still crazy after all these years

Stu asked me the other day how my parents met and I realized I didn't know that story. Or I've stored the memory in some part of my mind that I cannot access anymore. So I asked my mom and this is her version of the story:

Mom said that she was engaged to a guy she knew in high school. Gramma sent my mom to stay with an aunt for a month during the summer after she graduated from high school, and while mom was away, the fiance dated someone else. Of course, mom's girlfriends told her all about it when she returned, so she broke the engagement. (Dad had also been engaged to someone else and broken the engagement).

Mom said this was all shortly after WWII, and not many people had cars because of the rationing that had gone on during the war, but dad returned from the war with his buddy ("Gears"), who had been injured during the war, and dad and Gears both bought their own 1947 Oldsmobile--dad's was blue and Gears' was brown and cream and had been outfitted with hand controls so he could drive it. Mom said the guys drove those cars all over town every day after they got through working at the smelter. She knew dad, but at 27, he was a confirmed bachelor. She knew his friends and his family and had even gone to a dance or two with his youngest brother. Everybody knew everybody.

Mom said she asked her friend, JoAnn, to tell her boyfriend, Erk (yeh, I know, these names sound made up, but they are real)--anyway, she asked JoAnn to get one of Erk's friends to ask her on a date, but to make sure it wasn't that Billy J. JoAnn came over to mom's house one night and when JoAnn opened the door to see who was there, it was Erk with Billy J.

The guys came in and they all sat around and talked and apparently flirted a bit because dad pocketed a $5 necklace mom had bought and was wearing and he wouldn't give it back. He left with the necklace. A week later, she saw dad and told him she wanted her necklace back. Of course, he said she could have it back when she agreed to date him, so they set a date to go to a movie and he returned the necklace.

Mom said that dad started dropping by her parents' house after work and often they would go to eat at a local restaurant that had "really good chicken sandwiches." It was a place that dad liked to go to for a cup of coffee and it was the place where he talked her into drinking coffee by adding plenty of cream and sugar.

After a few weeks, mom told dad that if he wanted to see her, he could at least call to see if she was busy. A few days later, another guy asked her out on a date and she said yes. As mom prepared to leave with the new guy, Gramma asked what she should do when Billy showed up and mom said she'd told him that he needed to call her first. Dad showed up and was "furious" when she was out with someone else. They didn't see each other until she stopped at the SilverBell gas station that he worked at part time. They sat in his car and talked and listened to the radio. (She told me the name of "their" song that came on the radio, but I can't remember what it was--something about how much somebody missed somebody.)

I guess the rest is history. They started dating around Halloween, got engaged for Christmas (he put the ring in the pocket of a robe he bought for her), and were married on March 14, 1952.

I guess the amazing part to me is they are still together after all these years. On dad's birthday, my aunt (who married dad's youngest brother) and I were in mom's kitchen with her, and mom was telling my aunt about the most recent disagreement between mom and dad (the argument because she planned a surprise party and did so much work for it, which caused him to leave as the guests were arriving--yeh, I know, crazy). Anyway, mom said he was mad at her, and I said, yeh, they're fighting again, and my mom said they weren't fighting, and I said they fought all of the time, and mom said no we don't, and my aunt said yes you do, all of the time, and I said, yep, all of the time, and my mom said, "Fine Deal."

And that is the best example I can give of reality in mom's world.