Willie and Jeannette: Fragments from a New England Marriage...

Willie and Jeannette. Together, those two names sound nice, don't they! Warm and poignant, even melliflous in the musical sense -- their combined sound rolls rhythmically off the tongue like the title of some lovingly preserved French folk song -- and with a welcome wisp of nostalgia, not unlike that silk scarf you found one Sunday morning on the vacant chair of a restaurant, prettily flowered and infused with some indefinable perfume from a day in the city or perhaps a long-forgotten tryst.

I learned of Willie and Jeannette from a recent frame shop customer of mine who brought her parents' 1950's Era snapshots in for framing. While her Mom and Dad are no longer alive in the temporal sense, I could tell from talking with that customer that in her mind and especially in her heart, they're still very much alive.

The moment I saw those two snapshots, I knew I wanted to write at least a little something about these two elusive New Englanders with their quixotic smiles and easy-going appearances.

Jeannette, quite dashing in her stylish hat
and coat and her warm, winning smile...

There was something emotionally powerful in that image of Jeannette -- something elegant and mysterious in her hair, her eyes, her hat and coat and her demeanor -- that made me want to capture her story and hold it gently in my writer's hands, if only for one sweet, evanescent moment in the relentless onrush of Time.

All I know -- and all that I suspect I'll ever know -- about Jeannette is that she was born in Newmarket, New Hampshire of parents with a rich French heritage, and that like countless other young women with northern New England roots, she toiled for many years in shoe shops to make a living. The rest of what I know of her will remain purely conjectural and must be gleaned from a long and caring look into her eyes.

As for Willie, the man perched so jauntily on the hood of his c. 1950 Plymouth, I learned from his daughter that he was born in Biddeford, Maine, drove a taxi at times to earn his keep, and played both the harmonica and the accordion -- instruments that can claim a proud history as the instruments of choice for New Englanders of French Canadian heritage.

Our Willie must have fallen instantly in love with his Jeannette, perhaps when she hailed a taxi and found that handsome and yet self-effacing young man behind the wheel, cheerfully asking her where she needed to go. Had I been that driver, I know that I would have been swept quietly off my feet by the sight of this woman in my rear view mirror, she with her playfully off-center hat, elegantly designed winter coat and impish smile, dressed for an event that simply had to be far, far away from her ploddingly repetitious days in the mechanical din of a darkly lit shoe shop.

Willie the Taxi Driver, enjoying a relaxing
moment on the Hood of his smiling Plymouth...

Where might Jeannette have been going that day? And did her ride in Willie's taxi lead quickly to a string of more purposeful encounters, sans taxi? Perhaps their story took a very different turn that day, and like two tiny, delicate seeds planted in the freshly turned soil of a field on a country road in the village of Newmarket, their serendipitous encounter on a city street needed  the better part of a sunlit summer season to grow into love.

Did Willie wait a week or two, ask Jeannette to be his partner in a Friday night dance party, then play straight into her heart on his shiny red accordion, fingers flying across the keys and over the buttons, sending a musical message of the most intense attraction, pleading with his song to take her into his taxi driver's arms and become his wife? And did Jeannette hear both the passion and sincerity of his plea and agree without hesitation to join him in the certain-to-be adventure of their still youthful existences?

In a very real sense, the story of Willie and Jeannette is the story of early Twentieth Century life in northern New England: Two earnest, optimistic children of immigrants, new to life in an unfamiliar city, coming together by chance, then going together, hand in hand and with characteristic American optimism, into a future both joyful and unpredictable in its yet-to-be experienced details.

What, then, did you see when you looked into the eyes of Willie and Jeannette?

Perhaps, like me, you suddenly and happily realized that you could have been looking at yourself. And I suspect that would have been just fine with you.

                                                                
                                     -- Ross Bachelder January 28th, 2011