2/16/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

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Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

When I was 15 years old working at my Dad’s place, Deibel’s, in German Village, I fell in love one night with the Rodeo Queen. To be honest, I am not sure of what rodeo she was the Queen. She was in Deibel’s with a lot of other rodeo people. She had long blonde hair, beautiful blue eyes and a smile that would win the heart of the stoniest of people. I remember her hat most of all. It was a big white cowboy hat with a leather band fronted by a turquoise oval. She also wore long cowboy boots, out of which came legs that seemed to go on forever. I was a cook at the time, dressed all in white, stained with the dinners of the evening. The night was late, and the kitchen was all but done.

I used to come out of the kitchen and, believe it or not, do Louis Armstrong impressions with Esther the accordion player, Max the versatile musician who played the fiddle, the tire pump and the washboard, among other instruments, and Adolf the banjo player.

When I came out to sing that night, I noticed the Rodeo Queen right away. I didn’t know she was the Queen at that point. I was simply struck by her beauty. After my song (I would sing Hello Dolly and Bill Bailey), I came down off the bandstand. The Queen approached me as sweetly and softly as the sunrise on Christmas morning. There was a tradition at Deibel’s called “Pass the Hawaiian Lei,” plastic imitations of the real thing. Esther passed them out and you would give it to someone and give that person a kiss. That person, in turn, would give it to someone else. Well, the Queen had a lei and as she approached me, she stretched it out in its fullest circle. Remember now, I was only 15. I am sure I turned red as she placed the plastic lei over my head. The kiss was very innocent, a peck on the cheek, but it was from the Rodeo Queen, and I was in love.

Later, I spent some time talking to the Queen (which is how I found out that she was the Queen), and some of the rodeo people, all of whom were very nice. The Queen was 16. I don’t remember the conversation; I only remember that I was in love. At the end of the evening, she told me that they were all staying at the Neil House Hotel downtown and that the next night they were having a party. “Why don’t you come?” she said. I couldn’t say, “No.”

The next night, without telling my parents, I hopped a COTA bus downtown to meet the Queen. I stopped first and bought some flowers for her. I approached the Neil House, hair combed, teeth brushed, wearing my best bell-bottom jeans and paisley shirt. I entered the doors of this elegant old hotel and looked around. The doorman, dressed to the nines in his long coat with tails, asked me if he could be of assistance. He was an older African American man with a broad smile. I told him I was looking for the rodeo people. He told me that they had all checked out of the hotel that day.

My heart was broken! Amazingly, I told my sad story of woe to the doorman. He listened with rapt attention and told me I was a “nice lad” for bringing flowers. He asked me what the Queen’s name was. I realized that I didn’t even know! I suddenly felt the full embarrassment of my 15 full years, standing there with my flowers and a vanished Queen.

This doorman, a man I never had seen before and whom I would never see again, actually sat me down in the lobby of the Neil House Hotel and told me the story of how he met his wife at the old Union Train Station in Columbus one Saturday evening many, many years ago. He told me that he fell instantly in love with her and made many attempts to engage her in conversation before she finally took the initiative and spoke to him. He told me how, from that night, they were inseparable and that he was as in love with her at the time of our conversation as he had been the first time that he saw her.

I gave him my flowers and told them to take them home to his wife. He thanked me, patted me on the shoulder and wished me a “good night and a happy life.” My happy life has not been with the Rodeo Queen, but with another Queen, my wonderful wife Kathy, four fantastic children, and nine grandchildren, who make me smile just thinking about them.

Jim Silcott