Day Two - Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island

Today was another great day.  I saw one of the many things that made my NYC bucket list.  No, it wasn't the Statue of Liberty - although she's really inspiring - it was Ellis Island.  Since 100 million of us are descended from someone who came through this processing center, I really wanted to get the feel of this place.  I remember when it was restored - not rebuilt, and I also wanted to see what kind of job was done.  I think the Ellis Island experience is crucial in our understanding about ourselves.  Almost all of us come from somewhere else.  The ones who came were desperate, adventurous, determined, and willing to make a leap of faith that their life would be better if they got on those ships.  It was a journey into the unknown.  Most didn't speak English, many couldn't read or write, a great number arrived with nothing except what they carried, a strong back and a willingness to work.  The streets were not literally paved with gold, but for a surprising number those American streets became figuratively paved with gold - opportunity they couldn't hope to even glimpse where they came from.

Everyone was terrified of being 'sent back'.  Of the over 12 million people processed at Ellis Island, only 2% were deported back to where they started.  However, lots of people were detained - mostly for health reasons - a child with the measles could hold up an entire family for weeks.  Lots of Ellis Island was devoted to getting people well, so they could move on.  The bureaucracy functioned well here aided by private aid societies.   

I was struck over and over today how little has changed.  We are still the shining beacon of hope.  We still have a strong anti-immigration sentiment today.  Immigrants arrive today eager to find those golden streets.  I think you will find the pictures tell the story today.

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/DayTwoStatueOfLibertyAndEllisIsland?authkey=Gv1sRgCKzd8Iqrs637Ug#

New York City - Day One

Our first day in New York City was glorious.  Yesterday when we arrived, it was 93 degrees and you couldn't even see Manhattan from the bridge we crossed at the southern end of the island on our way into Brooklyn.  I couldn't imagine going to the top of the Empire State Building to see smog.  It was muggy and miserable.  However, the place we rented for the month is really lovely.  Everything is comfortable, and we are so close to a great subway line.  We felt really, really triumphant to have driven here.  All I'm saying is that driving the freeways/tollways isn't really that different from any big city experience, but the city streets are something else entirely.

Today we got up raring to go.  We decided last night our first stop would be Times Square.  It's just as iconic as it looks in the the pictures.  Even better, a weather front blew through in the middle of the night, and we woke up to bright blue skies without a hint of smog, and the temperature was almost 30 degrees cooler - thank heaven!  We decided our first event would be a Grayline Tour of "downtown".  This was 3 hours on the top of an open air double decker bus while a cute native New Yorker tour agent entertained us with his 'patter', and we got to see all of the famous uptown sites.  I won't bore you with the list.  You can just look at the pictures.

When we finished the tour, it was obvious that we should take advantage of the smog free skies and go to the Empire State Building.  We were warned of the horrendous lines - which didn't exist.  The Empire State Building does not disappoint.  It's a first class attraction.  The building itself is a gorgeous example of art deco architecture and looks as fresh today as when it was built in 1933.   The views today were absolutely calendar picture quality.  Of course, on one side of the building, the wind was blowing about 40 mph - literally.  Small children could have been picked up and wafted over the railing it was so strong.   It was worth the wind to see the views.  The pictures speak for themselves.

My observation about our first day:  New Yorkers are friendly.  They go out of their way to help you.  The subway is safe, unbelievably clean considering the number of people who use it,and an amazing transportation triumph.   9/11 is still on every one's mind.  Ten years later, this is still very, very personal to New Yorkers.  They are no where near being finished with this.  I don't think anyone has 'moved on'.  There's a new tower being constructed - it's going to be 1776 feet high, and you can watch everyone checking out the progress of the construction.   The variety in New York must be seen to be believed.  I'm talking nationalities, language, design styles, merchandise, and building styles.  You hear about it all the time:  New York - one of a kind.  Well, it really is. 

Check out the pictures.  Tomorrow we've decided the Statue of Liberty is calling us.

