Summer Love Stories of Casper, Wyoming

This is one of those summer love stories taking place in Casper, Wyoming at a bowling alley that doesn't have a happy ending. I guess you could call it a non-conclusive ending out of Casper, Wyoming, but as for summer love stories, non-conclusive is the same as losing out. Additionally, it's one of those summer love stories out of a Casper, Wyoming bowling alley that has a moral: it's better to take the risk than not to try at all.

What could have been is one of those premises in life that should be avoided at all costs! This account is true, and is based on my recollection of events and my interpretation of what happened one June evening in Casper, Wyoming in 1979, at a lodge hall bowling alley. I'm not going to say the actual names of the people involved, as their names will be changed.

Summer Love Stories Background

30 years ago, in the summer of 1978, I would become fascinated with a romantic movie, even though I was only 11 years old. It was called Grease, and it would prophesize my own first encounter with really being in love beyond the crushes I had felt before. I had been acquainted with the girl in 5^th grade, but at that time, I wasn't in love with her. I'll call her "Sue". Still, I found it hard to even talk to her at all. It was like she was, for lack of a better analogy, an intimidating monolith that appeared in 2001: A Space Odyssey. When I arrived back in school for the 1978-79 Casper, Wyoming school year, I began to notice that Sue was causing a new, deeper feeling within me, which for lack of a better analogy, was like one of those aliens growing inside the astronauts before it would burst out...which finally happened to me one November morning. I was sick to my stomach and in love with her, which would begin to accelerate the regretful conclusion of the summer love stories account I'm sharing with the world.

Because I could never find the courage to try to interact with Sue when I wasn't in love with her, I was now terrified of her. Delmore Schwartz wrote in his poem I Am a Book I Neither Wrote nor Read a line that says:

"The terror of love, the depth one cannot leap."

Roy A. Barnes fell in love seriously for the first time in this Casper neighborhood. This hill overlooks the city, and behind him is the former elementary school grounds where this milestone event took place.

Credit: Roy A. Barnes

Copyright: Roy A. Barnes