The former Mrs. and Other Stuff

06/28/2006

I am in my second round at attempting to get the marriage thing right.  My first ended badly and the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of this writer.  Yesterday, June 27th, would have been the 42nd anniversary of that marriage’s humble beginnings.  I thought I might use this site to share some things about my former life, as well as my former wife.

She and I - don’t ask how or why I remember this stuff, I just do- met for the very first time in late June 1956 at Vacation Bible School at the Andrew Chapel Methodist Church in Baltimore.  She was ten and I was, of course, a handsome much older man of twelve.  I remember teasing her, and that was the extent of our contact until some years later. 

At Andrew Chapel we were both members of the Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF) and it had maybe twenty, twenty-five regular members.  In addition to the services we attended on Sunday, the members, a rather close knit group, would often get together at one or another member’s home for parties.  These parties were of the harmless variety: no booze, no drugs – just lots of Cokes, chips, dancing and maybe some harmless “making out.”

Late September 1960 I attended a party at Pat Pohler’s house, and Sandra and I slow-danced a few of times and talked about 1960s stuff, and so on… The following week, whatever day the 28th fell on, we started officially “going together.” And from that point until September 16, 1963, we were practically inseparable.  That date is etched in my gray matter as the date of another of my life’s errors, it is the day I entered the military (that story previously posted).  It is she who got me through the funk I found myself in for the four months I suffered the rigors of Air Force Basic Training and Technical School.

After Basic I was stationed in Upstate New York, one of the coldest places I have ever been, and I thought at the time it was God’s idea of a joke on me.  I got to Rome, New York about January 19, 1964, and managed by hook or crook to get back to Baltimore every chance I got to spend time with Sandra.  It was during one of these trips that Sandra and I decided we should marry, and shortly thereafter I presented her with a fabulous, dazzling one-quarter carat diamond ring that cost me $100.00, which I paid for in installments. The ring was stunning, and in a certain light at a certain angle you could even make out the stone.

Marriage for us was not easily accomplished.  Sandra was seventeen and a half and I was four months into my 20th year on this earth.  Both of us, as minors, were required to have our parents sign for us in order to get a marriage license.  They did, and on June 27, 1964 we were married in a small but very nice wedding at Andrew Chapel with lots of family and friends looking on.

After a very inexpensive three-day Honeymoon in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, we took off for Rome, New York and a furnished, one-bedroom, first-floor apartment at 115 Emerson Avenue, just outside the main gate of the Griffiss Air Force Base .  These luxurious accommodations cost us a neat $75.00 per month and included all utilities.  It was in a building with three other apartments, all of them also with military families in residence.  We did the best we could to make the place a home and settled in.  This was early July 1964.

Some minor issues between us came to the surface almost at once.  Sandra didn’t like my clothing lying all over place ( I kind of dropped it and wherever it landed, it stayed) , nor did she like the manner in which I hogged the majority of our bed.  She often reminded me she was not my mother.  One day I came home to find my formerly thrown about clothing in a box on the front porch, and another time she pinned a tape measure down the middle of the bed to delineate her side from mine.  I soon learned who was boss of the bedroom, the proper method of hanging up clothes and the location of the hamper.

Money also became a minor but important issue.  My military pay, included two checks each month for $32.10 and another as a housing allowance of $92.00.  That’s $156.20 per month to you math buffs.  After paying the rent and a life insurance premium each month, we had just about $64.00 for food and other stuff, including gas for the rest of the month.  We had a 1958 Plymouth sedan – you may remember some models, including this one, had a “Push-Button” transmission – and we would lend it out to a guy named John Dominco, and he would put gas in it as payment.  It helped to stretch our money. Looking back, life was a struggle, but then we thought we were doing the right things.  I bought my Camel cigarettes at the Base Exchange for $1.50 a carton.  We lived on hotdogs, pizza and Campbell’s soup.  Sandra didn’t have a job.  There were none to be had.  She made money babysitting some officers’ children, and we got by.  We were dumb enough to think we had the world by the gonads.  Life was a hell of a lot more simple then.

In August 1964 we bought a mixed breed puppy (mostly beagle) and named him Fred.  Mr. Honaker, our ever-so-nice landlord, shortly thereafter served us with a notice to vacate the apartment – our lease said no pets.  So in October of that year we moved again, this time to a nicer, more expensive furnished apartment, also in Rome at 409 Myrtle Street, in a home owned by Lincoln Melioris and his wife Barbara, at a nearly unaffordable rent of $95.00 a month.

All in all, we made it through the first couple of years in good shape.  I got a couple of promotions, and while the money wasn’t great, it was enough for us to get by.  We had more money for pizza, especially pizza from the Plaza in downtown Rome.  It is without a doubt the best pizza I have ever had, and there were months when pizza was our main meal of the day at least ten times…the rectangular Sicilian style at $3.00 each.  I think I was drawing about $324.00 a month when I was discharged in September of 1967.

Our oldest daughter came along in January of 1967.  She was born at the Base hospital and the total bill came to $8.75. [Side note:  Family, do I sound like my dad with all these numbers and dates?] Sandra began the birth process with a rush of water right in the middle of “Bonanza” and an episode called “Ponderosa Explosion.” Little Joe and Hoss were raising some rabbits and…well you get the drift...it got way out of hand, rabbits everywhere.  Anyway, I didn’t get to see the outcome…we headed off to the Base hospital.  Sandra checked in and they sent me home.  There was no place for expectant father’s to hang out at the hospital, and in those days no one was allowed in the birthing room except hospital personnel.  Baby White came the next morning at 7:37am, and someone at the hospital called me about 9:30 that morning to let me know I had a daughter. 

After the Air Force discharged me out in September 1967, we moved back to Baltimore and in with Sandra’s parents, with the idea of staying there while we saved money to pay cash for our own furniture and would then get our own apartment.  We lasted about two months.  Her parents, while being more than wonderful to us, also nearly drove us crazy.  We got the apartment, and went into debt way over our heads, but at least we were in our own place being our own masters.  Well, not entirely, the roaches in the infested apartment complex we chose ruled us for the nearly two years we stayed there.

We had another move in between the apartment and moving to Richmond, Virginia in 1971.  It was there in Richmond we really began to live and to make friends and had another daughter in 1972.  It was in Richmond my former bride developed a work ethic that far exceeded her underachiever husband’s.  She excelled as I maintained the mundane.  In Richmond we moved two more times before the marriage, under my direction, went south.

This morning via e-mail we both acknowledged yesterday’s date and what it would have been.  Sandra and I are acutely aware of the ties we have and the history that will inexorably bind us together for as long as we live.  I have admitted to her many times there will always be a part of me that will always love a part of her.  And in her own way she has communicated the same to me.  We, the people of this planet, are all connected to one another in some way.  In a way, I suppose that isn’t all bad.

And that is all I have to say about that.