“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” – Robert Quillen

Thanks for following along each week as I prepared for my tenth Falmouth Road Race. I did finish in an hour and 35 minutes, four minutes slower than last year, but I credit the time to the socialization that took place along the route. And I did not need the medical tent. You can still make a contribution to Cystic Fibrosis and my fundraising page here.

3.5 Miles at the Dimond Family Cheering Section, an annual tradition.

Adding to the Falmouth Road Race Coffee Mug Collection: #9

Running for Elijiah, a real trooper, who I met this month in North Carolina.

On August 24, 1972, my future wife and I had our first date, and Saturday is the 52nd Anniversary of the event that changed the world, or at least our world. We were married 23 months later.

We were just kids and of course had no idea what life had in store for us. I knew within a couple of weeks that she was the girl of my dreams, I think it took her a little longer to categorize me in a similar fashion.

If you haven't read the story of that first date, it might not sound true, but it is. If you are reading it again, you already know where we are going to dinner on Saturday night.

I’ve never been one to kiss and tell, and in this first date story, and there is no kiss involved.

However, the details of that date are more or less etched in stone, or at least the highlights are.

Act 1:

Bill was my Big Brother in the fraternity, and he went to work at the University Book Store after graduation. A year later, a new girl at the information desk, my future wife, started working there as well. About a year after that, I also went to work part time in the bookstore, creating logoed and graphic t-shirts.

The day my first check was supposed to be there, I walked up to this beautiful woman behind the information desk and asked if the checks had come in. She curtly replied ‘no.’ 

Well then.

I went back to work and sometime later, I really don’t remember how long I waited, I went back to the information desk, looking for ‘information’ about my check. When I asked again, I got a fast answer like ‘I’ll let you know when they are here,’ which I translated as ‘don’t be a pest,’ or ‘don’t bother me again or else.’

Not a good start to the relationship.

Many months later, and after I left the job at the bookstore, I don’t remember exactly how long, my Big Brother decided to play matchmaker. He shared with me that, apparently, my future wife’s current boyfriend didn’t exactly have her on the pedestal he felt she deserved, and he thought I might be a better match.

He seized an opportunity to connect us when my future wife who, at the time, had a brother coaching soccer at a local high school, and wanted to get him a book on coaching. Bill offered my expertise to her, since I was a soccer player.

I came to the bookstore and helped her pick out a book for him. Pretty simple. Not sure when or how what happened next happened, but shortly after helping her pick out a great book, I made the big move and called her for a date.

She said "No."

I remember what I said, and so does she, when she said she couldn't go out with me. I said, ‘let me pick myself up off the floor.’ She always remembered that line.

With that kind of charm, the next time I asked her out, on what would become our first date, she gave me a definite maybe.

Here’s the story of that eventful evening.

The brand-new UMass Campus Center building had a beautiful lounge on the top floor with great vistas of the campus and low lighting, if you know what I mean. So, I asked her to have a drink with me up there when she got off work.

She indicated she couldn’t do that since she wasn’t yet 21, and they were pretty strict on campus at the time. You’d have to have a really perfect fake ID to get served there. 

Little did she know that one of the waitresses who worked there was in an English class with me. So, like the big man on campus that I pretended to be, I said “I can get you served.” Well, of course that clinched the date. This was about 4 pm and I had about an hour to make the necessary arrangements.

I scrambled to the Top of the Campus Bar, found my classmate, and asked her to serve a girl that I was going to bring up in about an hour. She refused. Oh, oh. When I asked why, she indicated she’d be fired if she got caught. I told her I would find her another job. After some negotiation, she said put it in writing, so I did.

On a cocktail napkin I wrote. “I will find you another job if you get fired for serving my date.’ She looked at it and then said, “what if I get fined?” “Of course,” I replied, “I will pay your fine.” And I promptly put that on a second napkin.

With things in hand, I met Betty at the door to the bookstore when she got off work, rode the elevator up to the tenth floor with her, went to the pre-arranged table in my classmate’s section and we both ordered an alcoholic beverage. My future wife had to be impressed, right? Right. She was. Act 1: a success. Now for Act 2.

Act 2: 

At the time I was working as houseboy at Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority (more fun than the bookstore). In exchange for helping the cook, cleaning the kitchen, setting the dining room, and serving a formal dinner in white waiter coats five nights a week, houseboy compensation was that we got to eat free.

Not only that, we were allowed stay in the house an hour after we were done cleaning up and play ping pong or hang around.

We were also useful as last-minute platonic dates if someone needed an escort to something, so we were asked out about as much as we asked out. About a year before meeting my future wife, Lisa, who was the kitchen steward at KKG, was worthy of the crush I had on her, and we went out on one date: to the Delaney House in Holyoke, about 10 miles from campus.

It was an old mansion set way back off the road at the end of a winding trail through the woods. We sat in front of a fireplace in a candle lit room. It was awesome.

It was exactly the type of place I wanted to go on this first date with the woman who was illegally drinking with me at the Top of the Campus Bar tonight.

I had borrowed a fraternity brother’s Volkswagen Beetle and after drinks we set off for Holyoke, as dusk turned to night. I turned right off US 5 and drove up the six-hundred-yard two-lane winding road to the Delaney House and…nothing. No restaurant, no lights, no nothing. Looks like my date is going to think I am a creep. We are in a very small VW Bug, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by darkness and both of us are nervous, but for different reasons.

My future wife started polishing the door as she moved further and further away from me as I stammered my confusion and mumbled apologies to this very skeptical woman. She couldn’t get out, probably wanted to, and I don’t think she believed a word I was saying.

I quickly turned the car around and we left. As we got closer to campus, both hungry, I pulled into McDonald’s on Route 9 in Hadley where we enjoyed some fries and burgers on our first date. (Years later, not 2 or 3 but 10 or 15, we ran across a story about the Delaney House fire and she finally believed me.)

I wish I had the cocktail napkins, but I still have the pedestal, and Betty. We'll be at McDonald's on Saturday for this 52nd Anniversary Date. I'm still a big spender.