We leave the chapel, go outside and sit on a bench right outside the front door.  I wonder what the preacher and his assistant are thinking?  I just cannot help this laughing, I am sure it is probably stress and a release.  Who knows? My fiance tries to not make any more jokes so that I can stop laughing but at this point, anything is a joke to me. I am sure that you have had these moments when you have a fit of laughter and anything that is done or said just sets you off. We start discussing/reliving all of the events since we have arrived laughing and carrying on about it. We eventually get all laughed out.  He asks if we can still go get married.  In we go.

There are no questions asked by the preacher or his assistant.  In fact, they hardly even have an expression on their face.  Then again, they have not had any expressions since the beginning except to each other and that is in their adoration to each other.  It somehow feels like the times you would get chastised in school for giggling or causing an outburst.  We did not have to stand in the corner or skip recess or even write sentences, though.

We are back in the chapel in our proper position.  Do you know what?  I do not even remember any of the rest of the ceremony to even talk about.  I just know that we did actually get married and it was probably short and quick.  He did read Corinthians 13:4-8, I remember that. He did not ask my fiance to say “my dearest beloved” and I assure you, that is a good thing! I think that at this point, they were no longer interested in trying to do it properly, as in stand on the exact spot, etc.  I think they wanted us out of there as quickly as we did.  He was uncomfortable, you know.  He did not have on his favorite blue tie!  There was also the gardening to get back to!

Okay!  Now we get to go home!  Yay!!  I decided that I would like to wait to surprise my mother and sister and everyone in person.  So here we go!  Do things get any better?  Of course not!  Will I ever get out of this truck?  It is doubtful. We go through Utah.  My new husband says we will get a hotel there for our honeymoon. Guess what is between California and Utah???  Death Valley is there.  There is a nice short little stretch for 200 miles that there is NOWHERE to stop!  There are signs warning of this all over the place. We have our last bathroom stop.  It never worked when your parents would try to make you go before you leave, I am sure it will not now. Being aware of no place to stop only makes you think of it constantly and I try to tell myself to stop thinking about it.  We are singing and trying to have some fun.

It starts to get really, really hot in the cab.  My husband is messing with the controls and everything but there is no air conditioning.  I do not get it, there must be something about no air conditioning with us.   There is nothing worse than being hot and it does not do much for your mood. This is Death Valley, you know.  If it is 100 degrees outside, it is probably 120 in the cab of the truck.  There is no alternative but to open the windows. Now we get to go down the highway with the noise of a semi, turbo and all, and the wind blowing through the truck.  Boy, I sure would hate to be a truck driver for a living!  How do these guys do it with all of these problems? I guess I must be a bit spoiled after all. My husband’s analogy was that it was like someone holding a hair dryer on high right in your face.  I say it was 10 hair dryers!  This was so miserable.  The only difference is no one was telling me to be quiet and go to sleep, but believe me, I was not giggling this time as when the hotel air conditioning was not working when I met his parents.

Well, I finally really had to go to the bathroom, so that was uncomfortable.  Miraculously a reservation/rest area appeared!  They were selling jewelry and trinkets, lots of turqouise.  They had bathrooms, boy was I excited, but not for long.  These bathrooms were metal teepees. The inside was a spiral walk through, like what the inside of a snail would look like. I started winding through and then came right back out.  It was dark and very hot.  There was no way I was walking through something I could not see in.  What if it were just a hole to lean over and I fell in.  I am such a sissy!  Back to the furnace of the truck and on our way.  Heat gets the best of me every time.  My husband suggests that I open the curtains and lay in the bunk. I tried that but it was no better and I said, “I want a divorce!”  Haha. (That happens to be the one and only time I have said that to him.  Probably because we have had air conditioning ever since.) Just a few short hours and the honeymoon is over.  He was ever so patient, but not me.

I believe we stayed in Provo, Utah.  This was not a good experience either.  We checked in, we ARE husband and wife, but no one there seemed to think we were.  They were all staring with looks of disgust on their faces.  I am sure they just knew I was someone this truck driver picked up for the night.  They went through all sorts of things just to register us, they had a million questions.  I do not know if this was because it was Utah or what, but they put us through the wringer.  I even finally volunteered that we were just married that morning.  They did not say a word or bat an eye, just looked at me like, yeah right, sure you did.  Well this put a big damper on my spirits. Their treatment was disrespectful.   My husband gave me all sorts of reasons they could be acting like this and tried to cheer me up.  Finally, I realized…this man IS my husband and who really cares what they think.  Just get through this and tomorrow I will be back home!

