55 Years Together

Today marks our 55th wedding anniversary. We were married on this date in 1971 at the St. Mary's Catholic Church in Clifton, Kansas. The officiating priest was Fr. Roger Meitl and he baptized our first son in 1972. It started out a beautiful day, a little chilly outside, but the sun was shining and there wasn't much wind. I felt like God was approving of our marriage.

My maid of honor was my sister, Linda, and I also had two bridesmaids, Joyce Derousseau and Janice Bergquist. They were friends from my college days. 

Dennis had his brother, Jim Barnes as his best man, and his brother Mike Barnes and a cousin Randy Brown as groomsmen. After the traditional wedding mass, we had a few pictures taken and then a reception in the church basement. Following that, Dennis' parents hosted a small lunch at their house. We relaxed until early evening at the house and then Mike and his wife, Deb, asked us to go to the movies with them in Concordia. They had been married a few months prior to our wedding, and Deb was expecting her first baby.

The movie was not one of my favorites, Five Easy Pieces, but I survived it and afterward, we said goodbye to Mike and Deb and got a motel room there in Concordia. It was right on the corner of Hiway 9 and Hiway 81 and was called The Baron's Motel. It wasn't a dive, but it certainly wasn't the Hilton either.  At least it was clean and private. 

We had originally planned to travel to Salina for our wedding night, but after the movie, we were tired and didn't feel like driving that far, especially driving his dad's jeep. That was a completely different story.

Dennis had planned to drive his own car home from Great Lakes, Illinois where he was stationed in the USN Seabees. But he had let a buddy drive it before he was due to come home, and the "friend" had torn the clutch out of it. It was a 1969 Ford Mustang with a 429 Cobrajet engine and was so hot he had won trophies drag racing with it up in Wisconsin. Anyway, the car was in the shop, so Dennis flew home and his friend was to bring the car to Clifton to be in the wedding as best man. Confusing, huh? The friend got drunk and didn't show up with the car, so Dennis had to find a new best man, and different transportation.

Our life back then was very complicated.

Anyway, back to the wedding night. We woke up around 3 a.m. and were hungry and thirsty, so we decided to make a run to the nearest quick shop to get food supplies. We opened the door to the room and looked outside. There were snow drifts about a foot deep on the top of the jeep and everywhere, and that was in a sheltered area.  We made a mad dash to the quick shop and got our goodies and returned to the motel.

The next morning, there was even more snow. Drifts were taller than the jeep and the roads were nearly impassable.  We decided we'd better get back to Clifton as soon as possible with that jeep, because we knew it would be needed.  

We did stop a couple of times and helped pull people out of the ditches. It was a real mess and it was really cold! We had thought we would make it back in time for Sunday mass, but it was lunchtime by the time we got back. So we just relaxed at his parents' house.

I'll continue my story tomorrow.