Wish Me Luck, Hoppy
By Suzanne
June 20, 1936
Sleepyside, New York
Seventeen-year-old Diana Lynch crept across the tiny bedroom that she shared with her two younger sisters.
The ten-year-old twin girls were snuggled up next to each other in the narrow twin bed just like always, their dark hair fanning out across the pillows as they slept.
“Goodbye Rosie, goodbye, Daisy,” Diana whispered, her voice barely audible in the silent room. “Now you can each have your own bed.” She blew a kiss to each of them before tiptoeing out of the bedroom.
Carrying her suitcase and pocketbook in one hand, and her worn brown loafers in the other, Diana stole noiselessly across the main room of the cramped apartment. The seven members of the Lynch family had lived here for as long as Diana could remember. She carefully placed a note in the center of the large round pedestal table, carefully anchoring it underneath the vase of flowers that her mother always kept in the middle of the table.
Before she opened the front door, Diana biting the edge of her bottom lip nervously, glanced over first at her parents closed bedroom door and then her younger brothers’ door. Shaking her head, she opened the door and slipped out into the hallway.
She dropped her penny loafers on the floor and slipped her feet into them. Then taking a firmer grip on her suitcase and purse, she walked down the dark staircase and out into the warm summer night.
The bus station was down near the far end of Main Street, one block over and eight blocks down from where she stood in front of the shaded windows of the photography studio that her family lived over.
Diana had never been out and about at four o’clock in the morning before. She was amazed at how silent and still everything was as she turned onto Main Street and began walking towards the bus station. The line of businesses including The First National Bank of Sleepyside, where her best friend Trixie Belden’s father worked, were all locked up tight. Diana could see her reflection in the highly polished windows of the stores as she walked past them.
Two blocks before the station, on the other side of the street, stood the Sleepyside Town Hall. The Town Hall was one of the oldest buildings in the small town, dating back to just after the Revolutionary War. The two-story white clapboard building was tall and narrow with dozens of tiny paned windows that seemed to draw all eyes up to the small cupola perched at the top of the steeply slanted roof.
After a quick glance to make sure that the road was clear, Diana hurried across the middle of the street. Standing on the deserted sidewalk, she looked up at the cupola. Even though she couldn’t see it in the dark, the teenage girl knew that attached to the top of the cupola was an old copper plated weather vane that everyone called Hoppy. Nobody knew for certain exactly how long Hoppy had been on the roof of the Town Hall, but everyone agreed that he was an antique and quite valuable. He was also considered by some to be a good luck charm.
Diana still remembered the October day almost four years earlier when she had started saying hello to Hoppy. It was a Saturday morning, and Trixie had ridden her bicycle into town so that they could work on a project for their history class. Since Diana didn’t have a bike, Trixie had left hers behind Diana’s house and the two girls were walking to the library where they were going to meet Ruthie Kettner.
As they strolled past the Town Hall, fourteen-year-old Trixie Belden had stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk, looked up and waved as she said, “hello, Hoppy.”
Diana had looked at her friend with a puzzled expression on her pretty face until Trixie explained how her mom had told her about calling out hello to the giant grasshopper for good luck.
Ever since then, Diana had made a point of doing it too and tonight she stopped to speak to the silent bug one last time before she left town for good.
“Hello, Hoppy,” she whispered into the silent summer night. “I just wanted to come by one last time before I left. I graduated from high school yesterday and am ready to pursue my dream.”
Diana stopped and quickly looked around again to make certain that no one was watching. She knew that it was probably foolish to stand there talking to a giant copper bug, but she needed all of the good luck she could get in order to make it on Broadway.
“Please give me good luck, Hoppy. If anyone ever needed it, I do because I can’t come crawling back here a failure. I have to make good as an actress. I have to!” Diana whispered fiercely into the night. Being an actress had been her dream ever since her grandmother Lynch had taken her to a Broadway play when she was seven. Diana had gone to stay with her grandparents for a couple of weeks after her twin brothers had been born. The young girl had been entranced with the theater and winning the lead role in every class play for the past four years had only convinced Diana even more that she was destined to star on Broadway.
Diana stood there for a few more minutes, storing up memories of the town and all that she was leaving behind before picking up her suitcase again and hurrying down to the bus station. The first bus to Penn Station left at five-twenty and she didn’t want to miss it.
After handing over three of her hard earned dollars to the sleepy looking clerk seated behind his little iron cage, Diana clutched her ticket nervously as she made her way to the platform to wait for the bus.
The bus was soon ready to board and she handed her suitcase to the driver and climbed in. As she waited for the driver to pull out of the station, Diana stared down at her hands which were neatly folded in her lap. The glint of the ring on her right hand reminded Diana of the one other thing she was leaving behind.
Mart had given her that ring last Christmas. The ruby wasn’t real of course, but it was Mart’s way of telling her how much he loved her and his hopes for the future.
“I’ll miss you, Mart Belden.” Diana whispered to herself as the bus lurched forward on its journey out of town.
This is a submission for CWE#3 and is inspired by picture #39.
The ring that Mart gave to Di, comes from a story in my own family. My great-grandfather did the same thing to my great-grandmother the Christmas before they were married. I still have the ring with its little green glass stone and it is a very precious memento to me.