*** This story was revised and extracted from the draft of one of Dave's forthcoming books ***
It was spring 1960. I was selling cars, working for my father, a Dodge dealer. I had done pretty well in sales and Chrysler rewarded me by making me a member of the Dodge Key Club. A frugal guy, I had saved a lot of my pay and had built up a pretty good nest egg.
Then, just before Easter that year, I received a telephone call from Bud, the father of one of my previous girl friends.
He said he was down at a local restaurant and his daughter, who he called Kate, was with him. He invited me to come down to the restaurant and visit with them. Since they lived a hundred miles away I took it as an opportunity to see how she'd matured as now she was a college junior and I hadn't seen her for some time. My understanding was she had been going with and was pinned by a local fellow who was attending Notre Dame.
I had dated Cathy on and off for about 5 years or so, as well as other girls, and I really liked her more than anyone else. Although I hadn't seen her in a couple years, I had sent flowers for her birthday a couple months before. I thought this was just a social visit to say hello and perhaps say "thank you" for the flowers.
I drove over to the restaurant and there was Cathy, smiling warmly, eyes bright and shining, pretty as ever, with a blue suitcase in hand.
Somehow the conversation turned to the idea that maybe she'd like to visit with me as she had a few days off from college due to the holidays. It would've been hard to say no to that soft smile and ever so pretty young woman with those quiet but pleading eyes. I was glad her dad had decided to call but a little bit suprised she hadn't made the call herself.
We decided to drive to Washington D.C. for a couple days to see the cherry blossoms.
Because she had to be back to school we couldn't stay in D.C. very long. On our drive home, passing through Winchester, there were a number of signs in yards and on houses that said 'Justice of the Peace' and somehow or other the idea of marriage came up.
We bought a license and the next thing I knew I was married. I wasn't sure. Was I conned, or just naive, was it my idea or what?
It was spring 1960. I was selling cars, working for my father, a Dodge dealer. I had done pretty well in sales and Chrysler rewarded me by making me a member of the Dodge Key Club. A frugal guy, I had saved a lot of my pay and had built up a pretty good nest egg.
Then, just before Easter that year, I received a telephone call from Bud, the father of one of my previous girl friends.
He said he was down at a local restaurant and his daughter, who he called Kate, was with him. He invited me to come down to the restaurant and visit with them. Since they lived a hundred miles away I took it as an opportunity to see how she'd matured as now she was a college junior and I hadn't seen her for some time. My understanding was she had been going with and was pinned by a local fellow who was attending Notre Dame.
I had dated Cathy on and off for about 5 years or so, as well as other girls, and I really liked her more than anyone else. Although I hadn't seen her in a couple years, I had sent flowers for her birthday a couple months before. I thought this was just a social visit to say hello and perhaps say "thank you" for the flowers.
I drove over to the restaurant and there was Cathy, smiling warmly, eyes bright and shining, pretty as ever, with a blue suitcase in hand.
Somehow the conversation turned to the idea that maybe she'd like to visit with me as she had a few days off from college due to the holidays. It would've been hard to say no to that soft smile and ever so pretty young woman with those quiet but pleading eyes. I was glad her dad had decided to call but a little bit suprised she hadn't made the call herself.
We decided to drive to Washington D.C. for a couple days to see the cherry blossoms.
Because she had to be back to school we couldn't stay in D.C. very long. On our drive home, passing through Winchester, there were a number of signs in yards and on houses that said 'Justice of the Peace' and somehow or other the idea of marriage came up.
We bought a license and the next thing I knew I was married. I wasn't sure. Was I conned, or just naive, was it my idea or what?
Bur the most important thing to me was to have a family. I felt mature and secure enough that I made the decision that this was the time and the place and Cathy was the right choice.
She had been first in my heart for quite a long time.
So I made the commitment. My promise was made both to Cathy and to God. And one I would keep no matter what the future held.
An idealist, raised in part by super ethical, very old fashioned grand parents, my word was my bond. In my heart, I believed she would be my wife for life. Come hell or highwater.
Cathy didn't want her school to know she was married. She was afraid she'd lose her job as a house mother. So we didn't live together till 6 weeks later when school was out. We also made a promise, a pledge to each other not to tell anyone till then. The first of a thousand promises that would be broken by Cathy whose word would slowly and sadly come to mean little or nothing*.
Early that summer we moved into a small 4 room plus bath summer cottage which my father had bought from my grand father by trading him a new Dodge car worth about $1700 back in 1947.
The little white cottage sat up off the ground on concrete blocks and lacked quite a few basic facilities.
We had no hot water or water heater and there was no source of heat to heat the house come winter. There was electricity but no natural gas.
To earn a living I set up a small used car lot in a nearby town and also got a job at a local lumber company for 50 dollars a week. I also began a Tv and electronics repair business charging $2 for a service call.
It was the mid 1900's, we were living in the country, where the cost of living was not high. Fortunately I also had my savings from my previous employment as a car salesman.
In lieu of rent I agreed with my father that I would fix up the house, replace the roof, put in a water heater, bring a gas line in from the distant city street and make other upgrades and repairs that would be equivalent to paying rent.
The first winter we heated the house with a western style wood western style stove burning a type of coal product called disco. Disco burned so hot the stove glowed bright red. It's a miracle that we didn't burn the house down. That first year our baths were warmed by pans of hot water heated on our little propane cook stove.
When Christmas came we hiked a half mile or so through the deep snow into the woods behind our house with our half wild cat Jinx bounding through the deep snow in and out of our footprints. We cut down a beautiful scotch pine and dragged it back to be enjoyed and decorated. Jinx, now wet and covered with snow, decided to ride home on our first Christmas tree.
Cathy finished her final year of college by driving the 25 miles each way to school every day that first winter. She also did her student teaching at a local school near our home in the Spring. Thank goodness I had my savings to pay her tuition and expenses. But now with our first child on the way I had to do much better for winter number two.
It took me two years total but I made all the promised improvements to our homr plus many more. The little summer cottage would slowly and with much patience and effort become a year around home complete with new natural gas line, foundation, furnace, water heater, electric stove, washer drier and most every necessity.
Photo: View Looking toward the lake from the dirt driveway about 300 feet up the road from our cottage. The 700 ' gas line was dug down the south side of this street. Since our road was private at the time the gas company said we had to put the line in ourselves at our own expense.
I dug a 700 foot long or so 2.5 foot deep ditch and installed a steel gas pipe and line. Then I bought and installed a gas space butheater in the living room. The following fall I replaced the space heater with a wall furnace and added a gas water heater. I built a concrete block foundation under and around the whole house, added fiberglass attic insulation, painted the house inside and out, installed new kitchen cabinets, added storm windows, remodeled the master bedroom adding real pine paneling and accoustic tile, closed in the front porch and later added a new room with a washer and drier.
But something in Cathy's personality, that I hadn't noticed when dating her, wasn't right and I grew progressively concerned. Most of the time Cathy was happy and acted as normal as can be, but occasionally, at times, she acted strangely and even distant.
Once I found her writing strange sadistic poems that made Edgar Alan Poe's darker poems look sane. When I inquired about it the notebook with the poems disappeared. I never saw them again.
She seemed to have some of the characteristics of a troubled or perhaps abused person but refused to talk to me about it no matter how carefully or gently I approached the subject.
I had been seriously abused by my own mother as a young person and understood that if something like that had happened to her, she may be uncomfortable talking about it just as I would be.
There were many other examples of unusual behavior. One day I came home from work early and found what resembled my signature written dozens of times on her notepad. She said she was practicing just in case she had to sign my name to a check or something. Since we had a joint account and she could sign, her reason seemed unusual and perhaps doubtful.
She unsuccessfully and repeatedly pressured me to buy life insurance even though I already had a small policy and she even brought an application home for me to look at after I said no. Many years later I learned she had in fact purchased a policy. My granddad had tried to caution me, but I just didn't listen.
No seemed to be a word that for her was hard to understand or at least accept.
Many times when I'd arrive home from work or where ever, she would very suddenly hang up the phone and act nervous.
Sometimes I'd wake in the middle,of the night and find she was not in the house. She'd explain she'd "been outside" sometimes adding "for a walk". Once she asked me "if she could be two people". She later said she had "deep dark thoughts". I should have paid more attention. But foolishly and perhaps naively, thinking it was in her best interest, I didn't press the issue.
Her family, including two brothers, lived only about ten miles away and they visited us only a few times in our first three years of marriage. But not once did they invite us to eat at their house and not once did she invite them for a meal even though I asked her to. That also seemed unusual to me.
After our first year, by the time she graduated, she was 6 months pregnant. I was so happy that we were expecting our first born that I tried to overlook her intermittent episodic and at times unusual behavior. (Fourteen years later her only known MMPI psychological test results said she was "Severely disturbed" [and worse].)
