In the spring of 1955, Joe came home on leave from the Navy. I was working after school and weekends at a small restaurant called The Halfway House. Joe and his friend Dennis showed up one night and parked outside and rang for a carhop. The jukebox was playing country music as I went out to answer the call. I was wearing a white dress with a full skirt, covered in big purple flowers. Joe told me later that he liked the way my skirt swished when I walked away. At any rate, he gave me a quarter to put in the jukebox and play some country song, probably Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” I think. After I went back in the restaurant, he and Dennis flipped a dime to see who would ask me about taking me home. I told them that I lived at the top of the hill. They didn’t believe me and waited til they saw my boss put me in the car and take me to the top of the hill. The next night, Joe showed up by himself and asked me for a date. The following Monday, one of my classmates told me to get him home early because she had a date with him the next night. I didn’t know what to think about that, but I didn’t like it much. On our first date, we went to the movie and I think that was about all we did. I didn’t see him again for a year.
It was still 1955. I was 17 years old, and it was the year of my high school graduation. It was probably March or April. An old family friend, who was 41 and had just divorced his wife decided he was going to pursue me. I couldn’t conceive of marrying the man, much less even consider him as a serious suitor. Anyways, following graduation that year my Aunt Earline and Uncle Ray came to Arkansas to get my cousin Arsenia, who was also graduating. Her family had moved to Arizona and left her to finish school in Arkansas. Uncle Duel, her father, had left his 3/4 ton pick-up with her to move her belongings to Arizona when she graduated, so Aunt Earline and Uncle Ray had come to help her with that. They asked Tommy and me to go with them.
After we left, the old friend went to my mother and asked her to go down to Arizona and get me to marry him. I wrote Joe who was stationed in San Diego at the time and told him about it, and in the second letter he ever wrote to me he said, “Why don’t you marry me, and let me take you home to my mother and let her take care of you?” I don’t remember what my response to that was, but we kept writing.
In the fall of 1956, Joe’s friend Dennis’ brother was killed in a jeep wreck in Japan. The family called Joe and asked him to accompany the body home for the funeral. I remember that Jane Morgan’s number one hit that year was on the radio. I had gone to lunch with a girl from the bank and we were walking back to work singing that song, and Joe drove by. My friend’s name was Darlene, and she was dating a boy named LeRoy of all things. Joe stopped and asked me for a date. We wound up double dating with Darlene and her boyfriend. When they picked me up, Joe was in his Navy uniform and white cap. He laid his head in that cap on the backseat of the car, and pretended to be asleep, and this went on the whole night. I thought at the time that it was going no where, and after the date I didn’t see him anymore.
So, two years passed and he came home and I was dating someone else, and so was he. However, one day at the bank where I worked I told all the girls that I was in the market for a new boyfriend. He called that night. It started a four year courtship, and during those fou years he told me that he wasn’t going to get married until his sisters graduated high school. As a matter of fact, he had five sisters still at home, and the youngest one being eight years old. So I decided to go to college. I came home for Christmas, and I was going through my hope chest when he came, and I jokingly asked him how Easter Sunday sounded for a wedding. That day he told everybody that we were getting married Easter Sunday. Surprise, surprise, surprise! He had decided to get married before his sisters graduated. We didn’t have any money, no plans, but I guess we just decided we’d get married and live off of love; because he gave his mother half his paycheck the day we got married. He borrowed $90 from his brother-in-law for our honeymoon and to live on for a month. Anyways, later on he told me I married him for a baby, and he married me for my money. Even though we made no plans and had no money and lived paycheck to paycheck for a lot of years, we’ve made it for 50 years…well, actually 49. That’s my marriage proposal story.