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/DayOneGraylineTourAndEmpireStateBldg?authkey=Gv1sRgCIG6gLHvoK2SlgE#

Crossing Midwestern America

We left Tulsa and started off across the Midwest. Surprisingly, I'd never actually driven across Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Theoretically I knew that the 'Midwest' was considered the first real agricultural heaven of the country, but for some reason the farmland surprised me. I realize that makes no sense.

First, we came through Joplin right after the tornado that destroyed about 50% of the town. We didn't stop because the very last thing those people need are looky loos. However, driving Interstate 40 we actually drove across the path of the tornado (the pathway of destruction was about a half a mile wide). There were buildings flattened, as well as very large trees simply uprooted as if a giant hand came down and plucked them out of the ground like annoying weeds. The large green interstate signs were snapped at the base supports looking just like they had been chainsawed down. I saw the pictures of the town on CNN, and I'm just as glad to have not seen that area of the town.

We've been staying on the Interstate highways because it's easier to pull the trailer on these types of roads, but we've run into a fascinating road that I'd love to drive. It's U. S. 40. This is called the 'National Highway'. It is a road that was commissioned by Congress in 1806 and signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson. The purpose was to fund the building of a road from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ohio River to facilitate settlement and commerce. It was extended across Ohio (where we have run into it in Zanesville), and was originally planned to cross Missouri, but the railroad expansion and extension across the country made the National Road obsolete. It wasn't until 100 years later that President Eisenhower signed into law funding for the Interstate Highway system. Interstate 70 through the Midwest parallels U. S. 40, and the purpose of the Interstate system was pretty much the same goals that were set forth in the early 1800's.

We came straight through downtown St. Louis, and we saw the Arch in the distance, but didn't stop since dragging the trailer on a Saturday down into the heart of the tourist district is really a non-starter. It seemed that immediately upon leaving St. Louis and crossing into Illinois, we were in farmland. For some idiotic reason, I never paired 'Illinois' with 'farms'. I guess I thought Chicago covered the entire state. The land in Illinois was really flat - and the farms were covered with yellow rockets - a type of opportunistic wild mustard that covers the fallow fields in a glorious blanket of creamy yellow. They were really gorgeous, but the locals consider them a big nuisance and a 'weed'.

We saw one interesting thing in Illinois - the homestead of Abraham Lincoln's father. Drake jokes the name of this blog should be "Abe Lincoln Never Lived Here". That is true. This homestead of his father's was taken up after Abe had left home. However, he visited there frequently when his lawyer circuit took him close. This site (further off the road than Drake really wanted to drive, but it was worth it.) shows the contrast between two types of farms common in the 1840's. Lincoln's homestead was subsistence farming which raised only enough food to feed whoever lived on it. The planting was by hand, and usually only covered a few acres. The cabin was constructed of rough-hewn logs and was small (two rooms). The whole point of this type of living was to be independent and to owe no one.

As a contrast, another 1840's home was brought to the site which modeled the life of a 'progressive' farmer who has invested in the new steel plow, subscribes to agricultural journals, lives in a clapboard house, and is interested in making money from his farm. His house is larger and full of items that can't be made on the actual farm. We talked to the 'farmer and his wife'.

We were lucky enough to tour this place during historical re-enactment. They had several people dressed in period costumes hanging around the buildings and pretending that you were visiting them in 1840. When we told them we were from Texas, they commiserated with us over that dreadful 'Santa Ana'. It was fun, and you should check out the pictures at https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2011DriveToNewYorkCity?authkey=Gv1sRgCKTCipfVpfeLCA##

Back on the road we encountered an appalling situation in Indiana. First, the worst road we have driven on during this trip. Interstate 70 across Indiana is horrible - full of potholes and buckled road surfaces. I've driven on the lowliest farm to market road that was a better surface than this Indiana Interstate. Even worse, they have closed their 'welcome' center - even stopped people from being able to use the restrooms. There were actually travelers (men) peeing against the back wall of the building! If you are a woman, then you were just SOL.

We skipped Columbus, Ohio and pushed on to Zanesville because I was very excited about the pottery in this area. This is the home of the Weller, Roseville and McCoy potteries (to name but a few). This area is known for its clay, and the pottery industry (both functional and art pottery) was centered here for 100 years. Zanesville is where the Licking and Muskingham Rivers come together it is known (especially by aviators) as the home of the Y Bridge that spans both Rivers. We were disappointed to discover that in small towns EVERYTHING is closed on a holiday, so it being Memorial Day we couldn't see the museums and still functioning potteries.

This trip across the Midwest has convinced me that I wouldn't want to live here for any period of time - it's all just farmland. The winter weather is super cold, and the summer weather isn't a picnic either - it's about 93 today and the humidity is topping 80%. Is there no happy medium? I seem to either be enduring 7% humidity or 80%. Tomorrow we will be in Pennsylvania and the day after that, New York. It's going to be fun!

Hey, Buddy, I See that Butt!

I'm officially part of the Green Mountain Energy Clean-Up Team that participates in the Keep Austin Beautiful program. That means that I spent a couple of hours on Saturday morning picking up litter along a seven block area of Rio Grand Street in Austin. That portion of the street is Green Mountain's litter territory. I was the butt lady. I found that to be poetic justice. Saturday I picked up 800 cigarette butts that had been discarded in the aforementioned 7 block area. My fellow team members picked up another 2000 or so. Isn't that appalling? We collected the cigarette butts separately (in a big zip lock) with a tally sheet taped onto the front. This is apparently an adjunct project of Keep Austin Beautiful (pretty self-explanatory organization and project).


I realized that as a former smoker I was guilty of discarding butts on the street. For some reason there was and still is this amazing disconnect between cigarette butts and litter. I wouldn't drop so much as a gum wrapper on the ground, but thought nothing about casually dropping a butt, grinding it with my foot and walking on. I will admit that I got a bit less casual toward the end of my smoking career, but I can't even count the number I just casually tossed on the ground over the number of years that I smoked.


One thing struck me today. We keep limiting the places it's acceptable to smoke, so that we are forcing the smokers (and there are about 20% of us who do continue to smoke daily) to smoke on the street. However, there's nothing provided for butt disposal. Are you supposed to put it in your pocket? I used to carry a zip lock for my filters - at times - like when I was camping. Even I knew that it wasn't right to toss a butt in the forest.


I can tell you that there are at least two smokers who regularly walk up and down Rio Grand in Austin. How? Well, there were two distinctive brands of cigarettes whose butts were somewhat 'new' cigarette butt litter spaced out along the seven blocks. I can also tell you that the unsmoked tobacco goes away pretty fast, and even the paper that covers the filter goes away pretty fast, but that filter NEVER goes away.


The Green Mountain team picked up not just cigarette butts, but also all the litter along their territory. We managed to fill some pretty big bags which tells me there are still people out there who think it's OK to toss garbage on the ground. Here's a clue: It's not OK to toss anything that's not biodegradeable onto the ground. I can also tell you that picking up litter for two hours will certainly activate your litter radar. As we've walked all around the Austin downtown and South Congress area, I've been seeing litter, especially those damn cigarette butts EVERYWHERE. Give ALL of us a break: Make it your person mission to never throw anything on the ground that someone else has to pick up.

Going Home Again

Returning to Hurst after a year, I wondered how it would feel. The short anwer is that it didn't feel that different. It seemed like we had been on a really long vacation. I suppose that feeling will ebb as we spend more and more time away from the DFW area. We did live there for 20 years, so, even after being away for almost a year, it felt natural to be back there. There were a few changes, but nothing really major.

Coming back to Houston has been a very different experience. We lived in Houston from 1972 to 1983. This is where we became adults. I told Drake I can remember to this day driving into Houston at the peak of rush hour in August of 1972 in our 'new' 1964 Oldsmobile '88 - a big honking white car with red faux leather interior (aka VINYL) I was to discover this was the worst possible interior car material for hot humid Houston. My hands were clutching the steering wheel so hard, and my heart was pounding, and I was sitting bolt upright. I'd never seen this many cars or this many lanes of traffic in my life. It seemed as if everyone but me knew which lanes to be in and when. I had it easy - Drake was driving the U-Haul Truck in the rush hour mess. It was not an auspicious introduction to Houston, but as I was to discover - prophetic.

In 1972 as in 2011 the car and the freeway rule Houston. It was surprising how quickly the configuration of the freeway system came back - especially to Drake. We have had no trouble navigating around town, and we've used quite a bit of the town while we've been here. That said, being here has been somewhat like Alice Through the Looking Glass. Things seem familiar, but they are oh so different. Time marches on, and Houston has subtly changed in many ways in the 25+ years since we've lived here.

First, the freeways - lots of them aren't 'free' anymore. We got onto Interstate 10 on Saturday and drove 30 miles to Katy, Texas - sort of the outer limit of western Houston's bedroom communities. Katy was a sleepy little town, certainly not a suburb of Houston in 1972. Interstate 10 was called 'The Katy Freeway" since if you drove west out of Houston, that was the first town. I-10 in the 21st century was a curious combination of freeway, tollway and HOV lanes. It was a vast improvement over the old 2 lane "Katy Freeway", however; when there are 6 - 8 lanes of traffic, some of them toll and some of them free, it gets a bit overwhelming. Drake's last office in Houston was at "Eldridge Road", a far western exit off the I-10 freeway. His office building was pretty much surrounded by fields and it was darn hard to find a place to eat lunch. Now it would be hard to find a field for 10 miles in any direction, and sleepy little Katy is a bustling suburb with no space between it and Houston.

It's very disconcerting to recognize all the names of the exits on all the freeways, but to discover you have no idea what is there anymore. For instance, The Summit - a very cool NBA venue for the Houston Rockets is now owned by Joel Osteen and is the biggest church in the USA. (How's that for strange?) So many things have been replaced or are just gone that when I saw something I recognized, it was like running into an old friend.

I think the changes in and around Houston have been positive. Their Museum of Fine Arts has evolved into two separate buildings connected with a cool tunnel filled with artwork. We went to three first rate exhibits today - one from the National Gallery of Art and two other modern artists. All three blew me away. (Don't you just love it when you get to see a new artist that blows your skirt up?) The Houston restaurant scene which was always way better than Dallas, Fort Worth or San Antonio is really, really exciting and better than ever. We've gotten to eat at some excellent establishments here - a welcome change after Arizona, home of the chain restaurant and proud of it. Minute Maid Park and the new Houston Rockets Arena is slowly transforming the concrete and glass empty canyons of downtown into a real neighborhood.

Overall I've felt like Rip Van Winkle while I've been here in Houston. Part of me feels I just lived here yesterday, and the changes are shocking. Then, I step back and realize that I've been gone from this town for over 25 years and, of course, it's changed. I feel both at home and a visitor at the same time. This has been a tutorial in the maxim that "Everything changes". In Houston's case, it seems to be for the better.

Farewell, Sun City

We are getting ready to leave Sun City, so it's time for a critique about what life has been like here. Sun City has been somewhat different than what I anticipated when I moved in.

Now I know from personal experience that most people settle into a routine that they endlessly repeat. We eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time each day (usually). That's probably the most common routine we fall into because work tends to dictate a lot of our routines including our eating habits. When I came here, I expected people to be pretty freewheeling since they don't' go to a job at the same time each day. If anything, the Sun City people are even MORE regimented than the rest of us. We've visited with more people who have their every day minutely planned. If it's Tuesday at 2:48, most people we've met know exactly where they will be and what they will be doing. Most people here don't practice time flexibility. I think they are missing one of the best things about not having to go to work, and that's spontaneity. Not very much 'seat of your pants' here.

