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Chapter 7: Charge It To My Home Phone




      "Hey Sweetie," I begin in a Sunday night call from the dorm payphone.  "What's up this week?"

"My mother says you can't call collect anymore," Karen cries, frantic we might not be able to talk regularly. "She says it costs too much, but I really think she doesn’t like me dating a college guy."

“Tell her I’m still only seventeen,” I laugh to hide dismay at being cut off from my emotional lifeline back home. “I'm just a year older than you.”

“They want me to apply to Renssalaer where Dad went," she decries as the sobs stop, "but I’m going to Louisville to be with you!”



     I was about to turn eighteen and was really two years older, but Karen Schindelar didn't have to be reminded in that moment of crisis. I also wasn't ready to tell her about my second thoughts on sports at the University of Louisville. We'd dated for a year and had been intimate for nearly that long, and we'd talked on the phone and written weekly since I'd left for school halfway across the country. She'd already asked if there was a dorm for married couples (there was), while I was just trying to adjust to college courses and to make it on the baseball team.

     Pay phone calls were expensive for a college freshman in 1976. The first few times I'd inserted quarters and dimes and still been cut off after a minute or two. Then we figured out I could reverse the charges by dialing the operator first and asking to make it a collect call. Karen would answer from her family's home phone at the designated time and accept the charges. That worked until her mother inspected the unusually large August phone bill.



     “Tony Branch is waiting for the phone so I gotta go," I lie, stalling on telling her I'm unhappy in Louisville until she's in a better place to hear it. "Next Sunday I’ll charge it to some business that doesn’t have an answering service.”

“Just don’t get caught," she laughs, resuming her defiant nature. "She'll ground me with any more phone charges.”

“Sure Sweetie, and love always!”

“Love always more!”




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