the first few days...

 As I promised some time ago, here is the first installment of my honeymoon memoir.

In July of 1968, my husband and I were joined in matrimony at an afternoon service in a lovely modern church which is now a parking lot.  My father walked me down the aisle and my soon to be mother in law wore pink for the last time in her life.  The service was followed by a punch and cake reception in the church basement.  Mints and nuts were also served.  At all our future parties my husband insisted that there be mints and nuts.   

Then we left on our honeymoon, the first of what became our annual cross country driving trips.  We were heading for Texas.  My new husband had worked as a civilian employee at White Sands for two years and wanted to show me Texas.  By a happy coincidence 1968 was the year of the Hemisfair in San Antonio so that was our first goal.  We started, as we began all of our trips, by getting lost.  We quickly found our way back to the interstate and on to the correct exit for our hotel somewhere in Illinois.  As they used to do in the old movies, I will draw a curtain across the first delightful night.  The next day we were on our way to Texas.  We had planned to camp some (using the same little green pup tent my girlfriend and I had borrowed from him for our trip west the year before).  Our first night of camping was as romantic as you can imagine.  We camped in a private camp ground at the back of a ranchers fields, alone in the trees beside a bubbling stream where we splashed and bathed and generally had a great time.

The next day we drove into San Antonio.  I was looking forward to seeing the Alamo, and suddenly there it was, right at the edge of the sidewalk.  I was expecting a parklike setting, but inside it did not disappoint.  Then on to our hotel where we had reservations for the next three nights.  When we got there we were informed that, because of the mass of people there for the Hemisfair, we would not be staying in the hotel.  Instead, we were given a small apartment in a nearby brand new apartment complex.  Not quite the same as the hotel but it seemed very nice, until our first fight.  Did I mention that we didn’t have air conditioning in our car, and Texas in July is hot? We were tired when we got to that apartment.  As we were settling in, Tom called to me that there weren’t any bath towels in the bathroom.  Since I was collapsed on the bed, I asked him, nicely I thought, to go down to the car and bring up some of the towels we had with us.  From the bathroom he said “No.”  I was shocked.  I’m afraid I may have gotten a little strident.  Finally, as he remained intransigent, insisting we didn’t need the towels, I tromped down the stairs (we were on the second floor) grabbed the towels from our car and brought them upstairs where I took them into the bathroom.  There I discovered several perfectly fine white towels in a variety of sizes hanging on the towel racks.  “Why did you tell me there weren’t any towels?” I shouted.  “I said there weren’t any bath towels.  These are all smaller.”  They were as large as any towels I had ever used, but evidently my new husband preferred bath sheets.  Who knew he was a towel snob?  Our next fight was nine years later, but that’s another story.  To be continued: