From the Tiger Beat Archives, July 1970
Mark’s best friend in high school takes you along on another journey back to the days when Mark was the big man on campus and to the day Mark vowed he would never marry!
Mark Lindsay always had a special something with women. I’m not sure to this day what it was–good looks was certainly part of it, a blinding charm was another and a definite air of being different helped out!
Still, he seemed able to date the girls no one else could. His first real crush was for a girl named Delma. She was a petite sort of girl with long, flowing black hair. Her father was one of the largest ranchers in the county surrounding the small town of Cambridge, Idaho where Mark and I went to school.
GIRLS DRESSED DIFFERENT
Girls dressed much different than what we see today. Skin tight blue jeans with brightly patterned cowboy shirts, complete with pearl snap buttons were the standard in the high school with dresses being saved for special occasions such as dances at the school, infrequent as they were, or church. Leather beaded moccasins completed the entire.
Delma was the best looking girl in school and she and Mark made a striking couple. Romance in a school of less than 100 students is just a bit different from what one normally expects. Sitting together in study halls, holding hands and assemblies–not very daring under today’s standards but considered quite racy back down!
Mark and Delma went steady for several months. Mark the serious suitor, Delma the attentive girlfriend. The two were the picture of youthful happiness. Yet through it all, Mark was always looking for something else.
MARRIAGE LONG WAY OFF
We often talked about girls and our relating to them. When you are young in the world lives just down the paved highway, marriage is something you learn to leave to the old people in their 20s. Mark said many times that he didn’t ever want to be married until he found the “right” girl and he was sure that wherever she was, it wasn’t in the small Idaho town.
The day Mark and Delma broke up, I saw Mark at lunch. The first word of their split had sent waves through the school because everyone had just figured them to be the perfect couple. “It’s over,” Mark said simply, tossing an apple between his large, strong hands. “Delma and I have split up.”
I sat there not knowing really what to say. Mark’s face never displayed a bit of emotion and all that I could think of was to say something that would make my friend smile again. But what do you say?
For many days afterwards the Mark I had known refused to rise through the silent, brooding person who sat silently troubled in the study hall, or on the lawn at lunch time. Finally one day he broke his silence with a statement that has proven out to this day.
NEVER GETTING MARRIED
“I am never getting married. It’s just not worth it,” he said.
“This is pure foolishness, Mark,” I replied, hoping that by getting him to talk, I could somehow find the person that I had known. “You can’t go sour on marriage just because you split up.”
He turned his head slowly towards me and said with a chuckle in his voice, “I’m not sour on marriage, I just want to live my whole life not being tied down to just one person. The world is full of beautiful girls and I want to know just as many as I can before I decide to join the home cooking and kids on the lapsing.”
The kid was back!!
From that point on Mark played the field like a true champion, and he did it with class and grace. First there was the sophomore cheerleader. She was a beauty. Then the daughter of the man who owned the telephone exchange. It was a procession of one beauty after another.
GIRLS NEARBY
When he wasn’t going with girls in our school, we were driving to the two small towns nearby to scout out any that might catch our fancy. The drives left plenty of time for talk.
Mark’s idea of the perfect woman always started with long flowing hair. The color would often change but it was usually dark–but always long and hanging down her back.
“She has to be understanding,” he used to say. “I want a woman that I can come home to who can understand and feel the things that I feel and need without me spelling them out. Who relates to me, the me that I have hidden under my outward appearance.” That in itself was a tall order for any woman as Mark seemed to have a different side every time I saw him.
Double dating in a small town is an experience that has to be experienced before you can really understand what it is all about. Not a drive-in in town, no bowling alley, a single theater that usually showed movies months out of date. It is a scene that doesn’t really lend itself to big time romances!
WASN’T SO BAD
You drove around-and around-and-around. Or you parked. If you were lucky enough to work the old man for some bread you went to the flick. But all things considered, it wasn’t so bad. It forced you to relate to the girl you are with through real communication. And at that, Mark reigned supreme.
Mark had the coolest line that any Idaho girl ever had the privilege of hearing! When it comes to the world’s oldest war–man against woman, Mark was without equal. He could convince a girl on the first date that he had loved her from a distance for weeks. It was beautiful to watch him work and it made you just a bit envious as you struggled with your own approach. That natural charm he projects over the tube is real, not something manufactured by an agent. I know, I have seen it in action!
Marriage, well that’s just wasn’t made a part of Mark’s bag. After the unhappy breakup with his steady, he became more and more firmly entrenched in the role of the happy bachelor. And that provoked more than one heated discussion over sandwiches and Cokes.
Me? Well, I am just kid from the country who grew up believing that marriage and family was a natural progression of life. But not Mark!
PEOPLE NEXT DOOR
“You just kill off the real person waiting to get out of you,” he would blast. “You start living by rules that others have set down, you end up in the middle class suburbia with your whole life dictated by others. Take your vacation when we tell you, make your house payment on time, got to have a new car like the people next door.” Mark was convinced that it just was someone scene other than his.
“What about love and sharing and companionship and all the other things about marriage?” I would shoot back, “you can’t get that while you are a bachelor!”
“Okay granted. But when you find that one girl who operates on your wavelength, who relates to you as a person, who wants the same things as you do, then it isn’t the stereotype marriage that have become the sign of our time. Then she and you can do the things that are in your own plans for life!”
At this point, Mark would always begin to smile as he knew that his logic was sound.
“But what about love?” my defense would always begin to crumble at this point.
“Man, love is a word that is relevant,” Mark would say as he applied the clincher. “For me, love is not something that comes in a neat package over the tube or on the movie screen. It is something that is special to only her and I and something that we can’t define. It will be something that is ours and ours alone and when it comes along I will know it as well as I do my own hand.” Mark Lindsay. If you ever get tired of being a star, you should take up the art of philosophy. You would make a million!
Editor’s note: Mark was married Jaime from 1975 to 1981. He has been married to Deborah Brandt from 1989 to present.
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