Sunday, February 18, 2018
#TheBookofMe: What Do You Read?
When I was a kid, my aunt would give me books to read, but I seldom enjoyed them. I guess it was rather like being assigned a book in a school class -- you never like them, no matter how good they really are. An example of that is To Kill a Mockingbird. I read it when I was about 14, voluntarily, and enjoyed it immensely. My daughters, when they were about the same age, were assigned to read it in school, and they hated it. It's the idea of lack of choice, I think, that makes these really good books come off not to our liking.
Anyway, in high school, I did not read much until the eleventh grade. In my high school, the English teachers would require us to keep a file, and write the names of books we had read, whether for an assignment or on our own time, on the inside of the folder. In tenth grade, I may have had ten books written down on the inside of my folder at the end of the year.
Over the summer, some sort of switch got turned on, and I started reading like a possessed person. During my junior year, I had read so many books that I had the inside of my English folder covered on front and back, and in the margins as well!
So what do I read? My first inspiration to begin that eleventh-grade reading binge was Ray Bradbury. I read all of him I could get hold of, then moved on to Isaac Asimov. I read in other genres, too. I read Steinbeck. I devoured everything he ever published. Then it was Hemingway and Faulkner. I read all of their books, too. I read Adela Rogers St. John, the newspaper reporter. My favorite of hers is her autobiography, The Honeycomb. I got into mysteries, and read all of Agatha Christie. I tended to prefer cozies to the hard-boiled detective stories of Raymond Chandler and the like. I also read several excellent biographies.
Of course, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy when they came out. At that time, I was in college at Florida State University. It was during that time that I also got into the ancient Greeks, reading a goodly portion each of Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus, and some others.
Childbearing years had my reading in a different direction -- such as Where the Wild Things Are, The Velveteen Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, and other great children's literature. There wasn't much time for adult reading during that time!
I tended to lose interest in science fiction about the time cyberpunk became the thing. I just couldn't sympathize with the troubled, distant, odd protagonists. I still retained my interest in mysteries, however, and found enjoyment reading Patricia Cornwell and Lawrence Sanders.
From my youth also, I began reading about history. I had a subscription for many years to American Heritage magazine, back from the days when it was published in hardback into their paperback years. Just a year or so ago, I finally re-homed my collection of American Heritage, giving them to an American History teacher friend of mine.
What do I read now? A great deal of my reading today, of course, is focused on Spain and her colonies, especially La Florida. I also enjoy another set of cozy mysteries, the wonderful stories of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, written by Alexander McCall Smith. Our whole family went on a seven-book binge when J. K. Rowling started publishing her Harry Potter stories. We read every one of them, and enjoyed them.
I also have been reading books written by friends of mine from an online writing group I've been a member of for over thirty years! It is because of that bunch that I have two books of my own in print. And a cousin of mine has just published her first mystery, so that is on my very long To-Read Queue.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Maybe Dead Men Can Vote Twice; They Can Also be Counted in Censuses
I am working with a group led by my former major professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg on what's called, in fifty-dollar language, a prosopography. That simply means an attempt to identify and describe all the people in a certain place at a certain time. The certain place in question here is Colonial Spanish Florida, and the time, or times, in question span from 1565 to 1763, and from 1784 to 1821, called, respectively, the First Spanish Period and the Second Spanish Period.
I am entering some of my data into a template. These data will become part of this massive project, which will be an online database, searchable by anyone who is interested.
Now, let me say that I've seen people who were counted twice in censuses. My great-great grandfather Charles Reed was counted twice in the 1860 U.S. Census, and my father was counted twice in the 1930 U.S. Census. I've seen people whose names were mangled in the censuses. I've seen male people identified as female people, with a female name substituted for the male name. That happened to the famous Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, in the 1910 census in which he was identified as Ella, seven-year-old daughter of Peter Ness, when in fact he was, of course, Eliot, Peter's son. Since the U.S. censuses are kept from public view for 72 years after they are taken, I'm sure Mr. Ness, who died in 1957, never knew of this goof. I've seen people given odd professions. One man in the 1935 Florida census is identified by profession as a lobster! The enumerator, of course, meant "lobsterman," but the form did not give him enough room to write the entire word.