I'm also discovered that Sun City is the ultimate small town. There seems to be endless gossip here. I'm certain we have been discussed thoroughly. Everyone knows everyone. If I lived here 5 years, I'd see people I knew everywhere I went. That, of course, is both good and bad. I've also surmised that Sun City (or 'Sin City', the tongue in cheek nickname) is also a hotbed of sexual intrigue. This fuels quite a bit of the gossip. The women here seem to fall into two categories: a) still interested in sex and b) not interested. ALL the men are interested.

This is also the male generation that expects to be taken care of: meals prepared, house cleaned, laundry done, etc. They don't seem to understand that they don't have that much to trade for the above mentioned services any longer. I think the real fuel for the gossips are the women who fall into the (a) group, but have no intention of ever taking care of anyone besides themselves again. One woman I've met summed it up this way: People (meaning men) are looking for a nurse, a purse, a floozy, and someone who can drive at night. This creates a bit of tension as you can imagine. I met one woman who recently remarried. When I asked her why? Her reply was, "WELL, I certainly couldn't just live with him!" (All my close friends would have been so proud of me; I didn't say, "Why not?" or "You could just sleep with him and send him home." ) I guess Sun City just proves that you're never too old to have sex be part of your life, or to be hung up about it. It's sort of heartening.

Another feature of Sun City which I so appreciate after our housing situation in Washington is that it is so quiet here. All movement pretty much stops here when the sun goes down. (See above: Hardly anybody drives at night.) The major drug stores (CVS, Walgreen's) only stay open until 8 pm! I think the grocery store stays open until 9. All the restaurants are closed by 9 pm. Some of the businesses close by 4 pm. In the summer - the season which is approaching - and boy, can you start to feel it - life goes on the early schedule. I've been amused to see advertisements for garage sales in Craigslist that start at 6am and close at noon. Everyone cheerfully admits that no one goes out after 10 am from mid June thru August. Sun City just becomes empty. People have already started leaving for the summer. First to leave are the people who 'go home to do their taxes'. They are gone. I guess no one has told them they can 'do their taxes anywhere'. Instead they are headed back to the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Minnesota to enjoy the last part of the snow season.

Then, there's the second group of people who leave. The ones who live here permanently but who escape during the summer. These people leave in June. One whole crowd goes to Logan, Utah to Utah State University. Someone at the University had a brainstorm and decided, why let all that student housing sit empty in the summer? They rent out their student apartments to seniors for peanuts during the summer and have a whole program called "Summer Citizen" they have designed for the seniors. I've investigated it, and it looks like fun. It's summer camp for the elderly. They have hikes, field trips to attractions, fitness centers, swimming, and you can even sit in on summer classes at the University for $10 a class. I want to go.

People here socialize based on what they like to do. Bridge players hang with bridge players, pickle ball players with pickle ball players, lawn bowlers, pinochle players, tap dancers, jewelry makers, sewers, quilters, weavers, potters, golfers, bowlers, even theater people - the list of what you can do here is endless. You could be busier here than if you had a full time job with 20 hours of overtime attached to it. I think that's one of the reasons people are so regimented - they have to be to squeeze in all their activities. To top it all off, everything is within 15 minutes of where we live, and we live at the far southern boundary of Sun City. You could literally be 5 minutes away from everything if you live closer to the geographic center.

The landscaping here has surprised me. It's really very beautiful. Because Sun City is 50 years old, the landscaping is full blown desert with touches of citrus. The cactus study I did earlier this year was really fun. Drake is constantly amused when we drive around and I call out - there's an Engleman's Prickly Pear or a Senilis! Another surprise is they actually have spring here. All the cactus and wanna be cactus are blooming, but you'd better be fast because these plants don't put out a lot of effort maintaining blooms. Some blooms appear and vanish with a day or so.

