What NOT to do on a first date - a memoir

This is a true story about how to wreck a weekend with a perfectly nice and attractive young woman named Jane who, my highly discerning uncle believed, was closely linked to the Busch (as in Anheuser-Busch) family of St. Louis and who, if this first date went well, might open doors to elevated social status and, of course, great wealth and the prospect of becoming a kept man.

The date didn't go well, I am to this day not a kept man, and I only have myself and my uncle, in equal parts, to blame.

The life-altering weekend happened in the spring of 1968 when I was a college senior.  I'd just met Jane and thought it would be a great idea if we could spend the weekend together as guests of my aunt and uncle who lived not too far away in Westport, Connecticut.  At the time I all but idolized these two - they were the perfect aunt and uncle for me: fun-loving, irreverent, wildly sociable, with three great kids (my first cousins, a few years younger than I), a beautiful old house, a barn with horses, a swimming pool - a place perfectly designed for a good time.  And they could cook, which meant a lot to a college kid.  So I called them up to see if they were free to be our hosts for the weekend, and they were thrilled with the idea of entertaining us.  My uncle, in particular, was eager to check out how I was progressing in my social life.

I picked up Jane and we drove the hour or so to Westport in my stylish but rapidly decaying 1957 Porsche Cabriolet.  It had a nothing-fancy 1600 cc engine, and was suffering from terminal rust throughout its rocker panels.  But it had a brand new ragtop, it drove great, and of course it was a classic old Porsche with its unique great looks.

We arrived in Westport, and the whole family turned out to give us both a complete once over.  Then the ensuing liturgy of pleasure: cocktails, crackling and witty conversation, a spectacular steak dinner with wine,  more animated repartee, more wine.  Before bed, my uncle took me aside alone and told me, "You've hooked up with something great.  Don't blow it.  She's got beer money written all over her."  Well, whether sensible or not, none of that appealed to me very much.  I liked Jane for other reasons - she was smart, funny, thoughtful, very pretty, a good person.

Don't blow it?  The next day I blew it sky high.

After breakfast, my aunt said she needed to go grocery shopping to lay in more supplies, and, for some reason that completely escapes me, Jane offered to join her.  I believe this was because she was a naturally gracious person wanting to help, rather than looking for a break from my company.  In any event, smiling and waving, off they went to the store.

My uncle looked at the Porsche, then at me and said, "Paul would love to see this car.  Let's go across the street."

The Paul he was referring to was Paul Newman.  It happened that if you walked out my uncle's driveway straight across the road, you'd walk right into the driveway of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.  There was no gate, no protective fence - it was just another Westport house, a garage, some outbuildings, and a pretty fancy tree house that my uncle called Paul and Joanne's love shack.  Westport was (and still is, I gather) the kind of town where the rich and famous aren't treated as special, much to their relief.

I'd known they were his neighbors, I'd thought it was pretty cool, but otherwise I didn't have feelings about it one way or the other.  They were just there -- now what's for dinner?

I wondered aloud if it would be better to wait for Jane and my aunt to come back from shopping so Jane could meet him too.  "Nah," he said, "I know he's home now, he might be gone later - let's pay a visit."

We both got into my old Porsche and drove forty feet out of my uncle's driveway and into Paul Newman's.  One of the cars caught my eye - a red VW bug with an oversized, customized rear end.

Newman popped out of the back door of the house.  I remember him wearing a denim shirt and old chinos, and looking exactly the way he did on screen. After quick introductions he took a grand tour of my rotting old Cabriolet, inside and out, and under the hood.  As I've said, the engine was nothing special and he kind of wagged his head at the car, as in "good luck with this."  (I didn't know then that he was just starting to get into racing, was a Porsche aficionado, and loved going very fast, whether by motorcycle or car).

"Let's go for a ride," he told me, indicating the VW.

"Sure."

It happened that he'd removed the VW's back seat to make room for a quite large high-performance Porsche engine, and possibly a racing transmission. Apparently, he'd done a lot of this work himself.

So it was just Paul and myself in the car.  My uncle stayed in the driveway.

Off we went on a ride I'll never forget.

Topographically, Westport is like many small New England towns, with rolling hills and dense hardwood forests - mostly maples and oaks - and narrow winding roads that are very unforgiving, with large tree trunks hugging the road's edge and lots of places where you don't have a clue what might be coming at you around a bend.  You don't want to be racing a car along these roads.