But it was a year or so later, not fourteen years later and we shared the joy and unbelievable happiness of a newborn and beautiful baby daughter. This was a precious and wonderful time. A time to experience the excitement, love and challenges and the wonder of a new family and the miracle of a new life.
I was more than busy with home, jobs and family. This was family time. It seemed not the time to pry or probe into Cathy's somewhat changing moods, personality and fortunately limited but strange, behavior patterns.
A year later my daughter was walking, talking, picking up shiny stones, throwing her food on the floor, chasing the cat and doing everything else healthy normal kids do.
To have a family had been my deepest wish.
So I made the commitment. My promise was made both to Cathy and to God. And one I would keep no matter what the future held.
An idealist, raised in part by super ethical, very old fashioned grand parents, my word was my bond. In my heart, I believed she would be my wife for life. Come hell or highwater.
Cathy didn't want her school to know she was married. She was afraid she'd lose her job as a house mother. So we didn't live together till 6 weeks later when school was out. We also made a promise, a pledge to each other not to tell anyone till then. The first of a thousand promises that would be broken by Cathy whose word would slowly and sadly come to mean little or nothing*.
Early that summer we moved into a small 4 room plus bath summer cottage which my father had bought from my grand father by trading him a new Dodge car worth about $1700 back in 1947.
The little white cottage sat up off the ground on concrete blocks and lacked quite a few basic facilities.
We had no hot water or water heater and there was no source of heat to heat the house come winter. There was electricity but no natural gas.
To earn a living I set up a small used car lot in a nearby town and also got a job at a local lumber company for 50 dollars a week. I also began a Tv and electronics repair business charging $2 for a service call.
It was the mid 1900's, we were living in the country, where the cost of living was not high. Fortunately I also had my savings from my previous employment as a car salesman.
In lieu of rent I agreed with my father that I would fix up the house, replace the roof, put in a water heater, bring a gas line in from the distant city street and make other upgrades and repairs that would be equivalent to paying rent.
The first winter we heated the house with a western style wood western style stove burning a type of coal product called disco. Disco burned so hot the stove glowed bright red. It's a miracle that we didn't burn the house down. That first year our baths were warmed by pans of hot water heated on our little propane cook stove.
When Christmas came we hiked a half mile or so through the deep snow into the woods behind our house with our half wild cat Jinx bounding through the deep snow in and out of our footprints. We cut down a beautiful scotch pine and dragged it back to be enjoyed and decorated. Jinx, now wet and covered with snow, decided to ride home on our first Christmas tree.
Cathy finished her final year of college by driving the 25 miles each way to school every day that first winter. She also did her student teaching at a local school near our home in the Spring. Thank goodness I had my savings to pay her tuition and expenses. But now with our first child on the way I had to do much better for winter number two.
It took me two years total but I made all the promised improvements to our homr plus many more. The little summer cottage would slowly and with much patience and effort become a year around home complete with new natural gas line, foundation, furnace, water heater, electric stove, washer drier and most every necessity.
Photo: View Looking toward the lake from the dirt driveway about 300 feet up the road from our cottage. The 700 ' gas line was dug down the south side of this street. Since our road was private at the time the gas company said we had to put the line in ourselves at our own expense.
I dug a 700 foot long or so 2.5 foot deep ditch and installed a steel gas pipe and line. Then I bought and installed a gas space butheater in the living room. The following fall I replaced the space heater with a wall furnace and added a gas water heater. I built a concrete block foundation under and around the whole house, added fiberglass attic insulation, painted the house inside and out, installed new kitchen cabinets, added storm windows, remodeled the master bedroom adding real pine paneling and accoustic tile, closed in the front porch and later added a new room with a washer and drier.
But something in Cathy's personality, that I hadn't noticed when dating her, wasn't right and I grew progressively concerned. Most of the time Cathy was happy and acted as normal as can be, but occasionally, at times, she acted strangely and even distant.
Once I found her writing strange sadistic poems that made Edgar Alan Poe's darker poems look sane. When I inquired about it the notebook with the poems disappeared. I never saw them again.
She seemed to have some of the characteristics of a troubled or perhaps abused person but refused to talk to me about it no matter how carefully or gently I approached the subject.
I had been seriously abused by my own mother as a young person and understood that if something like that had happened to her, she may be uncomfortable talking about it just as I would be.
