OK, to keep these stories going. My dad dropped out of the Iowa medical school after three years when he finally got up the nerve to tell his dad, my grandpa, who was a small-town doctor back in the hometown, that he didn't want to be a doctor.
He became a pharmaceutical rep with the state of Arkansas his territory. He walked into a doctor's office and asked the receptionist for a date that night. He proposed after two weeks and they eloped to Kennett, MO (got to keep this Missouri thread alive) after three weeks. The only thing my grandma was mad about was that she was marrying a 'damn Yankee'. My dad moved back to the hometown, became a banker and they had six kids, I'm #5.
One last interesting side note. My dad's fiancé was still living back in Iowa City. He got married without giving her notice! She wasn't very happy, I read some of the letters she sent.
Love hearing these stories.
My own parents' way of meeting was pretty crazy...sorry if it's too long, no need to read it.
My dad was born and raised in the same town I live in now. His dad (my grandpa) owned a fairly successful business and told all his kids when they graduated from high school he'd either pay for college or buy them a new car. My dad took the car.
He and his best friend graduated, and decided they wanted to sow their oats. They looked at help wanted ads in the Sioux City Journal and there was a company called Regal China in Kenosha, WI looking for factory workers. They made stuff like those cheesy decanters and perfume bottles that were so popular in the 60s. So they both hopped in their cars, drove to Kenosha, and rented a house.
Around the same time my mom's dad had gone to work for American Motors in Corinth, Mississippi after the farming thing started to transition to bigger operations. In 1968 that car plant went to the chopping block. The workers were given two choices...3 months severance pay, or you could go to work in their plant in Kenosha but obviously you had to move. There were still 5 out of 12 kids at home and they decided to go north. My mom had quit school by then and was 17 (she later got her GED and nursing degree), so she got a job at Regal right around the same time my dad did and that's how they met.
So from two TOTALLY different worlds my folks ended up together, got married, and moved into a little rental house by themselves in Waukegan, Illinois. Then things got real weird.
Six weeks after they got married my dad got a draft notice and a bus ticket to Ft Lewis, Washington for basic training. Nine weeks after that he got on a plane to Vietnam and spent the next two and a half years over there carrying an M60. The pictures I have are unreal. He looks like a baby.
My mom, newly married with no husband and no place to go, moved in with my dad's parents here in Iowa while he was overseas. My grandma hated her, she was a real snooty German lady who thought her shit didn't stink and to her my mom was just a hillbilly my dad had a crush on. No pictures of the two of them exist. My grandpa and her were thick as thieves though and got along great. He treated her like one of the kids and they laughed their asses off in the short time he ended up living from what I've been told. My dad's siblings used to even tell me what a stuck up old ***** my grandma was, I never met her. That was coming from her own kids. My mother was the most loving, big-hearted human being I've met in 44 years on this earth, so maybe it's best I didn't meet my dad's mom. I probably wouldn't have liked her or been good enough for her.
Dad came home after Vietnam and started working at the family business (it doesn't exist anymore, things went to shit in the 80s farm crisis and that was the end of it), and they built their own house. I came along a whole 10 years later. My parents were the last ones in either of their families to have kids, my dad was 30 and mom was 28. In 1980 that was ancient to be having kids. I'm glad they waited that long because the had their shit together byb that point. Neither of them were wild and they always put my brother and I first in their lives.
Unfortunately, neither of them took awesome care of their health like a lot of folks didnt in the 70s and 80s. Dad died at 57 years old and so did mom. They're still the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. Crazy how when you're going through life it feels like it takes forever, but now it feels like it was all instantaneous.
C'est la vie.
. Feel free to DM me for details. PS. the pool heats to a balmy 94.
