From the minute we started the Women’s Literary Society, people began asking questions. Because I worked at the post office—especially when I was stuck doing counter duty—people grabbed the opportunity to quiz me down. A day didn’t go by without a customer asking, “Can I have a four-cent stamp, please? And by the way, what is this Women’s Literary Society you belong to?”
They didn’t want to join us. They just wanted to know what the heck we were doing.
I felt defensive. I liked my new friends and I didn’t feel it was right for people to expect me to defend them or explain why I spent time with them. It was my business. We were a little band of oddballs trying to survive in a time and place where sameness was revered. Because of my divorce, and the mean way I’d been treated, I had more compassion and was more open to different kinds of people. And I had less patience for small-town people who thought they knew everything and wanted to tell everybody else how to live.
Even with the part-time job and our literary society gatherings, I sensed that Jackie was still not happy. I was beginning to worry that one day she’d be up and gone. But then one little event intrigued her. Of all things, what captured her attention was the fall fund-raiser for the Lions Club. For a two-week period each year in Naples, women could walk up and kiss any man, single or married, who grew a beard or mustache. Since the men who kept shaving during those two weeks had to pay a “fine,” this meant there were a lot of hairy faces available to be kissed.
Most of the ladies of Naples did not, of course, partake of the opportunity. It was just a game. But then along came Jackie. At last, something about Naples that Jackie could like, and she took full advantage. One of the men she had her eye on happened to be the owner of our one-and-only local radio station, WNOG, “Wonderful Naples on the Gulf.” His name was Bill McIntyre, he was in his late twenties, and Jackie had remarked on more than one occasion that he was “Cary Grant cute.” She walked right up to him and planted one right on him, almost knocking him over. This happened right under the bank clock. She told us later that his mustache tickled. Anyway, he must not have minded, because after the initial surprise, they ended up having a conversation. He knew she worked part-time at the newspaper, because the Naples Star was right next door to his radio station and there was some sharing of information between the two, like calendar items and ad copy. So he had seen her around.
But he had never heard her voice. Suddenly he was all business. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a wonderful voice?”
Jackie thought he was flirting. “Why, yes, they have.”
“I mean a wonderful radio voice,” he said.
“Oh,” Jackie said. “No, I don’t believe they have.”
“Well, you do.” Jackie said you could practically see ideas hatching in his brain. “I’m looking for someone to do a late show—midnight to two a.m.”
“Is that so?” Jackie asked.
“The show would be taped. You would come into the station anytime and record your intros and voice-overs. My station manager doubles as the sound engineer and he would handle the rest.”
“Well, that’s a lovely idea, but haven’t you noticed my New England accent?”
“It’s your voice I’m talking about. If you speak slowly enough, you should be able to hide the accent. Come to the station and we’ll do a test.”
Jackie liked the sound of that. It seemed glamorous and adventurous.
“Okay,” she said. “But what kind of show? Would I be introducing music?”
“Yes, sort of a Good Night, Naples show.”
“Would I get to pick the music?”
“Sure,” he said.
“And could we keep my identity a secret, just to keep people guessing?” If there was one thing Jackie loved, it was intrigue.
“Wow, great idea!” he said. “So the only people who would know are me and the station manager! Now come by the station and let’s do that test.”
Jackie had to go to the Winn-Dixie to get the fixin’s for a birthday dinner for the twins, but she didn’t think this was a good image for a budding radio star. “I have an important errand I must do,” she said. “How about later, like four o’clock?”
“Make that four thirty, ’cause everyone else will be gone by then.”
“Oh,” said Jackie. “You mean so we’ll have some privacy.”
Jackie admitted later that she’d gone too far. That poor young man blushed so hard, he turned purple. “I mean, if we’re going to keep your show a secret,” he stammered.
“Right,” Jackie said. She was beginning to regret the kiss. This needed to be a professional relationship. A tenminute conversation under the bank clock had turned into an extraordinary opportunity.
Well, four thirty could not come fast enough, and once she was seated in the sound room behind a microphone, she was in her glory. With coaching from her new best friend, Bill, Jackie did her sultry best to ditch the Boston accent.
