Startin the Star. Chapter 38. Part One.
This is not a true story. Yet parts of it could have happened Startin the Star.
When Monica Startin walked down the street, men still looked at her. So did many women.
It wasn't only that Startin was still an attractive woman, even in her mid-fifties. Later they would ask themselves, "Wasn't she on television that woman? I'm sure I saw her on t.v. "
Indeed Monica Startin had been on television and on the radio. Like many British Columbians she came from elsewhere. She grew up in Winnetka, an affluent suburb of Chicago in Illinois. Startin went to private Catholic schools run by nuns. In summertime she played and lived in camps that catered to the children of the rich. "I have good memories of the Upper Michigan peninsula." she told her friends in Vancouver. "It was a lovely place to spend a summer." That's where Startin went to summer camp.
Of course, Startin didn't worry about the other side of Midwest America. Rough industrial towns like Gary, Indiana, and Hamtramk in Michigan or the tough poor high rise apartments on the South Side of Chicago didn't fly across her radar screen. She lived in a nice big house with one brother and an older sister. Her mother, a former nurse, helped by a maid, kept their ten room house spotlessly clean and neat. Monica's father, Ralph took the train downtown to work five days a week
in Chicago.
Chicago," said its famous poet, Carl Sandburg "is the city of big shoulders." In other words it had its rough side. A.J. Liebling once called Chicago, "The most completely corrupt city in America." When Monica was young, Mayor Richard Daley' political machine ruled the roost. And when writer and broadcaster Studs Terkel once told an Italian in Italy that he came from Chicago, the man said, "Bang, bang. Bang, bang." Chicago then as now had its share of violent gangs.
Monica's father didn't concern himself with such things. A big man who favoured dark three piece suits, he toiled away in a high rise skyscraper. He made good money in private business and made sure that his family was well-provided for. After high school, Monica went to Michigan State University in Ann Arbor. Michigan was nearly next door to Illinois. Both states bordered on Indiana. Illionois sat just to the west of Indiana. Michigan sat to Indiana's east. Startin wanted to put a little distance between herself and her family, but not too big a distance. For she was a bit of a rebel, even though as a teenager she'd entered beauty contests and won quite a few prizes.
Startin had long brown hair, big brown eyes and near perfect features.
She came to university in the early 1970's. American campuses were starting to cool off from the political heat of the previous five years. Yet Monica was still caught up in the now fading rebelliousness of the recent past. She wanted to see other parts of her country though as a child and adolescent she had travelled with her parents quite a bit. She and her new partner Donald bought a VW van and travelled across the U.S. For the first time in their lives they saw the waving wheat fields of Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. They thrilled to see the mountains of Colorado and sweated in the broiling deserts of Arizona.
Then they made a right turn, headed north and ended up in Vancouver, British Columbia. "Mum, it doesn't snow here all the time," Startin told her mother Elizabeth over the phone. "It just rains here all the time." Like many Americans, Elizabeth saw Canada as 'The Great White North' and was glad to know that Monica and Donald didn't have to battle snowstorms as Chicago residents sometimes did.
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