Our Wedding Journey, Part I

I wasn’t keeping a journal in 1969, the year Joyce and I married—but, oh, how I wish I had been! I remember a lot about our honeymoon, but so much has fled to that inaccessible land where most of human experience dwells.

So … I’ll try my best—to remember—not to embellish …

On December 20 we were married in Akron, Ohio, at Concordia Lutheran Church, a building that some of Joyce’s stone-mason ancestors had helped erect. Joyce had lived her entire life in Akron, most of her male family members working for the rubber industry. I had just turned 25; she was 22.

Our reception was at Stan Hywet Hall in Akron—once the home of the Seiberlings—in the Gate Lodge. One strong memory I have of that event: Dr. Fred Bissell, a friend from Aurora whose children I had taught (and would teach), went around the room with a little Christmas tree and “invited” (shamed?) people into attaching money to it, money that he then presented to us as cash for our wedding journey. (And, oh, did we need it! As a public middle school teacher—Aurora, Ohio—I was making only about $6000 a year at the time.)

I remember, too, Joyce’s phone conversation with her dear cousin Paul, a med student at OSU who could not make the wedding (exams). There’s a photo of her on the payphone with him.

Mostly, I remember walking around in a daze, talking with friends from all throughout my life, with my family, with my “new family” (Joyce’s), with colleagues and even students who had come. It seemed to me beyond a miracle that all this had happened …

I had met Joyce only about five months earlier—in a Kent State grad school  course on American Transcendentalism, a course neither of us had wanted to take. She’d wanted another class: closed; I’d wanted another class (not the same as hers): closed. And so we ended up in the same classroom in Satterfield Hall that summer—but it would be some weeks before we even spoke …

I’ve told this story before, so I’ll not repeat it here. But we spoke; we “hit it off”; we had a couple of dates; we decided to marry.

We had made reservations for our wedding night at the Holiday Inn North in Columbus. We would be heading to New Orleans, a destination we’d picked because neither of us had ever been there. We thought that would be cool—beginning our life together in a new place. I was driving a 1969 VW Fastback. Dark green. Snazzy ...

We were more than naïve in so many ways—e.g., deciding on a big car trip in late December. Naïve? Maybe just dumb. But off we drove that evening, and, fortunately, I-71 was clear, and we made it to our hotel with little trouble.

The next morning (it was the first night we’d ever spent together!), I learned a few things—a few differences between how men and women get up and get ready for the day. Just one example: Joyce had put her hair in curlers the night before, and that first morning came the Removal Process, the eons under the portable hair dryer (she invariably read during this “activity”).

Let’s say that I began learning the meaning of the word patience that first full day of our marriage. (And she began learning what an impatient man looked and acted like!)

Eventually, we were up and off to stop Number Two: another Holiday Inn near Memphis, TN.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

*stole/adapted the title from William Dean Howells’ 1871 novel, Their Wedding Journey.