By: Dylan Lenz

In’58 when the copper mine was still the chief source of industry for Duluth Minnesota, Arthur Lowe fell in love with Gladys Fischer one hot evening in mid-July at a company picnic. Eventually the heat became commonplace and ignored along with the damp cotton shirts and perspiration that collected on the guest’s foreheads. They had met once before, Gladys was a secretary for Joe Howtz, a company manager from Detroit, Arthur was an engineer from a farm outside of Fargo and had to report to Joe a few times a week. They spent the next morning together.

It was that morning in Gladys’s apartment that was over a travel agency in Duluth that Arthur began to appreciate the woman he knew so little about.  Gladys was beautiful in a way that Arthur had only experienced when he was in Chicago for school. It was the kind of beauty that gets replaced with fuller cheeks and a good temper the farther you get from the urban sprawl. Gladys was thin with dark hair and a thin nose. Her legs seemed to start at her shoulders and all about her was a delicacy that deserved a reverence beyond the brutality of the night before.

She made him breakfast and he looked over at the plants she kept by the back window. They were all green and full. They reminded him of the plants his mother kept in the room his father had added on to the farmhouse. The room that remained green even after winter buried the house to it’s neck in snow. When Gladys placed the plate on the table in front of him he held her hand and kissed the back of it. Her skin was soft but worn like his and he realized how she was older than him. They made love again that day.

The rest of the summer passed quickly with Arthur spending most nights with Gladys. She was from Michigan and had come west with Howtz. She had spent her childhood summers on assorted lakes in small cabins and Arthur arranged for them to do the same. They took a short trip into Canada and fished and took photos and made love and ate at a small diner on the trip there and the trip back.

In September Gladys left with Howtz who had been promoted. He had offered her a raise and to pay for her accommodations in the city, and explained how it would be better for her to see her family more often. Arthur was happy for her and he replaced Howtz and was given more money to stay in Duluth. He planned to save for the year and see Gladys at Thanksgiving with his parents then move her to a house in Duluth where they could live.

Once Gladys had moved to Detroit she called Arthur and told him things were over. She was with Howtz now and was happy to be rid of him. Arthur did not really understand and drank wildly for three days and did not go to work. In the spring of ’59 he resigned from the mine and went to home to help out on his parents farm. He began to date Cathy Downs who lived two farms away from Arthur.

Arthur Lowe told Cathy he loved her. He did not. It was in the late spring after they had just turned twenty-six and seemed very much in love, and seemed inseparable that he told her this. They got married mid-summer, though there was no rush because Cathy Downs was not pregnant and there was no real reason for them to be married besides their public perception. Arthur did not tell Cathy about Gladys Fischer.