“It’ll get easier, and we can always retape,” said the station manager, a wiry fellow with a deep tan who had once served in the Canadian Air Force, where he had learned his trade. Around town he was always referred to as “that guy from Canada who works at the radio station”—or, for short, “Canada”—even though he’d lived in Naples for twenty years or more. Jackie, who could not bring herself to call him Canada, learned that his real name was, in fact, Charles and became the only person in town who used the poor man’s given name. Apparently thrilled by this development, Charles took an immediate liking to Jackie. Since she had already bonded with Bill, she now had the approval of the only two people she needed. The truth is that in a few short hours—somewhere between the bank clock, the aisles of Winn-Dixie, and a stop at home to put food in the fridge and leave a quick note for the kids—she had fallen deeply, desperately in love with the idea of having a radio show.
Since she had passed her audition with flying colors, the rest would come easy. Within a few days she had chosen her theme song, a choral rendition, with full orchestra, of a sentimental Henry Mancini ballad called “Dreamsville.” The song was heard frequently on the TV series Peter Gunn, a show about a private eye that had gone off the air a year earlier.
Bill and Charles were thrilled. This would be her signature song. They wrote a press release, which was published in the newspaper where Jackie continued to work part-time: “New Show on WNOG to Feature Mystery Temptress.”
That last word was Jackie’s idea. Bill thought temptress might incur the wrath of the Baptists, maybe even the Methodists, but he went along with it. And he started promoting the show like mad.
The launch of a late-night radio show—one with a hint of honest-to-gosh sex appeal, even—was a thrilling prospect in Naples. Late at night, we couldn’t pick up anything except Havana. The only exception was Saturday nights, when we could usually get WSM all the way from Nashville and listen to the Grand Ole Opry.
The first night of the new show, I stayed up and tuned in like everyone else. There were a few seconds of music—the “Dreamsville” song—followed by a woman speaking in a low, sexy voice, each syllable drawn out.
“Hello . . . This is Miss Dreamsville . . . bringing you beautiful music . . . to soothe the soul . . . and lull you to sleep.” Like everyone else in Naples, I was racking my brain trying to figure out who in the world was this woman? A few ideas went through my head. Not one of them was Jackie.
I remember the very first songs she played—“Crazy,” sung by Patsy Cline, followed by Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa,” and ending with Elvis crooning “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” Then the woman with the sexy voice came on again. “Did you like that, Naples? . . . Would you like some more?” And so it went, until she signed off at two a.m., saying, “Good night . . . Naples,” and a few bars, again, of “Dreamsville.”
The next morning, Naples was in an uproar. Every Godfearing soul wanted to know—had to know—who Miss Dreamsville was. This was the most exciting thing that had happened since a lifeguard from Everglades City got chewed up by a shark and lived to tell about it. Heck, we’d never had a radio show after midnight, and this was the first time there’d been a woman on the air at WNOG.
At the Edge of Everglades House of Beauty, the proprietor, Bunny Sanders, insisted she had the inside track on figuring out Miss Dreamsville’s identity. “I know every woman in this town,” she’d say in a loud voice that contradicted her feminine name. “I will be the first to figure this out.”
If the women in town were curious, the men were obsessed. Teenaged boys and young unmarried men, especially, were convinced that Miss Dreamsville was drop-dead gorgeous, like Ursula Andress or Raquel Welch. We’d hear them talking all over town: maybe, they’d say, she was a former Swamp Buggy Queen or even a Miss Florida.
Across from the side entrance to the Book Nook was Ray’s Barbershop, a tiny building that appeared exactly square, like a sugar cube. Ray’s was communications central for the menfolk in town, and when the windows and door were left open—which was nearly all the time—you could hear the men gossip. In the days before air conditioning was common, there were few secrets.
“Oh, that Miss Dreamsville!” one old man would say. “What do you think—blonde or brunette?”
Then another old man would say, “I’d sure love to get my hands on Miss Dreamsville.”
And a third voice—maybe the barber’s—would say, “Ha! You wouldn’t know what to do with a woman like that.”
Jackie proved very good at keeping her secret, even from her family. She figured that taping her intros at different times, on different days of the week, would help confuse people. Since she still worked part-time at the newspaper, no one would be suspicious if she was seen near WNOG.
Personally, I was relieved that this mysterious Miss Dreamsville had become the center of attention, rather than our literary society. The questions about what we were reading and why (and always with the assumption that we must be doing something wrong) stopped overnight. All anyone could talk about was Miss Dreamsville, and that was fine with me.