However, I have never seen a dead person enumerated in a census post-mortem. Until now.
I am working on entering some data from the 1793 census of St. Augustine, and there is an entry for a man whose name was Theophilus Hill. What a great name! The Spanish rendered it as Teofilo Hill. When I came across this entry, my reaction was, "Theophilus Hill was alive in 1793?" I had seen his death record, it is in his file in my file cabinet, along with over 1600 other residents of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period, on which I am still gathering names and data. I remembered vaguely that he had died earlier. I pulled his file, and there, in the back of the file, is his death record, taken from the St. Augustine parish death records, the original documents. The information is on a form I have created just for this purpose. And the date of death? 20 December 1790.
When the census had been taken, Theophilus Hill had been dead for around three years.
Is there a chance that there was another Theophilus Hill in St. Augustine? No. He and his wife Teresa Thomas had four daughters and a son named Juan (John), who died at age 9 in 1796. There was no Theophilus Hill, Jr. I have not found any other Hill family in St. Augustine. The data in the 1793 census matches the information I have on the deceased Mr. Hill. There is no notation in the census, as was customary, that someone else was informing for Mr. Hill on the census. The 1793 census of St. Augustine is one of the few, if not the only, census on which we know, at least in a small percentage of the entries, who the informant was, prior to the 1940 U.S. Census. When a householder was absent, the census-taker would obtain the necessary information from someone else, and would record the name, or at least the relationship to the householder, of the individual reporting for him.
I have no idea how a man who had been dead for around three years ended up enumerated in the 1793 St. Augustine census. Was the grieving widow that much in denial? Was there some reason someone wanted Mr. Hill recorded in the census -- as a memorial? Was there another motive? And since, obviously, Mr. Hill could not have responded to the census-taker himself, why did that official not record who was giving the information?
Or could the death record be in error? I doubt that. Theophilus Hill and his family were well known to St. Augustine's people. One of his four daughters was married to one of the most prominent men in St. Augustine, don Francisco Xavier Sánchez. Certainly the priest who conducted the burial, Father Thomas Hassett, knew Theophilus Hill, his wife, Teresa Thomas, and his four daughters. After all, he was the priest who conducted the marriage between Theophilus Hill's daughter and don Francisco. No, I think the death record is correct.
Which provides us with a dandy mystery.
I am entering some of my data into a template. These data will become part of this massive project, which will be an online database, searchable by anyone who is interested.
Now, let me say that I've seen people who were counted twice in censuses. My great-great grandfather Charles Reed was counted twice in the 1860 U.S. Census, and my father was counted twice in the 1930 U.S. Census. I've seen people whose names were mangled in the censuses. I've seen male people identified as female people, with a female name substituted for the male name. That happened to the famous Prohibition agent Eliot Ness, in the 1910 census in which he was identified as Ella, seven-year-old daughter of Peter Ness, when in fact he was, of course, Eliot, Peter's son. Since the U.S. censuses are kept from public view for 72 years after they are taken, I'm sure Mr. Ness, who died in 1957, never knew of this goof. I've seen people given odd professions. One man in the 1935 Florida census is identified by profession as a lobster! The enumerator, of course, meant "lobsterman," but the form did not give him enough room to write the entire word.
However, I have never seen a dead person enumerated in a census post-mortem. Until now.
I am working on entering some data from the 1793 census of St. Augustine, and there is an entry for a man whose name was Theophilus Hill. What a great name! The Spanish rendered it as Teofilo Hill. When I came across this entry, my reaction was, "Theophilus Hill was alive in 1793?" I had seen his death record, it is in his file in my file cabinet, along with over 1600 other residents of St. Augustine during the Second Spanish Period, on which I am still gathering names and data. I remembered vaguely that he had died earlier. I pulled his file, and there, in the back of the file, is his death record, taken from the St. Augustine parish death records, the original documents. The information is on a form I have created just for this purpose. And the date of death? 20 December 1790.
