Seven years of courtship proved long enough

That was during the horrible Depression. We began our friendship by eating sack lunches together in his truck. Soon he took me to the Presbyterian Student Center, where fellows took turns cooking 15-cent Sunday night suppers for the girls. This group did a lot of no-cost, fun things. We sang and played games in the winter and once hiked from Rocheport to the big cave in a hard rain. Drying our socks and other clothing was interrupted by someone shouting, "Get out of the cave at once; a wall of water is coming." We left the food and wet socks and got out fast. The group felt like family after that close call.

At my church, our friends were mostly young married couples. We played cards, swam, picnicked, fished, cooked out and had lots of parties. In winter, the fellows made sled runners for a farm wagon, and we had some wonderful star-lit horse-drawn trips in that sled. Chub and I hosted a Halloween party where he wore only a draped sheet and looked just like Mahatma Gandhi.

University tuition and fees were near $50, and that was a lot! Dad and Mom sacrificed personal pleasures to keep my brother and me in college. I made a little money selling blackberries, gooseberries, walnuts and Christmas trees. Chub helped me cut, carry and deliver trees. He helped Dad on the farm occasionally just so we could be together.

We used Dad’s mules and big old scraper and leveled a place for tennis, but the joy was in the doing; we couldn’t afford rackets and a net. We swam at the free city pool in Columbia; we skated on our ponds. Mom played the piano while Chub sang and I fiddled. When I fiddled for square dances, Chub was learning to dance. After midnight, he’d take me home in his truck, and I often fell asleep with my head on his lap.

By 1935, I was teaching 10 hours a week at Christian College for a tiny salary that doubled for the second semester. Chub’s meager income came from hauling milk from about 10 farms south of Columbia. He didn’t make much more than his expenses, and he had student loans to pay. We never talked about marriage, but I guess we both felt we would someday have money enough to establish a home. My mother’s basic instructions before I was old enough to date were, "Save your kisses for your husband." I knew what she meant.

After seven years of courtship, we abandoned sensible reasoning and called Carl Agee, dean of the school of religion. "We want a small wedding in my home on Dec. 27." He obliged. That was 71 years and two days ago.


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