Another vegetation surprise are the roses. They have a rose garden here which was dry sticks in March and by mid April was awash with blooms of all varieties. That's another club: The Rose Club which maintains common area roses like the Rose Garden, and you can actually have them plant specific roses and dedicate them as memorials. I've seen people at the Rose Garden with friends pointing out specific bushes and saying things like, "I had this one planted in memory of my mother." By far the planting of choice in Sun City is citrus. The trees fall into two groups: ornamental (the fruit is all rind), and actual fruit trees. All the trunks are painted stark white. This is not just decoration - it's a special plant paint that allows the trunk to breathe, but at the same time reflects the summer heat, so the trunks won't crack when it's 115 degrees.

The unregulated hobby in Sun City is garage saling. Some people like to run them and they run a garage sale every day for weeks. A few of these people run their own business of "Estate Sales" - lots of those as you can imagine. Some people just like to shop. Garage sales generally start Wednesday (a few early birds), but prime time is Thursday and Friday. Saturday is an also ran in Sun City. I get the feeling that stuff just endlessly floats around in a big circle here. It's casual recycling at its best. The signs are funny. Mostly they are cardboard boxes - low to the ground, held in place by bricks or stones.

One of the things I haven't liked about living here is that everyone is the same age. You have to be 55 or older to live here, but just by looking, I'd say the average age is probably 75. These people are done with the RV life, done with looking after grandchildren, done with flying on airplanes, done with traveling, and done with driving more than 5 miles at a time. You can almost feel some of them detaching from this earthly life. Some of them have little or no interest in learning anything new, seeing anything new or doing anything new. I can't tell you the number of rants I've heard about 'that computer stuff' or 'that texting nonsense'. Sometimes just to devil these crotchedy people, I pull out my iPhone and tap away.

I'd say the Sun City experience has overall been positive because of two elements - we get to play bridge all the time (yes, we are addicted), and we get to use out of these clean fabulous exercise facilities. I also like having an individual house (more personal privacy), at a ridiculously reasonable rate. We have also enjoyed being around Drake's mom on a regular basis as well as being able to easily see the rest of the family. For instance, we are going to a giant Easter Party/Birthday Party/Anniversary Party blow-out today.

I know my blogs have been few and far between during this sojourn, but take my word for it - there's been nothing to write about. The next six months will be more 'writable', so get ready to have your inbox tickled with blogs.

Happy 40th Anniversary to Us

On April 9th I will be officially married for 40 years. I was blackmailed into marriage by my loving mother. The reason: She found out I was living with Drake without the benefit of matrimony. She disowned me and drummed me out of the family writing me a series of horrible letters designed to push every button she could think of to make me feel guilty and ashamed. She was actually a bit slow on the uptake. I had been living with him for more than a year when she went out of her way to discover the awful truth. By contrast, my loving mother-in-law decided that turning a blind eye was a much better way to handle the situation. What she chose not to know, we didn't have to deal with.

In 1969, when I was 19 and madly in love, nice girls did "IT", but furtively in the back seats of cars and in cheap motels where the management wasn't too picky about who they rented their rooms to. Most of them had engagement rings on their fingers before they 'surrendered'. I actually started living with Drake in my dorm room that autumn. It was clean. It was quiet. It had a bed. How did we manage this, you ask? I had a unique situation. A single room (after my sophomore roommate moved out), and a floor that was one-half women's honor's housing and one-half the Sigma Epsilon FRATERNITY.

There was someone who really didn't think ahead when the university housing was planned for that year. The dormitory was 12 stories and laid out in the shape of an X. The center of the X on each floor was the elevator lobby. Floors 2 and 3 were campus housing for adults who were coming back to school and for some unknown reason decided to enjoy hard dorm beds, built in desks, minuscule closets, and bad cafeteria food. Floors 5 - 12 were leased to the United States Post Office. Yes, every two weeks a new batch of postal workers arrived for zip code school or something. I never did figure out what they came for, but they stayed for about two weeks, and then like clockwork, a new batch would arrive. They were all men, and they were all housed in my dormitory.

