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I Met A Boy I Used To
Know
Lenora Mattingly
Weber
1967, Thomas Y.
Crowell Company
Katie Rose Belford met
the boy with the restless black eyes, the cockey toss of head, and the
appealing flash of smile, on the first day of the mid-year semester.
This is Gilmartin “Gil” Ames, new boy in Katie Rose’s
Colorado town. Katie Rose, laboring
under a dual name and a weakness for victimized boys, falls hard. The fact that Gil speaks longingly of a beloved
horse he had to leave behind in his old home in California makes it official –
Katie Rose is infatuated.
Couldn’t the students
and teachers realize his showing off was just a cover for his inner insecurity
and unhappiness?
Gil is as shallow as a mud puddle, but Katie Rose is in
love. She’s far too enraptured to credit
any of the negative features everyone else in town mentions to her about him –
the whining, the laziness, the exaggeration.
Of course our heroine must realize Gil for what he is – but the
book has a two-piece method for that.
Katie Rose discovers Gil in an ugly, cruel crime – dognapping pets and
holding them for ransom – and is the unwitting vehicle of his downfall. For which she is castigated as a rat and
suffers mightily because she doesn’t fall out of love at all. Despite despising him, she feels locked into
her weakness for his stories, his many, many stories of neglectful mothers and
cruel fathers. Katie Rose, despising
herself for her inability to shrug him off, seizes the chance to accompany a
neighbor on a long car trip to California, to visit her uncle, only to discover
that Gil, using an assumed name, is also ride-sharing with the neighbor to get
out of town.
A prolonged, torturously hot and slow trip ensues, which
rips off the very last of Gil’s mantle of sad appeal.
Tedious Good Boys
Make Girl Craziness Understandable
Katie Rose, like so many misled heroines, has a pelican in
the form of a dreary, dull, relentlessly goody-goody Husband Material boy. In her case, dreamy Miguel. Oh, dreamy, boring Miguel, who is temporarily
out of the picture by virtue of visiting his dad in Hawaii. Katie Rose, having finally fled Romantically-Misunderstood-turned-Whiny-Jerk
Gilmartin, doesn’t do anything as crazy as take a moment’s breath, but
immediately turns to Miguel, who’s due back in a month. Oh, reliable Miguel!
For she knew suddenly
that a girl wasn’t supposed to feel maternal and protective – even apologetic –
for the boy she dates.
While true, this like so many old teen novels seems to feel
the only alternative is for a girl to feel apologetic to the boy she dates.
Because you know old Miguel is getting an armful of “Oh, I’m a silly thing! Let me confess!” the
minute he plods back into town.
Clothing porn
KR (I can only write that out so many times) opens the book
pining over another girl’s ‘it’ look:
The flecked tweed
skirt and soft pull-over of solid color to match. Right now that “Heather and
Knit” outfit was the most at Adams High.
She notes but disregards the very first warning sign of Gil’s
unstable, unreliable nature – his insanely cowboyesque and overly sharp clothing
choices.
His attire differed
noticeably from that worn by other boys at Adams. Instead of a T shirt, he wore
a tailored Western one of maroon wool broadcloth with white piping edging the
yoke and wide cuffs. It fitted tight
over his shoulders and ribs, and his creamy white pants were snugged even
closer over slim hips. The heels on his black half-boots added an inch to his
height; and he was already taller than average.
Inverted universe
The Belford clan boasts the usual single-parent household of
teen novels, but with the twist that the father is dead and their mother is alive. Even better, she’s a singer/pianist at a
nightclub/Italian restaurant.
Zany 1960s nostalgia
Negroes pop up, always in a positive and completely forgettable
way. Thanks, Negro Home Ec teacher! Hey, Negro fellow pupil who Katie Rose is
super cool about! Bye, now!
Irish-American relatives who faith and beggorah incessantly. I take umbrage at this fluffery – half my
family had accents like leprechauns after 40 years in the US, and they managed
not to lilt like a drunk on Saint Patrick’s Day.
The lovingly and perhaps overly impressed manner in which
the Foods of Italy are described in a scene at an Italian restaurant. Called Guido’s.
About the author
1895-1971
Born in Missouri, but spent most of her life in
Colorado. She rode horses, played sports and wrote from a young age. Her Beany Malone series was
her most popular. She married Albert
Herman Weber in 1916, at age 21, and had 6 children.
Books in the Belford series
Don’t Call Me Katie Rose (1664)
The Winds of March (1965)
A New and Different Summer (1966)
I Met A Boy I Used to
Know (1967)
Angel In Heavy Shoes (1968)
How Long Is Always? (1970)
Hello, My love, Goodbye (1971)
Sometimes A Stranger (1972)
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