Jimmy Dorsey

There were many do’s and don’ts at Maryville.  We were not allowed to read comic books; we had to eat every bit of the food they served, even though much of it was uneatable (the putrid and at times rancid food had such an effect on me that to this day I cannot eat bread pudding or Spanish rice). We could not say shut up to anybody, so we learned to say “up shut the other way” with as much vehemence and ire as one would use to say Shut …Up (or anything else).  Parents could come and visit every other Sunday but if they came out on the wrong Sunday, we were not allowed to see them. .  We could go home every other month for a week end except in the summer. During June, July, and August, we were not allowed to go home as it was thought that polio was contracted during the summer months, and that our isolation might spare us from that illness. In addition to a large and formidable list of other restrictions and rules, it was known that we were not allowed to order anything and get it delivered to Maryville, and while I may have abided by most rules, this was one I decided to break.

One day, during one of my visits home, I went to a candy store and bought a Nestle crunch bar.  Upon opening the wrapper the wrapper contained an offer.  It said, with two Nestle Crunch wrappers and 15 cents I could get a Jimmy Dorsey record.  I had no idea who Jimmy Dorsey was, but I assumed he had something to do with music because why else would he make a record?  It did not matter that I had no idea who this person was; I was thrilled with the idea of getting a record (or just anything) that I could call mine.  I would get 15 cents from somewhere, buy another candy bar and send it in and wait for my record.

A few weeks passed, and Sister Madelyn came over to me one day, and she had in her hand my Jimmy Dorsey record.  She said “you know you were not supposed to do this”, I didn’t respond.  An 8 year old is really not prepared to make rational arguments, so I stood there, silently, it was all I could do - she handed the record to me and said with a stern tone of institutional distance and indifference, “don’t do this again.  I put the record in my locker and just smiled. I felt like I had won – it was a wonderful feeling. I couldn’t really explain my excitement over the record, I had no way of playing it, no record player, no turn table, but I didn’t care, my desire wasn’t about playing anything, it was about having something.   It is now 58 years later and I still have my Jimmy Dorsey 45 and I have never really cared about the way it sounds.