...so I came home from New York City feeling like a world traveler. Me with my souvenirs from the United Nations building, napkins and other mementos of all the places my cousin and I visited. so it was back to 501 N. Main St. with my parents.
my future husband asked me out for the first time, but i resisted because he had been going steady with my girlfriend and i thought that would be disloyal to her. i like to remind him that i rescued him from ending up with her as she is now a crazy cat lady living alone with her multiple cats!
but after a year of checking out the rest of the available male population, it became clear to me that John Davids was the man for me. we had known each other since we were babies because both of our parents were members of the Congregational Church and we saw each other in Sunday School, church, youth fellowship, and summer Vacation Bible School, and at school. besides, he looked so sexy in his basketball shorts! plus, the most important thing of all, we had been friends for a long time before we even started dating and he could always make me laugh. that is huge! (and by the way, he is still making me laugh after 46 years of being married.)
so i accepted a ring from him the spring of my senior year after dating him for a little over a year and we married the fall after i graduated.
he had attended Ellsworth Junior College in Iowa Falls during my senior year of high school. then that summer he started working for T.E.Ibberson, a company that built the big concrete grain silos all over Iowa. so our first home together was located in Iowa Falls...my home #5!
It was a duplex and i don't think there was anyone living in the other half for the six weeks we lived there. We lived in the right half of the house. It was a two-story house at 721 Stevens Street with a garage. Our first home! We paid $50 a month in rent!!!
It was fun to finally be able to arrange things the way I liked them and to try my hand at cooking. (there's a topic for another day!)
We had my parents' old 1950's gray tweed sectional (that i would love to get back!)
Our stove was an old, old one given to us by Daisy K. I don't remember where our table came from. john's grandmother gave us two antique kitchen chairs and an antique dresser with a mirror. My mother gave us an old oriental area rug that had belonged to my dad's mother. Our bed was really old with an ancient lumpy mattress. Full size! can you imagine? i am still amazed when these old couples come to me for a new mattress set and tell me they have been sleeping on a double (full-size) for over fifty years!
Soon after we moved in, John decided that he should re-enter college so as to avoid getting drafted. So he applied to Iowa State University in Ames. He would be a junior.
We packed up all of our belongings except our stove which we left in Iowa Falls, and moved to Pammel Court in Ames (home #6) which was the married student housing. We paid $33 a month for rent! They were tin shacks dating back to WWII and very, very cold! (I went back to Ames several years ago to visit where we lived back then only to discover that our little shack had been demolished years before. sigh!)
There was no tub, just a shower, and I am a bath lover. But for some reason, there was a huge sink which I could actually climb into and at least get a good soak!
Christmas was coming and I was getting homesick! There was a tiny convenience store within walking distance. One time it was snowing and John had made me mad so I walked to the little store and used their phone to call my parents, collect. I talked to my mom and told her I wanted to come home! He was being mean to me!!! My mom said, "Betty! You've made your bed and now you have to lie in it! Go back home and make up with your husband!" That was good advice!
In early 1969, john was getting very nervous. his student deferment still had not come through and we knew his draft number was coming up. he did not want to be drafted into the army, so one day in February he went to a local recruiter and joined the Marine Corps! He was going to have to leave for boot camp in San Diego soon, so we decided to move me back home to my parents' home (#7) while he went through basic training which would be for almost four months.
So we packed up as much of our stuff that we could. we didn't have room for everything, so we dumped that beautiful sectional in the woods near Ames along with that oriental rug and we left the two antique chairs with john's sister who lived in Ames. I moved back into my old bedroom at my parent's house. About two weeks later John's folks drove us to the airport in Minneapolis. That was hard letting him go!
But before long, our first child made her appearance and I was kept busy caring for her. She was a good baby. It was mid-June before John got to hold his new daughter. She was already three months old!
His orders came through and he was going to be stationed at NAS (Naval Air Station) Millington, Tennessee. So we packed up our belongings in our car, put a blanket on top of everything in the back seat, laid Jill back there, and took off for our next new home!
And that will be #8!
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