger siblings. Maybe it was because Mr. Wilder was going to work another night shift and wasn’t even home. Maybe it’s because the baby had a fever and Mrs. Wilder had her hands full. Who knows the reason, but permission was granted to see the new Walt Disney film and the girls set out for their strategically planned night.
Nancy felt butterflies in her exposed stomach as she pulled up to Rod’s house in her new outfit after dropping off Laura and Amy. She could hear the records blaring and the high schoolers laughing and smell the weird smoke emanating from the open windows. She took a deep breath, steadying herself for her first big party, her first fun night, her first bellbottoms and crop top and lying about her whereabouts. All of the ingredients in this coming-of-age cocktail were absolutely intoxicating.
As she entered Rod’s parent's house, she was struck by the crowd. Sure, there were familiar faces from the cheer squad and the lunch room and biology class offering her drinks and hugs, high-fives, and what she thought were hand-rolled cigarettes. But there were also kids whom she remembered graduating years ago, kids who were at least halfway through their tenure at UMass or working for their parents or the city. Nancy, who had only moments earlier felt so grown-up and mature in her wooden clogs, her new outfit, and freshly flipped hair, now felt tiny and childish next to these fully-bearded men and girls with heavy eyelashes and turquoise jewelry.
Nancy accepted a beer from a guy whom she knew had graduated years earlier, with her cousin Abigail, and was pleasantly surprised by how easily the fermented bubbles slid down her throat and relaced the knot in her stomach. She found herself laughing and dancing, refilling her cup, accepting compliments from the squinting women with slow, scratchy voices and was absolutely appalled when she happened to glance at her watch and see that it was 10:00.
“Oh no!” she exclaimed to no one in particular, feeling like Cinderella when the clock struck midnight,
“I have to go!” Now, the bearded guy who’d graduated with Abigail did not like this idea. Neither did the very stoned college girls or the guy pouring the beers or Rod himself. Nancy had been quite the hit. But the worry in her stomach wrestled with the bubbles in her head and she had no idea who was going to win.
“I can’t drive,” Nancy said matter-of-factly, again, to no one.
Now, in 1969, there weren’t the laws against drinking and driving like there are today. It wasn’t drilled into teenager’s heads that this was an easy and stupid way to die. Most people probably thought nothing of it, but Nancy wasn’t most people. She was a Wilder, the oldest of seven sisters, and she knew that this wasn’t a smart move. And she also knew that she couldn’t just leave her sisters at the movie theater.
Nancy slipped out of the house, the sounds of the party echoing down the quiet street. Without any other options, Nancy stuck out her thumb and prayed that someone nice and not creepy would pull over and give her a ride to the multiplex where The Love Bug was just getting out.
It turned out that that night, on that side of town, there were lots of creepy people totally happy to pull over and pick up a cute teenage girl thumbing her way across the highway. Nancy may have been drunk. She may have been anxious. She may have been worried about her sisters for being late and stressed about going against her parent’s rules. She may have been a lot of things. But stupid wasn’t one of them. She declined a ride from the drunk guys in the blue truck and the drunk guys in the green VW van and the drunk guys in the silver convertible. She was just running out of hope when she saw either the best sight she could imagine or the worst.
Police lights.
The flickering blue and red bounced across her sweaty forehead as she lowered her thumb to her bell-bottom-ed side. The officer was taking his time rolling down the window. Her stomach clenched like a vice. And that's when she heard it:
“Nancy? Get in.” And that’s when Nancy knew that she was toast. Her father’s voice was professional, even, not angry or loud but that was even scarier.
She walked over to the passenger seat, not sure if she should get in the back. Was she getting arrested? Was hitchhiking legal? She hadn’t meant to break the law. Something about a cop car can sober up anyone and this was certainly true on this particular night.
“Dad, I’m so sorry- but I-” But Mr. Wilder stopped her.
“You’ve been drinking?” Nancy knew better than to lie for a second time.
“Yes,” she squeaked out meekly.
“And you’re going to get your sisters?” Nancy nodded, the tears welling up in her eyes.
“So you decided not to drive?” Nancy just looked at her dad like a puppy begging for table scraps. He put his hand on her knee.
“That was the right decision. Now, tell me about this party.”
This was the first time in Nancy’s entire life that she told her father everything. They picked up Laura and Amy from the movies and then he took them all out for ice cream. The girls don’t know what got into them or their dad on that night in April. But something changed. The floodgates opened.
They told him about their lives and their fears and their dreams. Something about him being in uniform made it all feel safer than the man in corduoys at their kitchen table.
It was the first night of the rest of their relationship. And something, that now in his late 90s, Mr. Wilder still remembers to this day.
Nancy, of course, got grounded. Her parents had principles. But after that, when Nancy would hear her father’s car bounce up over the weeds in the driveway, she’d throw on her robe, run downstairs, and make them both a pot of coffee, talking to her father before he took off his uniform. It would be that way for the rest of his life. When her father retired, he kept his hat. And he would put it on whenever his daughters wanted to talk.
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