We started out conservatively enough, but then as he kept giving it gas and racing the engine the ride went from exciting to jaw-dropping to white-knuckle terrifying as we hit sixty, maybe seventy miles an hour in a thirty zone, whipping around corners so fast I was sure we were going to roll and fly into enormous trees or some oncoming Cadillac that would have no chance of avoiding us.

"Holy shit!!"

"Hang on."

"We're gonna roll!!"

"No we're not."

We careened off the road onto another, narrower and windier, flirting with certain death at every blind corner until the road straightened out a bit and he gunned the engine again.  Then onto a third road, just as snaky as the first, going just as fast.  Why at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning weren't there any other cars?  I have no idea - maybe the locals knew this was Newman's racing time and stayed off the roads.

I remember the tires squealing when we got home and whipped back into his driveway.  My uncle stood there whooping and laughing at us.  Newman looked both cool and ecstatic - that we'd made it home alive and he'd succeeded in inducing in me the "pucker factor."

I have never had a ride like that before or since.  That guy could effing drive.

The rest of our visit was much less insane.  We went into his house, and I'm pretty sure he grabbed a beer, and offered me one too.  Being pretty buttoned-down in those days (it wasn't even ten in the morning yet), I declined.  We saw a room with some movie memorabilia, then cruised downstairs to his basement pool room.  The balls were all racked up and ready to go (I'd spent far too much time in my senior year playing pool, and was half-decent at it), but there was one distraction or another and the Great Pool Game with Paul Newman never happened.  When he finished his beer, my uncle started making noises about getting back to the ladies across the street.  Handshakes and thanks all around... S'long, Paul.

(In time I learned my uncle and aunt were fairly good friends with the Newmans for as long as they were neighbors.  They were polar opposites politically, but they both lived life as a great adventure.  They loved cooking, wine and spirits, socializing, life in the fast lane.  They were only in their early 40s then, with plenty of maturing time to come... time and events would change them both).

Heading back across the road, my uncle said, "Here's where the shit hits the fan."

Numb-brained as I was at the time, I believed it was because we'd been gone for awhile, not so much that we'd been hanging out with Paul Newman.

Wrong.  Jane and my aunt came out of the house.  "Where have you boys been?" my aunt asked.

"Across the street," said my uncle.

She laughed.  "You've been with Paul all this time?"

Jane asked, "Who's Paul?"

That horrible sinking feeling.  I've blown it.

My aunt grabbed Jane's hand.  "My dear, you and I went shopping and they've been hanging out with Paul Newman.  Was Joanne there?"

"Paul Newman..."

"No, Joanne wasn't there."

"Paul Newman?"

It turned out she was a fan.  A big fan.  She was inconsolably crushed.  She looked at me as if I were the biggest jerk who'd ever walked on the earth.

"You didn't," she said.

"It all happened kind of spontaneously," I said spontaneously.

We must have talked again that weekend at some point, but she said she needed to get back to college a day early, and as we left my aunt and uncle's house on Saturday instead of Sunday I don't remember another word that passed between us.  Possibly I apologized until I was empty.  But it didn't matter - I was still a complete, consummate, championship jerk.

I visited my aunt and uncle at their home several more times as a young man, before they moved out of Westport, but I never saw Newman again. A few months after my thrill ride with him, he went off to shoot Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and I think he spent more time on the west coast and less time in Westport.  One detail about his place bears mentioning: he and Joanne had several guest cabins on their property.  My uncle told me they were mostly for "runaway kids" and others who needed a place to stay - a pretty common thing in the late 60s.  His "Hole in the Wall" camps would follow, as soon as his food business started making money.

A year after college, I sold my Porsche for $600.  I told the buyer the rust was pretty severe and the car probably wouldn't last very long, but he didn't care.  A few months later, my older brother spotted the car off the side of the Maine Turnpike with its wheels splayed out like a squashed turtle.  The frame had finally given way.  Entropy always wins.

Later, when I started writing screenplays, I had Newman in mind as my lead, and managed to get three scripts to him via his publicist at Rogers and Cowan.  My first cover letter included words to the effect, "You may remember me as _____'s nephew and taking me on a thrill ride in your Porsche-powered VW in Westport..."  Newman passed on all three screenplays, but personally signed the rejection letters.  I still have them somewhere.

I've loved his movies, but everything I've known about his life, and the kind of person he was, impresses me much more.  He loved his art, but disdained his celebrity.  He loved food, but didn't keep any of the money he made from it.  He had many friends (like my uncle), but only as real people who wanted to enjoy life with him.

So, one last time:

Sorry, Jane.