They fell into two groups: Group One: Nice older guys who paced around the lobby and jingled the change in their pockets, counting the days until they could go home to their wives and kids who they fiercely missed. Group Two was not nearly so benign. An odor of liquor hung about them - a feat considering Oklahoma was an almost 'dry' state. They talked a little too loud, and stood a little too close to you if you were unlucky enough to get trapped by a Group Two guy. I was actually in the best cardio shape of my life because I routinely walked up four flights of stairs to get to my room. That year there were some elevators that no sane woman would get into.

So, here we were: Women's Honors Housing - on the fourth floor of a Post Office Hotel - that is actually a dormitory on a college campus. Are you surprised that some of the men who came in for zip code school thought we were a service provided by the United States government to make their stay a little more pleasurable? If this isn't bizarre enough, in come the Sig Eps. It wasn't long before we ladies of the fourth floor were so very glad they were there. I never did find out the real facts, but the rumor was the Sigma Epsilon Fraternity lost their house a week or so before school started, and the University leased one-half of the fourth floor of the Walker Towers to them for a fraternity house. All I know is there was a fraternity living on the same floor as I was in 1969.

Now, you would think the frat boys would hassle the women living within spitting distance of them incessantly. Not so. That was handled by the postal workers. It was all too common for a drunken post office guy (from the infamous Group Two discussed above) to be wandering around our fourth floor hall in his underwear banging on our doors demanding our 'services'. It become standard operating procedure to call over to the Sig Ep side, and a couple of the frat guys would come over and hustle the drunk guy out of our hallway. Well, you can see how easy it was for Drake to move in. He was just a little more security for all of us.

I think that's when Drake really learned to appreciate living with women. His 'real' dorm was a mess. Guys up all night long, and they weren't studying. They were drinking, smoking pot, screaming as well as pulling practical jokes all hours of the day and night. (One infamous night, they blocked all the doors to one floor and them simultaneously called all the room phones on that floor. Think - this is pre-cell phone, pre-computer, so the jokers trapped a whole group of unlucky college boys on their dormitory floor for several hours.) There was also a hygiene issue. We actually CLEANED the bathroom in our suite, and washed our sheets and towels. Drake swears that no one cleaned the bathroom in his boy's suite for the entire year.

That was a great year. I fell in love, and I was with my beloved constantly. (It's why '19' is my favorite number - the age I was when I first got together with Drake.) We both knew this ideal situation couldn't last because the confluence of all the events discussed above was a one time deal. By the next year the Sig Eps got a house, and the University wised up and realized that maybe we didn't need postal workers living in a dormitory in the center of campus. A definite plus that year was whenever my mother called, I was always in my dorm room. She had no clue that Drake was also there..........

The following year we moved into Crazy Betty's. We lived outside her house in one-half of her detached garage which had been converted into two apartments using a sheet of plasterboard to separate the two. This palace was rented for $55 a month, bills paid, to Drake by Crazy Betty, an alcoholic old lady with bright red hair and two inch gray roots who preferred stretch pants and polka dot halter tops in about a size 22. The pop guy delivered cases of 7-Up to her home from his truck - her mixer of choice. As the day progressed, she got drunker and drunker, and she could often be heard calling her cat "Peaches" at the top of her lungs in the dead of the night. I had a $40 a month dorm room that year - which I never slept at. It didn't take my mother long to discover I was living in SIN, and she wasn't going to rest until she had corrected that situation. I held out for several months against her incessant rage and horror, but ultimately I caved.