When the census had been taken, Theophilus Hill had been dead for around three years.
Is there a chance that there was another Theophilus Hill in St. Augustine? No. He and his wife Teresa Thomas had four daughters and a son named Juan (John), who died at age 9 in 1796. There was no Theophilus Hill, Jr. I have not found any other Hill family in St. Augustine. The data in the 1793 census matches the information I have on the deceased Mr. Hill. There is no notation in the census, as was customary, that someone else was informing for Mr. Hill on the census. The 1793 census of St. Augustine is one of the few, if not the only, census on which we know, at least in a small percentage of the entries, who the informant was, prior to the 1940 U.S. Census. When a householder was absent, the census-taker would obtain the necessary information from someone else, and would record the name, or at least the relationship to the householder, of the individual reporting for him.
I have no idea how a man who had been dead for around three years ended up enumerated in the 1793 St. Augustine census. Was the grieving widow that much in denial? Was there some reason someone wanted Mr. Hill recorded in the census -- as a memorial? Was there another motive? And since, obviously, Mr. Hill could not have responded to the census-taker himself, why did that official not record who was giving the information?
Or could the death record be in error? I doubt that. Theophilus Hill and his family were well known to St. Augustine's people. One of his four daughters was married to one of the most prominent men in St. Augustine, don Francisco Xavier Sánchez. Certainly the priest who conducted the burial, Father Thomas Hassett, knew Theophilus Hill, his wife, Teresa Thomas, and his four daughters. After all, he was the priest who conducted the marriage between Theophilus Hill's daughter and don Francisco. No, I think the death record is correct.
Which provides us with a dandy mystery.
Monday, February 5, 2018
#TheBookofMe: What Makes You Tick?
What makes me tick? Or what has made me tick for the past 70 years?
1. Family -- My mother was a widow with three kids. I was the youngest. My grandma and my aunt helped raise me. Every Sunday, we had a large midday meal, either at my grandma and aunt's house, or at ours. Sometimes we had guests, too. It was fancy table-setting time, using our dining room table, usually at full extension. Those were great (and delicious!) times. My husband and I have two daughters, and we spend holidays with them, and with two sisters who are around our daughters' age and who have no family in this area. We always have a great time at these celebrations. Our daughters and I also do things together, and we have a lot in common. It's not as frequent as we would like, as both our daughters work. We have fun when we do get a chance to do things together.
2. Service -- My aunt instilled in me an ethic of public service. She was a public health nurse, and the Director of Health Information for the State of Florida in the 1950s and early 1960s. The first time I went to college, back in the 1960s, I joined a service sorority. I served as first vice president, in charge of the service projects of our chapter, and it was during that time of service that our chapter won the sorority's most prestigious award for the second time in a row. I was a registered nurse for a while, until we had three deaths in the family in a rather short period of time, and I burned out. I also served in the uniform of the United States Coast Guard, mostly in the reserve, but I did do a total of over two years of active duty, too.
3, Learning -- I went back to college at the age of 60, and earned two post-baccalaureate degrees, summa cum laude with honors in the majors. Then I went on to earn a second master's degree. My first was in library science, in 1970. I lost that path when library jobs dried up in the early 1970s, in a recession. (That was also in line with my ethic of service.)
4. Staying busy -- I always have said that I would rather be busy than bored. When I worked as temporary office staff, if I had nothing to do, I would look for something to do. Sometimes I bugged the boss until I got something to work on, as when I volunteered to update and organized one company's publications, having much experience doing so as a yeoman in the Coast Guard. They say women never really retire, and I'm an example of that. My husband is retired, and is quite very retired. He earned it. Me, I stay busy.
