By know, you know that I met the future Mrs. Missingthesmokefreeparadise while stationed at Oakland Naval Hospital, aka Oak Knoll.

Between HM1 JEL and our mutual patient RM, there was an obvious conspiracy to bring the two of us together. I wondered what a beautiful young woman would see in me – probably the same thoughts ran through the minds of Sarge Charlie and John Heald when they met their future beauties. What is it that these women see in us?

In me, I think she saw a gentle, well mannered young man who was infactuated with her big brown eyes (and cuddly body ). We soon became inseparable and, as I previously mentioned, she basically just moved in on me one day. What could I say – someone to share my life (and bed with) – hey, I was 24 years old and not exactly experienced in the opposite sex.

I can vividly remember that she would come home around midnight (she worked the second shift on the Orthopedic Ward) and would crawl into bed, cuddling up against me with her head on my shoulder. We would sleep that way all night long – I still suffer pains in my shoulder that are probably related to her sleeping on my shoulder all those days.

I asked her to marry me on her birthday. We were driving to the World Airways headquarters for me to pick up two tickets to that night’s A’s-Yankees game when I popped the question. Of course, she said yes without hesitation. To show my true love for her, I even forewent the Yankees game that night.

We made plans to visit my family in Vermont that fall in conjunction with the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. In an earlier post, I discussed my families history of attending races at Watkins Glen. It was basically an annual event for the family, one that I had even traveled home from Iceland for the year before.

My mother, the good product of a Mercy education, refused to allow us to sleep in the same room, so we decided to get married on the way across the country – I always tell people that the only reason I married my wife was because my mother would not let us sleep together. The wedding ended up being a hoot, to say the least.

We disagreed on many things about the forthcoming wedding – I wanted a dungaree affair and she wanted to dress up.

We left our home in Oakland and drove up to the Lake Tahoe area. The idea was that we would take a hotel room for the night, get dressed and married the next morning, then continue our trip across the country. All went well until we tried to find a hotel room – they were all full because there was a whistler’s convention in town. I kid you not.

We drove around for quite some time looking for a vacancy, then pulled into a rest area to use the facilities. I knew that we could spend the night in this particular rest area, as I used to sleep there at night before hitting the ski slopes early the next morning. So, no more driving around – we had found our hotel room for the night.

We spent the night in the car in our dungarees and flannel shirts, then got up the next morning and found the Royal Wedding Chapel in Carson City, Nevada, where we were married by a minister in a lime green polyester leisure suit (do you remember them?). I can remember my bride telling me so confidently that she was not going to cry, only to produce water streams that rivaled the melting sierra snows.

From Carson City, we drove to Salt Lake City, where we spent our first night as a married couple – we were so tired that we simply went to sleep. We continued driving across the country, aiming to arrive in conjunction with the USGP.

We picked up my second oldest brother in Rochester, where he was going to school. We drove in my Plymouth Arrow, the three of us, with the Mrs. packed into the back seat literally surrounded by all sorts of camping equipment and our luggage so well that you could not see her except through the right side window. When we got to the Glen, the person selling tickets for the weekend asked how many and I answered “three”, to which he quizzically looked at me until an arm came snaking out from all the stuff crammed in the back.

We spent the weekend at the Glen, mostly in the tent because of the rain. The first night, the Mrs. moved to the car to sleep, because the floor of the tent was becoming flooded. The next day, we took everything down and reset the tent and at least that stayed dry for the rest of the weekend.

From there we went to Vermont and visited my family, then made the return drive across the country. It was memorable because, during our descent out of the Rockies into Salt Lake City, the car started fishtailing in the snow. I crept the rest of the way to SLC, where we again spent the night.

When we arrived back at our apartment, we discovered that we had a new roommate – HM1 JEL, who had been one of those pushing us together, had moved off base at his doctor’s insistence. He had developed, of all things, Bell’s Palsy and one of the treatments is to reduce the amount of stress in one’s life. Because he had been living in the barracks, he never really got the time to relax. JEL became my roommate for the next year and one-half.

As to RM, the other protagonist in this relationship, it was her husband who made our wedding rings. I paid a total of $9 for our rings to pay for the silver – he had taken up silversmithing as a hobby after having a heart attack and their gift of the rings was the most heartfelt of all.

BTW – RM was a remarkable woman. She was afflicted with total body rheumatoid arthritis. Mind you, this era was the late ’70s, yet she had undergone bilateral hip replacements, bilateral knee replacements and numerous other surgeries. You could not slow her down – it is from her that I learned that, regardless of the afflictions that you may suffer from, you must still live life to the fullest or the disease wins. I can remember one time going to visit her in the hospital after she had been admitted and asking her what happened – she had bent over to feed her cat and forgot about her hip (you weren’t supposed to bend past 90* in those days) and popped it out. Her husband came home from whatever he was doing, loaded her into the back of the pickup and drove her from the foothills of the Sierras to Mather AFB in Sacremento, where her hip was relocated and she was shipped back to us at Oak Knoll.

Live on RM – you taught me so much. And, you (and JEL) are responsible for the love of my life being in my life. I thank you both.

Next up – the end of a Navy career.

JustJon