One summer. One unforgettable girl. And a night that would follow him for the rest of his life.
In the summer of 1976, a young man arrives in Bellville, Texas, and meets Sally—a wild, free-spirited girl who changes the course of his life. What begins as a summer of youthful freedom becomes a story of love, choices, and consequences neither of them could have imagined.
Lucy Asks George
The story behind the story
Lucy: George, where did When the Moon Betrayed Us come from? Was there a particular memory, person, or moment that first gave you the idea for this story?
George: There was. It was the real Sally.
I originally just wanted to tell the funny story about the night Sally and I climbed the fence at the Bellville City Pool and went skinny dipping. A local policeman came by on patrol, shined his spotlight on us, and basically told us to keep the noise down.
But in order to tell that story, I had to explain what I was doing in Bellville in the first place, why I was there, who Sally was, and how we ended up together at the city pool in the middle of the night. One thing led to another; the story just kept growing organically, and before I knew it, I had a book.
Lucy: So how much of the young man in the book is actually you, and how much of Sally is the real Sally?
George: Well, being widowed now, sadly, I think I can safely say this story is almost as close to a biography of those early years of my life as I’d want to admit.
At the time, I was a funny but kind of shy kid who could make almost anybody laugh at any time. I fooled around with hot rods, but I didn’t have much experience with girls. I was basically a college sophomore who’d been on a few dates. I had a steady girlfriend from Galveston whom I’d met at a sock hop where I was playing records, but otherwise I was pretty straight and narrow. I’d never even tried recreational drugs.
So meeting Sally was an eye-opener for me.
The real Sally’s father was a railroad engineer who was gone much of the time, and her mother had passed away when she was about four. She was a good girl, but she was also very independent. She pretty much did what she wanted to do within the confines of small-town life.
Lucy: The book has gambling, railroad men, Frenchy, and even a murder, but when you get to the end, Sally seems to be what the story was really about all along. Did you know when you started writing it that it would become a story about missed chances and the things we leave unsaid?
George: Yes and no. Of course, I knew the actual story about losing Sally, although it wasn’t my original intent to include that in the book.
But as the story unfolded, I came to understand that I was writing about her—and that maybe even the whole story was about her. After all, it began with the two of us skinny-dipping after hours in a public swimming pool. And that was all Sally.
So naturally, as the story evolved, it kept coming back to her: who she was, what she meant to me then, and the effect she had on me throughout my life.
Read Chapter One
The Cajun Connection
There was this guy—no, not a guy—an old man named Frenchy. That might not have been his Christian name, but that’s how he was introduced to me. He was my then-girlfriend’s step-grandfather and was easily in his 70s in 1976, the year I met him.
They called him Frenchy because he was from Louisiana, Evangeline, I think, and spoke with a thick Cajun accent. Whatever age he was, he still had thick black hair, wore thick black-rimmed glasses, and had that ruddy, weather-worn complexion that old Cajuns get. Anyway, the guy ran a taxi service on Galveston Island, and since this was 1976, it wasn’t very competitive; in fact, he may have been the only taxi on the island.
Galveston in the 1970s wasn’t the glitzy, glamorous fun Galveston of the early 21st century, but a rugged blue-collar community looking for a new identity after the 1960s shutdown of all its gambling houses, illicit bars, and whorehouses.
The Strand—a popular tourist attraction today, teeming with shops and restaurants—was once known as “The Wall Street of the West.” It was dirty and run down, with mostly empty spaces where businesses once thrived but were long ago shuttered.
Though a few whorehouses remained—unmarked, of course—Frenchy assured me he could deliver me to the best of the best. “De cleanes’, I take you dere, me!” Mind you, this was the first time I’d ever laid eyes on the man, as a guest in the home of my girlfriend, who was a high school senior. And he said this right in front of my girlfriend and her family with no hesitation or embarrassment.
Not that I was then or ever in my life a client of such a business. Frenchy just seemed to have no filter or embarrassment for anything that came out of his mouth. But Frenchy wasn’t just in the taxi business. If you needed something—anything—he could get it. And he didn’t beat around the bush about those other things either.
Frenchy also let us know he could source any kind of illicit drug for us. And keep in mind he’s saying all this in front of my prospective father-in-law, much to my great chagrin (things were seriously semi-serious with the girlfriend at that point).
But he had a strict code and never mentioned words like marijuana. He used his own code language (de grass), cocaine (de sno’), speed (stay ‘wake), and downers (de sleep pill) and let me know that all I need do was mention any of this in any kind of context, and he would fill my order promptly, cash on delivery.
If I wanted the services of one of the whorehouses, all I needed to do was mention “de puss’, and if I wanted to be safe and not catch a disease, it should be ‘de clean puss’.
Gambling was referred to as a ‘card game’ or ‘shoot de dice’.
At twenty-one years old, I was not a purveyor of any of the services Frenchy could offer. I had my own car—a hot-rod 1969 Mustang—and didn’t need a taxi. But we all listened intently there in front of my perhaps future in-laws.
The girlfriend’s father barely looked up from the TV (perhaps he was embarrassed with his father-in-law too), where Nadia Comaneci was scoring another perfect ten. But every so often, he cut his eyes toward me, just to see if I flinched at any of Frenchy’s offers. But I was able to simply sit with a straight face, only occasionally nodding. Finally, and thankfully, as dinner was being placed on the table, the conversation turned to the Olympics on television.
Want to Keep Reading?
When the Moon Betrayed Us is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.