5. Books -- I read books. I also write them. I have two published, and I'm working on a third at this time (along with other things I'm into). Years ago, when my husband and I were looking for a new home, he said we needed a house with a library because we have so many books. I said, "No, what we need is a library with living quarters." I have so many books, and need to refer to many of them from time to time, that I have my bookshelves in my office organized by the Dewey Decimal systerm (well, I was a librarian once upon a time)!
1. Family -- My mother was a widow with three kids. I was the youngest. My grandma and my aunt helped raise me. Every Sunday, we had a large midday meal, either at my grandma and aunt's house, or at ours. Sometimes we had guests, too. It was fancy table-setting time, using our dining room table, usually at full extension. Those were great (and delicious!) times. My husband and I have two daughters, and we spend holidays with them, and with two sisters who are around our daughters' age and who have no family in this area. We always have a great time at these celebrations. Our daughters and I also do things together, and we have a lot in common. It's not as frequent as we would like, as both our daughters work. We have fun when we do get a chance to do things together.
2. Service -- My aunt instilled in me an ethic of public service. She was a public health nurse, and the Director of Health Information for the State of Florida in the 1950s and early 1960s. The first time I went to college, back in the 1960s, I joined a service sorority. I served as first vice president, in charge of the service projects of our chapter, and it was during that time of service that our chapter won the sorority's most prestigious award for the second time in a row. I was a registered nurse for a while, until we had three deaths in the family in a rather short period of time, and I burned out. I also served in the uniform of the United States Coast Guard, mostly in the reserve, but I did do a total of over two years of active duty, too.
3, Learning -- I went back to college at the age of 60, and earned two post-baccalaureate degrees, summa cum laude with honors in the majors. Then I went on to earn a second master's degree. My first was in library science, in 1970. I lost that path when library jobs dried up in the early 1970s, in a recession. (That was also in line with my ethic of service.)
4. Staying busy -- I always have said that I would rather be busy than bored. When I worked as temporary office staff, if I had nothing to do, I would look for something to do. Sometimes I bugged the boss until I got something to work on, as when I volunteered to update and organized one company's publications, having much experience doing so as a yeoman in the Coast Guard. They say women never really retire, and I'm an example of that. My husband is retired, and is quite very retired. He earned it. Me, I stay busy.
5. Books -- I read books. I also write them. I have two published, and I'm working on a third at this time (along with other things I'm into). Years ago, when my husband and I were looking for a new home, he said we needed a house with a library because we have so many books. I said, "No, what we need is a library with living quarters." I have so many books, and need to refer to many of them from time to time, that I have my bookshelves in my office organized by the Dewey Decimal systerm (well, I was a librarian once upon a time)!
Friday, February 2, 2018
#TheBookofMe: What do (or did) you do?
You could almost ask, "What did you not do?"
Well, for one thing, nothing that broke the law. (wink)
When I was a child in the 1950s, unfortunately in a traditional family, I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. But little girls just did not have such ambitions, I was told. And when I said I wanted to join the Navy and serve our country because my father had been in the Navy (Annapolis, class of 1934), my mother and brother were aghast, telling me that good girls just didn't do such a thing.
That is why, when I got older, the surest way to get me to do something was to tell me not to do it. (However, be it said that this did not lead me into doing really stupid stuff.)
I got through college at Florida State University with a bachelor's degree in government and a master's in library science. I worked at a city library until, having become married in the meantime, my husband got a change of station and we moved. He was in the Coast Guard.
At our new location, there weren't any jobs for me. It was the early 1970s, there was a recession, and under such conditions, libraries are the first on the chopping block.
When my husband was released from active duty and went into the reserve, we moved back home. I had seen how interesting the Coast Guard was from all the things my husband had done -- some of them sounding downright fun -- that I wanted to join up. Unlike my mother and brother, my husband was all for it. He knew me well enough to know that I could certainly remain a "good girl" and still serve. So I enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve as a yeoman and spent 15 years in the reserve. Along the way, I got a commission. I did not make it to 20 years and retirement because I developed osteoarthritis, and had to stand down. However, I had finally satisfied my desire to serve my country, and could thumb my nose at my mother and brother who, despite their original misgivings, were proud of me. There was also the added boost that my brother had been a Marine -- and I outranked him!
