The story of us, part 3

 

Why we stayed a third year 

After we graduated from the two year junior college, where we met, we heard that the northwest singers were going to be traveling to the Philippines and China for a music festival the next year. By then we were living with the drama teacher that we had made friends with, Kermit Hurd. He had played the Paige in the movie version of Rogers and Hammerstein‘s Cinderella and he’d been in attack of the killer tomatoes. His name is Kermit Hurd, but we called him guru Bob. We had started by renting a room in his home for the summer while he was out of town. When he returned, we found a tiny one room basement apartment that flooded every time the upstairs neighbor took a shower. Then Kermit’s son died in an ultralight accident and he didn’t want to live alone so he asked us to move back in with him. After he told us about the China trip,  we decided that Greg should stay and do the trip to China, and I had graduated except I was missing one PE credit credit because we signed up for a kayaking class and then Greg ended up having surgery on his femur to correct the shortened leg and curved femur resulting from a motorcycle accident when he was 15, and we didn’t take it that class after all. We had already taken a spelunking class together, but he had an extra PE from a tennis class his first semester before I met him, so I thought I’d actually get a PE credit and my AA degree and he’d go to China. The third year was wonderful because we did all those electives that you want to do and college was inexpensive enough that you could work minimum wage jobs, pay rent and still have a great time. He had a lot of fundraisers to get the money to go to China, and some of his old hometown friends helped a lot. Then shopping in China was inexpensive enough that he brought me back lots of ivory rings and silk robes and treasures of the orient. Pretty sure it was fake ivory. anyway that third year proved to be influential in both of us deciding to be exchange students to China three years later.

Justice of the peace

We had lived together since October 18, 1982 but in May 1984 we were graduating jr college and had gotten a job in a summer repertoire theater in the Black Hills in Custer State Park. We had told them at his audition that we were married so we could go together but it was close to Greg’s parents and his mom really didn’t want her friends to see programs noting us as married when we weren’t. We were packing to move when suddenly we just decided to go buy $7 Kmart rings and pick up my parents. Get a blood test and get married just before the office closed for the day. My family lived near the college. So we were storing our stuff for the summer at their house and just invited them along. We didn’t tell his parents until three hours later after my parents had taken us out for Chinese food. It hurt his mom’s feelings too much and I’d suggest either elope and include no one. Or include everyone. Once his parents believed that we really were married, you could never ask for more loving in-laws. 

Honeymoon bitterness

Working in summer theater is brutal and we couldn’t admit to being newlyweds. We got room in an old ccc cabin that was fifty years old and infested with mice and squirrels and would be torn down as soon as we moved out. 
We worked 8 am to 1 AM except Sunday afternoons and every other Monday. We ate in the mess hall. I did the box office and the snack bar and he did sets and acting. 
Perks were we had places of beauty everywhere and a free pass to every attraction but no time to use it. All our family and some friends from Germany visited. We had buffalo on the path home in those moonless midnights when we were feeling with our feet to see if we were still in the gravel path. We had mountain lions screaming like women behind the cabin. We did our laundry by stomping on it while we showered and hanging it from the trees to dry. We had buffalo licking our window and leaving nose prints with heads bigger than the window. Mice eating the hot chocolate packets in our bookcase headboard. And we saw buffalo with an itchy head turn a tree to toothpicks. And we made friends we still have forty years later.