My wife Carolyn and I had a long-term, or traditional marriage.
December 13, 1963, the day we were married.
How it All Started
You know, I did something rather foolish when I was twenty-four, in 1963, I married. Now, I am not saying that in all cases marriage is foolish, it’s just that in our case the odds were against us.
It’s like this.
In early October of 1963, I went to a party for an old friend who was leaving town. I had decided to stop all of the party nonsense because I was concentrating on school, but I went to this one.
Well, it was just one of those things. I met this young woman. She was right pretty and had great legs.
And she had a brain.
We liked each other and started dating.
Friday the Thirteenth
So, not too long after Thanksgiving, we agreed to do “it” in two weeks, on a Friday. We shortly discovered that the date set was a Friday the thirteenth. A really swell start for a marriage.
We had known each other for about eight weeks. How much time does a man need to make up his mind?
Anyway, I was twenty-four, Carolyn was twenty-one, and we had a hundred bucks between us. Oh, yes, before we married, I found an apartment, if you can call it that, for fifty bucks a month. So we started off with fifty bucks hard cash. By the way, that apartment is another story in itself.
Carolyn had a job making about thirty bucks a week. Thank heavens it was shortly raised to forty bucks.
I was going to Marshall College and had a part-time job making about ten or twelve bucks a week. I was also a student assistant where I got in about five or six hours a week at six bits an hour.
And, lest we forget, Carolyn was a package deal. That is to say she had a daughter, Lisa, who was two and a half years old. I bought the package. I made every attempt to treat Lisa as my own daughter. And it seems to have worked. Lisa is sixty now and we are still very close.
Carolyn, Lisa, and yours truly, 1965.
The Wedding
Apparently, it is bad luck to be married on the half-hour. I didn’t know this. We were married at 6:30 p.m. Bad luck count, including Friday the thirteenth: two.
It is bad luck to see the bride before the wedding. But I picked Carolyn up and drove her to the church. Bad luck count, including Friday the thirteenth: three.
So, as you can readily see, luck was with us.
We had a very nice but small church wedding.
The Reception
Our reception, again rather small, was at the home of my sister, Winona.
It was a nice little family affair. We all enjoyed ourselves.
Carolyn and I left at around eleven that evening. I don’t remember why.
My sister kept Lisa.
The Honeymoon
This is a pip.
It was December in West Virginia. Did we go to Miami? No.
Did we decide to live it up and go to Las Vegas? No.
We had a weekend in that crummy apartment. If you can’t guess why, the reason was cash. You know, money, which was in short supply.
The reason we had a weekend honeymoon is quite simple. I had to get up very early on Monday morning, and I mean very early, to be at my first day of being a temporary Christmas mailman.
By the way, weather wise, it was a beautiful weekend, sunny and the temperature was about fifty.
When I crawled out of bed for my first day as a mailman, there was a foot of snow on the ground. It stayed cold and wet and snowy for the entire time I delivered packages. The last day was Christmas Eve. Twelve hours was a short day. On Christmas Eve, I was home about midnight. I think I made about 240 bucks. Great fun, big money.
If you envy my honeymoon, you are in big trouble.
The First Year
Really exciting.
I found a part-time job. I taught accounting and English at a business school. I didn’t make a lot of money. I could still go to school full-time.
I had been an Air Force instructor for three years, teaching electronics and computers. Somehow, electronics in the USAF and accounting at the business school didn’t quite match up. What I am telling you is that I stayed one chapter ahead of my students. The English I had fewer problems with.
I did that for one semester. I then got a job as a clerk in a drugstore.
Carolyn was a secretary at forty bucks a week.
Between us, we pulled in about sixty bucks a week. In 1964, we could get by on that. Of course, we missed out on a few luxury items such as a car and a television set.
Carolyn found a great place to keep Lisa while we worked and I went to school. It was operated by one of those civic clubs, the Rotary Club if I remember correctly. It was very nice and well run. For young couples such as ourselves, they charged two bucks a week. A Godsend.
Working Together
Our typical day was not one which middle-America typically experienced. Leaving out the gory details, it went something like this:
Carolyn, Lisa, and I would take a bus ride downtown, I would walk Lisa to daycare, walk to work, walk to school, walk to pick up Lisa, walk back downtown, take a bus ride home. As for walking, we are talking miles.
A lot of bus rides and a heck of a lot of walking. A little less walking if I could cough up a nickel for a bus transfer to get from downtown to daycare.
Sometimes, depending on my schedule, Lisa and I would meet Carolyn downtown and, if we had a spare seven cents, we would go to a little place and buy one small Coke and get three straws. Then the bus ride home.
Boy, oh boy, what fun.
A Change of Pace
Somewhere around March of 1965, I had a bad cold and didn’t go to school one day. I forget details but I guess that Carolyn had to handle getting Lisa to daycare.
Anyway, my parents lived a short walk away and I walked over. I picked up the morning paper. I saw that IBM was hiring. I was fed up with my day-to-day routine and always being broke.
To make a long story short, I took a job with IBM as a technician in Poughkeepsie, New York. By the way, I could neither spell nor pronounce Poughkeepsie.
This is important. Once with IBM, I could afford to buy a car and a small television set. And we could actually afford to go to a restaurant once in a while.
We lived in New York for three years. Then, in 1968, I had an opportunity to transfer back down South to IBM’s new place at Research Triangle Park, near Raleigh. I went South as fast as I could.
Down South
I won’t bore you with a bunch of everyday life from 1968 until today. Just a couple of things.
I went back to school, NC State University, in 1969 and graduated in 1971, at the age of 32. On that, Carolyn had to display her sense of humor. She said to me, “It took you 12 years to graduate from high school and 14 years to graduate from college.”
Oh, before I forget, something a bit funny. I was married on Friday the thirteenth. My college degree is dated August 13, 1971, which just happened to be a Friday the thirteenth.
I retired from IBM in 1992 and started my own small, very small, company. I retired from that in 2002. And now, I am officially a bum.
Oh, yes, a minor detail. We have two daughters, nine grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren.
My family in 1977, HD, Laura, Lisa, Carolyn.
Long Term Marriage: Looking Back
HD and Carolyn, I was about 50.
Carolyn and I did all right considering from where we started. Fifty bucks and a crummy apartment.
In later years, Carolyn and I would talk about where we started and where we were finishing. The thoughts evoked smiles. Two paid-for cars, a rather nice paid-for home, a pretty decent investment portfolio, and no debt.
It all worked out right well. And I couldn’t have done it without Carolyn.
You know, it is amazing what a man can accomplish with a little work, a little effort, and the support of his wife. It takes two to make a long-term marriage work and I had a wonderful partner.
My wife, Carolyn, died on April 4, 2017.
If You Are Interested
I have another blog on my website which I wrote on the second anniversary of my wife’s death, April 4, 2019. I called it “Me and My Shadow” and it is serious and rather personal. It is about handling the death of my wife after 53 years of marriage.
I swore in that blog that I would never get that personal again. I intend to stick to that.
If you are interested in that blog:
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