During the time I was in the reserve, I also helped the family out by taking jobs through temporary staffing agencies doing clerical work for various concerns, from a large city hospital to small businesses to one of the largest railroads in the country. Then I got extended temporary work with the Internal Revenue Service during tax season. I did that for a couple years, then got a permanent job with them. It was interesting enough, but the boss of the section was one of those civil-service fief-builders, and I was not interested in her self-aggrandizement. I decided to go to school and become a nurse, enrolling in a program of study at the local junior college. I spent a couple of exhausting but fascinating and rewarding years as a registered nurse, but then we had three deaths in the family in a relatively short period of time, and the emotional and physical exhaustion were too much. I burned out and had to quit.
I enrolled in a distance-learning course through the University of Toronto, a course of study adminstered by the National Institute of Genealogical Studies, of Toronto. I got training in American Records. It was a varied group of courses taught by certified genealogists or by people who were Ph.D.s in their field. I decided to study Florida's Spanish lineages, as no professional work had been done in that area, and I lived within day-trip driving distance of several fine repositories and archives of materials on the subject. However, realizing that my high-school Spanish from 40-odd years ago was not going to help me much, I looked into taking courses at a local state university, and ended up enrolling as a post-baccalaureate student with a double major in history and Spanish. I graduated in April of 2012, and then applied to graduate school. I got my second master's degree in May of 2015. I am now a historian studying Spanish colonial Florida, concentrating on St. Augustine and its province of East Florida during the years 1784-1821. Again, I have, in a way, satisfied a childhood wish. I'm a reporter, but a different sort of one as a historian. And I enjoy it!
Librarian, nurse, clerk, Coast Guardsman, genealogist, historian -- a varied career, indeed.
Well, for one thing, nothing that broke the law. (wink)
When I was a child in the 1950s, unfortunately in a traditional family, I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. But little girls just did not have such ambitions, I was told. And when I said I wanted to join the Navy and serve our country because my father had been in the Navy (Annapolis, class of 1934), my mother and brother were aghast, telling me that good girls just didn't do such a thing.
That is why, when I got older, the surest way to get me to do something was to tell me not to do it. (However, be it said that this did not lead me into doing really stupid stuff.)
I got through college at Florida State University with a bachelor's degree in government and a master's in library science. I worked at a city library until, having become married in the meantime, my husband got a change of station and we moved. He was in the Coast Guard.
At our new location, there weren't any jobs for me. It was the early 1970s, there was a recession, and under such conditions, libraries are the first on the chopping block.
When my husband was released from active duty and went into the reserve, we moved back home. I had seen how interesting the Coast Guard was from all the things my husband had done -- some of them sounding downright fun -- that I wanted to join up. Unlike my mother and brother, my husband was all for it. He knew me well enough to know that I could certainly remain a "good girl" and still serve. So I enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve as a yeoman and spent 15 years in the reserve. Along the way, I got a commission. I did not make it to 20 years and retirement because I developed osteoarthritis, and had to stand down. However, I had finally satisfied my desire to serve my country, and could thumb my nose at my mother and brother who, despite their original misgivings, were proud of me. There was also the added boost that my brother had been a Marine -- and I outranked him!
During the time I was in the reserve, I also helped the family out by taking jobs through temporary staffing agencies doing clerical work for various concerns, from a large city hospital to small businesses to one of the largest railroads in the country. Then I got extended temporary work with the Internal Revenue Service during tax season. I did that for a couple years, then got a permanent job with them. It was interesting enough, but the boss of the section was one of those civil-service fief-builders, and I was not interested in her self-aggrandizement. I decided to go to school and become a nurse, enrolling in a program of study at the local junior college. I spent a couple of exhausting but fascinating and rewarding years as a registered nurse, but then we had three deaths in the family in a relatively short period of time, and the emotional and physical exhaustion were too much. I burned out and had to quit.
