How I Met Your Father

Sorry for the use of the title of the TV show.

First you need to hear my circumstances.  I graduated from high school a year early.  Mainly because I could and I wasn’t having much fun. My Sunday School teacher also taught at the school and her daughters were my main friends.

My parents sent me to business school in Columbus, OH for a nine month course in how to be a secretary.  I lived in a boarding house along with twenty-nine other girls. I shared a room, got one-eighth of a refrigerator shelf, shared a bathroom (I don’t remember with how many girls). 

At that time there was an Air Force base nearby, I think it was called Lockbourne.  Some of the girls had been there longer and were always looking for a blind date for some guy.  I went on some dates with different guys.  Several of them talked about “Brownie”. 

They talked about borrowing money from Brownie.  So I asked to meet Brownie.

His circumstances were that he was far from his home in Vermont and already not so happy with military service. 

The business school was having a halloween party and one of my girlfriends was going with her Air Force boyfriend.  They arranged for Brownie to be my blind date to the halloween party.

We danced well together, we both grew up on farms.  He was from Vermont and had three sisters.  I had a brother and two sisters. 

He was in the process of having his lower teeth replaced by dentures, I already had a full set of dentures.  Later we joked that all our children were born toothless due to this.

At one point he asked to get out and the driver stopped and let him out and drove on.  He eventually turned around and went back and got him.

What I didn’t know was that Rod had a girl back home and they were engaged to be engaged.

That took a while to resolve.  I told him to make up his mind and let me know when he had decided.  In the meantime he had wrangled an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at my house.

This was a time in the past when a young man in uniform could hitchhike safely and quickly.  I rode the bus home, about a three hour trip.  He went with me when I got on the bus and met me when the bus arrived.

I had explained to him that my family didn’t do anything special for Thanksgiving, but he said it would be better than cafeteria food.

So he met my family.  The way potatoes were served at our table, they were peeled, boiled and put in a bowl on the table. Each person took one, mashed it with their fork and added what they liked, mostly butter and salt.  My sweet little sister quickly counted the potatoes and people and concluded that there was one for each person and one extra.

We dated week-ends and sometimes Rod even borrowed a car. We spent time in Isaly’s ice cream shop with one coke and two straws. He bought a miniature chess set and taught me how to play.

He finally wrote the letter to his girl back home breaking up with her.  She was friends with his Mother which didn’t help my case at all.  It eventually resolved itself.

I received my engagement ring on April 1st and we were married on May 18, 1958.   You kids came along in 1963, 1966, and 1968.

That was a really really long time ago. Maybe this is already…

Later….

    

 

 

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