Thus, on Good Friday (April 9th, 1971), Drake and I got up and drove to Gainesville, Texas and were married in by a fat, sweating Justice of the Peace in the county courthouse. The ceremony took less than 5 minutes. We got married because I was pressured into it, and Drake couldn't stand then (or now) to see me so torn apart and miserable. We went to Texas because Drake was too young to get married in Oklahoma - you had to be 21, and he wasn't. The biggest lesson we both learned that year was to never, ever let anyone push us into something we don't want to do. We both now agree wholeheartedly that we got married much too young, but at the time it seemed the thing to do.

For a long time I felt cheated out of a wedding. With 40 years under my belt, looking back it was actually easier to elope considering the family storms going on, and we had the wedding we could afford. $15 for the Justice of the Peace and the license, $10 for the wedding ring (mine, we could only afford one), and $7 for the Dairy Queen meal prior to the wedding. We even ate in the car. I was pretty depressed on the way back to Norman. My new husband's refrain was: "My parents are going to kill me." I think we were both stunned by what we had done.

I was almost in tears when we pulled into the parking space outside Crazy Betty's. Fortunately, Rick (the guy who lived in the other half of the garage and who has been a lifelong friend) was sitting on the hood of his car enjoying the Spring afternoon. When he discovered that we had gotten married, he went into action. He planned an impromptu party complete with wedding gifts and a wedding supper with our close friends. And, late, late that night, we were serenaded with songs and banging pots and pans in an old-fashioned shivaree. Fortunately, they decided Drake didn't need kidnapping, and everyone just had one more drink before toddling off. That supper and party went a long way to easing my feelings about a lack of wedding celebration. This is my only wedding picture - taken a week after our marriage in the driveway of my parents' home - returning to the family fold - legal at last. I'm showing off my invisible plain gold band wedding ring in the photo.

With such a start, and at such a young age, I sometimes think it's a miracle that we have such a happy marriage. Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to achieve one. I was raised in "They lived happily ever after land." Boy, it didn't take long for that fantasy to evaporate. I also quickly discovered that problems were not solved in 22 minutes (the length of a half an hour TV program), and that I had to learn how to fight productively so we both came out winners from inevitable conflicts. I have become gratified that the initial basis of our relationship was friendship rather than romance, and as we progressed down the marriage highway realized that bedrock of friendship has held us together when life has thrown us those unlooked for curve balls and littered our path with not only pot holes but giant sinkholes.

I don't have Elizabeth Barrett Browning's gift of writing the poetry of love, but I feel blessed by having a husband that is not only my truest friend but also my ardent lover and my source of quiet, constant, unchanging support. In the vernacular - he loves me like a rock, and he always has my back. It hasn't hurt anything that he's about the smartest guy I ever met, and he adores me. Also, he picks up after himself, after me, and makes our everyday life run smoothly with a minimum of fuss. I guess I contribute the spontaneity, the optimism, and the ability to make him laugh.

In 42 years we've run the gamut of every emotion you can name from the highest high to the lowest low. We've had times that it would have been easier to give up on one another and move on. We've had times that are so good we got giddy with happiness and delight. I don't have any secret formula. I do know that to be successful at this marriage business, it takes both parties refusing to give up on the ideal. You have to believe in your heart of hearts that no matter what, you are better together than apart, and you just keep trying your hardest to make that true.

Since I married when I was a child, who I am today was formed by my unique relationship with Drake. Sarah Lynn, our daughter, used to feel excluded at times because we were so in tune with one another. When you grow up together, my experience has been that you grow together. As my friends know, I really don't care what anyone else thinks about who I am, what I believe, or what I do. However, everyone also knows there is one exception - I've always cared about what Drake thinks and feels. To let him down or disappoint him is to let myself down.

I am the most fortunate of people. I am loved without reservation, and I can give love back without reservation. On some days 40 years seems like an eternity, but on most days it feels like a nano-second (whatever THAT is). All I really know is that my life has been enriched in thousands of ways by sharing it with Drake.

Happy 40th Anniversary, my darling.

For those who wonder what I'm getting for my anniversary - how does a month in New York City sound? Works for me, and the blogs will be great.