I enrolled in a distance-learning course through the University of Toronto, a course of study adminstered by the National Institute of Genealogical Studies, of Toronto. I got training in American Records. It was a varied group of courses taught by certified genealogists or by people who were Ph.D.s in their field. I decided to study Florida's Spanish lineages, as no professional work had been done in that area, and I lived within day-trip driving distance of several fine repositories and archives of materials on the subject. However, realizing that my high-school Spanish from 40-odd years ago was not going to help me much, I looked into taking courses at a local state university, and ended up enrolling as a post-baccalaureate student with a double major in history and Spanish. I graduated in April of 2012, and then applied to graduate school. I got my second master's degree in May of 2015. I am now a historian studying Spanish colonial Florida, concentrating on St. Augustine and its province of East Florida during the years 1784-1821. Again, I have, in a way, satisfied a childhood wish. I'm a reporter, but a different sort of one as a historian. And I enjoy it!
Librarian, nurse, clerk, Coast Guardsman, genealogist, historian -- a varied career, indeed.
Genealogy Blog Party: Stories of Love
Remember the old love stories, where kids grow up together and later fall in love, marry, have kids, and live happily ever after?
Rarely does it work like that in real life, and never with anything approaching perfection. Life is a rocky road at times, and so is love.
However, let me tell you a story:
When I had just turned seven years old, my father died, and my mother wanted to take the three of us kids -- my sister, the oldest (16 at the time), my brother (12), and me -- from our home in California to Florida, where her mom and sister lived. In Florida, my aunt (mom's sister) took upon herself the duties she had assumed six years earlier, when she was my godmother at my baptism. She took me to her church, of the Episcopal persuasion, and there I met a group of other kids, including a boy with the unusual name of Keys. We kids grew up in that church, all of us participating either in the choir or as acolytes (altar boys), and when we became teenagers, we all joined the Episcopal Young Churchmen.
That was a fine time, and I found opportunities to serve as treasurer of the EYC and as one of two delegates to the diocese-wide House of Episcopal Young Churchmen, or HEYC. I got my driver's license at 16, my aunt having also taken up the duties of teaching me to drive, as she had my sister and my brother. She was a calmer teacher than mom ever could have been! Keys needed transportation home after meetings, so I gave him rides. I lived quite near to the church, just three blocks away. Keys lived much farther than that, but I enjoyed driving and was happy to take him home. We developed a habit of sitting in the car in the driveway and talking, about all sorts of things. We, know-it-all teenagers that we were, solved the world's problems there. We talked about amusing or engaging movies and TV we had seen. We told jokes. And I commiserated with Keys when he told of his difficulties with his girlfriend. I wasn't much into dating as a teenager, though I enjoyed social gatherings and talking with all sorts of people. So did Keys. We were good buddies.
We went to different high schools, rival schools. When we graduated, we went to different, rival colleges. One Christmas break, I decided to go to the Christmas Eve service at the church, and Keys was there with his family. I saw him on the other side of the church, with new eyes. I fell in love. I didn't know whether he reciprocated, but he began to call me on the phone, and we'd go out for ice cream or to a movie.
It wasn't all smooth sailing. I had entered upon an internship at the city's public library, which led to a full grant for graduate school in library science, and a guarantee of a job at the city's main library after graduation. It was during the internship that Keys decided to break up with me. It broke my heart, but my steadfast mentor, my aunt, who was unmarried, told me that if he cared for me, he would be back. She was right.
We dated again, and after graduating from college, he was concerned about the draft. It was the 1960s, and he did not particularly want to go to Vietnam, but he didn't want to go to Canada, either. He was looking for a way to serve. He joined the United States Coast Guard, and went to officer candidate school at Yorktown, Virginia. After he completed that training, he was assigned aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Ingham -- which is now a museum on the National Register of Historic Places, moored at Key West, Florida.
