"Very hot out tonight," Sidney said.
"Yes," Jeanette answered, and lowered her eyes. It was the "thirties." They were on the rooftop of the Jewish People's Institute, or the J.P.I., as it was called, each deciding if they should dance with the other.
He'd already introduced himself, said he was from the " North West side" and that he'd gotten a ride with a buddy from that Humboldt Park neighborhood. She told him she'd walked all the way from her Westside home because it wasn't sundown yet, and riding streetcars was forbidden since the Sabbath was not over when she had started out.
He scratched his head hearing about such devotion to religion in so young a woman. Of course, he was Jewish but they didn't hold to such strictness in his family.
In the background, her girlfriends rolled their eyes, nodded their heads, indicating that Jeanette should dance with him if asked.
So now, it was after sundown, the stars had come out, and the band started to play.
And he saw that she could really dance - fox trot, two-step, all of it. Her dark tightly waved hair, securely curved behind each ear, was starting to slip by the third dance. His pale, thin, thirty-year-old face began to warm up. But each kept up with the other - a moment in time when they seemed to know more about each other by dancing than they'd yet revealed by words.
Twenty-four-year old Jeanette was a "good girl" and they didn't ever give the wrong impression in those days. You could get a bad reputation fast. But, most guys were gentlemen, didn't push or "test" their dates. You had to be careful, though.
Even though she didn't date that much, she would be careful.
Turned out, later, Sidney was one of those "gentlemen".
So, instead of just taking a walk in Douglas Park, seeing a movie, or eating a corned beef sandwich at Carl's on Roosevelt Road, he introduced her to bigger horizons. Downtown! Movies and stage shows on State Street. A place called a "Beanery" that had a delicious bowl of something so tasty she ate the tiny cube of salted meat on top, hoping she'd be forgiven if it wasn't kosher!
By the third month of dating they took a double-decker city bus up Lake Shore Drive, past mansions, new tall buildings, and sparkling Lake Michigan on their right.
Finally, when she met his people, who were not immigrants like her, she worried if they really welcomed her. What she didn't know, but suspected, was that they thought she wasn't very "American" yet.
But her people only worried about what his intentions were. So prim, she thought.
Of course, what none of them knew was that Sidney had already popped the question by now.
And Jeanette had said yes.
Dee Greenberg is a Chicago-based writer at the Self Help Home, a Jewish Senior Living Facility, where she resides. A retired attorney, she has published a novel and short stories. She edits the Self Helper, a monthly publication of the Self Help.