There were many other examples of unusual behavior. One day I came home from work early and found what resembled my signature written dozens of times on her notepad. She said she was practicing just in case she had to sign my name to a check or something. Since we had a joint account and she could sign, her reason seemed unusual and perhaps doubtful.
She unsuccessfully and repeatedly pressured me to buy life insurance even though I already had a small policy and she even brought an application home for me to look at after I said no. Many years later I learned she had in fact purchased a policy. My granddad had tried to caution me, but I just didn't listen.
No seemed to be a word that for her was hard to understand or at least accept.
Many times when I'd arrive home from work or where ever, she would very suddenly hang up the phone and act nervous.
Sometimes I'd wake in the middle,of the night and find she was not in the house. She'd explain she'd "been outside" sometimes adding "for a walk". Once she asked me "if she could be two people". She later said she had "deep dark thoughts". I should have paid more attention. But foolishly and perhaps naively, thinking it was in her best interest, I didn't press the issue.
Her family, including two brothers, lived only about ten miles away and they visited us only a few times in our first three years of marriage. But not once did they invite us to eat at their house and not once did she invite them for a meal even though I asked her to. That also seemed unusual to me.
After our first year, by the time she graduated, she was 6 months pregnant. I was so happy that we were expecting our first born that I tried to overlook her intermittent episodic and at times unusual behavior. (Fourteen years later her only known MMPI psychological test results said she was "Severely disturbed" [and worse].)
But it was a year or so later, not fourteen years later and we shared the joy and unbelievable happiness of a newborn and beautiful baby daughter. This was a precious and wonderful time. A time to experience the excitement, love and challenges and the wonder of a new family and the miracle of a new life.
I was more than busy with home, jobs and family. This was family time. It seemed not the time to pry or probe into Cathy's somewhat changing moods, personality and fortunately limited but strange, behavior patterns.
A year later my daughter was walking, talking, picking up shiny stones, throwing her food on the floor, chasing the cat and doing everything else healthy normal kids do.
To have a family had been my deepest wish.
Now I had one and was very happy and felt deeply the specialness and love for this growing family. Perhaps my happiness was enhanced because my wife was an absolute master of telling me and others what they wanted to hear instead of the truth. I foolishly believed it all. A major part of my happiness had perhaps been just an illusion.
My Tv business was beginning to prosper, and with a recommendation from bank Director Ralph Moss, the local bank loaned me the money to expand into the Tv leasing business.
My Tv business was beginning to prosper, and with a recommendation from bank Director Ralph Moss, the local bank loaned me the money to expand into the Tv leasing business.
Paul Ralston, owner of the local hardware store, built a Tv store for me at the corner of Third and Line Streets. There was no contract, just a handshake and a personal promise. That's the way business was done in small towns in those days. A person I' word was their bond.
Our second daughter was born the next spring. It became apparent to me that to properly support my family and even though we had a moderately successful business that I should return to college and move to a metropolitan area with better business and educational opportunities. My paternal grandfather had supported and encouraged the idea.
For me that meant moving my business and family to a new city, another home and hopefully an environment where Cathy might be away from her past and whatever or whoever troubled her. For she was indeed a troubled person. But however naive, I believed that with a lot of love and support that she'd slowly get over it.
My brother had taken a job as an instructor at a Texas college and his wife had suggested we visit and maybe consider attending school there.
And that's exactly what happened. We visited my brother and his lovely wife, then I packed up and moved my growing family and business half way across the country.
But that adventure is a separate story and best related in my book.
-------
Our second daughter was born the next spring. It became apparent to me that to properly support my family and even though we had a moderately successful business that I should return to college and move to a metropolitan area with better business and educational opportunities. My paternal grandfather had supported and encouraged the idea.
For me that meant moving my business and family to a new city, another home and hopefully an environment where Cathy might be away from her past and whatever or whoever troubled her. For she was indeed a troubled person. But however naive, I believed that with a lot of love and support that she'd slowly get over it.
My brother had taken a job as an instructor at a Texas college and his wife had suggested we visit and maybe consider attending school there.
And that's exactly what happened. We visited my brother and his lovely wife, then I packed up and moved my growing family and business half way across the country.
But that adventure is a separate story and best related in my book.
-------
* Cathy broke this commitment by notifying, of all people, my father. Strange? To find our why, please see the book.
*** This story was revised and extracted from the draft of one of Dave's forthcoming books ***
*** This story was revised and extracted from the draft of one of Dave's forthcoming books ***