It was then that we got married. We did not start off living as husband and wife, though, because I was under two years' contract to the city library, having received my master's degree and started work there, and his ship spent 30 days at a time bobbing like a cork in the North Atlantic ocean, hosting scientists conducting atmospheric and oceanographic experiments, and providing guidance to ships crossing the ocean on the northerly routes.
We did manage to have a baby, and then he got a change of station to a city about 400 miles away from our home city, and we finally were together as a family. It's been nearly 47 years -- we are 18 days away from our 47th anniversary -- and there have been hard times, but there have been more good times and a lot of laughter. We have grown old together, and are happy and content to be as we are. It's not perfect, but it sure beats anything else I could imagine.
So sometimes such stories do come true.
Rarely does it work like that in real life, and never with anything approaching perfection. Life is a rocky road at times, and so is love.
However, let me tell you a story:
When I had just turned seven years old, my father died, and my mother wanted to take the three of us kids -- my sister, the oldest (16 at the time), my brother (12), and me -- from our home in California to Florida, where her mom and sister lived. In Florida, my aunt (mom's sister) took upon herself the duties she had assumed six years earlier, when she was my godmother at my baptism. She took me to her church, of the Episcopal persuasion, and there I met a group of other kids, including a boy with the unusual name of Keys. We kids grew up in that church, all of us participating either in the choir or as acolytes (altar boys), and when we became teenagers, we all joined the Episcopal Young Churchmen.
That was a fine time, and I found opportunities to serve as treasurer of the EYC and as one of two delegates to the diocese-wide House of Episcopal Young Churchmen, or HEYC. I got my driver's license at 16, my aunt having also taken up the duties of teaching me to drive, as she had my sister and my brother. She was a calmer teacher than mom ever could have been! Keys needed transportation home after meetings, so I gave him rides. I lived quite near to the church, just three blocks away. Keys lived much farther than that, but I enjoyed driving and was happy to take him home. We developed a habit of sitting in the car in the driveway and talking, about all sorts of things. We, know-it-all teenagers that we were, solved the world's problems there. We talked about amusing or engaging movies and TV we had seen. We told jokes. And I commiserated with Keys when he told of his difficulties with his girlfriend. I wasn't much into dating as a teenager, though I enjoyed social gatherings and talking with all sorts of people. So did Keys. We were good buddies.
We went to different high schools, rival schools. When we graduated, we went to different, rival colleges. One Christmas break, I decided to go to the Christmas Eve service at the church, and Keys was there with his family. I saw him on the other side of the church, with new eyes. I fell in love. I didn't know whether he reciprocated, but he began to call me on the phone, and we'd go out for ice cream or to a movie.
It wasn't all smooth sailing. I had entered upon an internship at the city's public library, which led to a full grant for graduate school in library science, and a guarantee of a job at the city's main library after graduation. It was during the internship that Keys decided to break up with me. It broke my heart, but my steadfast mentor, my aunt, who was unmarried, told me that if he cared for me, he would be back. She was right.
We dated again, and after graduating from college, he was concerned about the draft. It was the 1960s, and he did not particularly want to go to Vietnam, but he didn't want to go to Canada, either. He was looking for a way to serve. He joined the United States Coast Guard, and went to officer candidate school at Yorktown, Virginia. After he completed that training, he was assigned aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Ingham -- which is now a museum on the National Register of Historic Places, moored at Key West, Florida.
It was then that we got married. We did not start off living as husband and wife, though, because I was under two years' contract to the city library, having received my master's degree and started work there, and his ship spent 30 days at a time bobbing like a cork in the North Atlantic ocean, hosting scientists conducting atmospheric and oceanographic experiments, and providing guidance to ships crossing the ocean on the northerly routes.
We did manage to have a baby, and then he got a change of station to a city about 400 miles away from our home city, and we finally were together as a family. It's been nearly 47 years -- we are 18 days away from our 47th anniversary -- and there have been hard times, but there have been more good times and a lot of laughter. We have grown old together, and are happy and content to be as we are. It's not perfect, but it sure beats anything else I could imagine.
So sometimes such stories do come true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)