NOT!!!  He had another run added on.  We were going to stop in Denver.  I really want to tell my family that we are married. All of a sudden, it dawns on me that I only met his parents that one time.  What did I really know about any of them?   They live about 45 minutes from my home town.  I realized, what if my husband was like the town trouble maker or a hated family in their town?  How would I like that?  I start asking him these questions.  I asked what if he were the town drunk or in trouble with the law.  He said no that is my grandpa.  He said, but I am the town bigamist.  So funny, this guy!  Fine time to ask now, but he just laughed and told me all about his family and I had nothing to worry about. Funny, he never asked me any questions.

Nothing much happened after this other than more delays. We had to spend an extra two nights waiting for the place to open. He was suppose to be able to drop at any time, but for some reason, this was changed. I was so anxious to get home and tell everyone. I finally had to at least tell my sister. We called and told her and she promised to keep the secret.  Since we got married alone, I needed for someone to be excited for us and my sister was.  We did run into a fellow that worked with him and he was happy for us!

I think that by the time we finally did get home to tell everyone, it was about 10:30 p.m. or so.  I was disappointed knowing that all of my family was probably asleep by now. I had him lay on the air horn anyway!  I love those horns!  My disappointment did not last long, though!  My sister and her son had a cake made for us and came immediately over to mom’s house with the cake and gifts. How sweet!!!! That made everything perfect to me! My mother did not believe us when we told her.  How we told her was to have him “carry me over the threshold”. That backfired. She jumped up and asked what happened to me, did I get hurt?  Haha. When my sister came over, it helped her to perhaps maybe think we were telling the truth.  We showed her our “cute” little wedding certificate that we got from the chapel.  She said anyone could make up a fake one of those!  We told her that the official certificate from the courthouse would take a few days to arrive in the mail and she was somewhat satisfied.  My mom had a really nice reception for us about a week or so later and his sister had one for us in his hometown.  We are now ready to begin our life together.

After knowing each other for three weeks, we are still married almost 30 years later and still making each other laugh.  I am sure we will have a lot more adventures/embarrassing moments/memories and get into a lot more “trouble”.

So, since it was only suppose to be a day to get to Florida and back, this should be a two day trip.  I am packed and ready to go!  California should be beautiful.  I have to admit I am sort of excited.  I have only been east and south.

This first day has seemed so long. I am bored out of my mind, the scenery is not as pretty as I was thinking it would be. Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico seemed to take forever to get through. In Texas, we did come upon a place where they had buried a bunch of cadillacs in the ground leaving only half sticking out of the ground.  This was on Route 66 west of Amarillo.  Here is an excerpt from what I found online:

“Standing along Route 66 west of Amarillo, Texas, Cadillac Ranch was invented and built by a group of art-hippies imported from San Francisco. They called themselves The Ant Farm, and their silent partner was Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh 3. He wanted a piece of public art that would baffle the locals, and the hippies came up with a tribute to the evolution of the Cadillac tail fin. Ten Caddies were driven into one of Stanley Marsh 3’s fields, then half-buried, nose-down, in the dirt (supposedly at the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza). They faced west in a line, from the 1949 Club Sedan to the 1963 Sedan de Ville, their tail fins held high for all to see on the empty Texas panhandle.”  You may want to Google the article.  Just search for Cadillac Ranch. 

It seemed I slept a lot through this trip since I was so bored. I do not know how those drivers stay awake for hours on end day after day.   It was about 10:00 p.m. when my “driver” woke me up and told me to sit up I would want to see this.  We were climbing a mountain and he wanted me to be sure to see when we got to the top. OH MY GOODNESS!!  What a beautiful, breathtaking sight!  It was Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It was the lights of the town, the stars in the sky, the way the night just felt, the sounds from the truck seemed hushed and it was like time stood still.   I can barely describe it.  It was like a bowl of jello, dark, dark jello with suspended bright lights in it.  It felt like we were hovering above it and were suspended in this bowl of jello.  It no longer felt like we were driving or moving. It was too beautiful to describe and exciting as well as it felt as though we were going to fall all of the way to the bottom. Seeing this was worth the trip! The Grand Canyon was driven through at night, so we missed that.  That actually made me sort of angry, well not angry, maybe sad.   My driver/tour guide sad we would have actually had to drive over to it anyway, but what a missed opportunity! There is beauty to be seen in everything, I realize and appreciate that but  I just had expectations.

Then came California which was not what  I imagined at all.   It is sort of sad to have waited your entire life to see something and then it is a let down. We dropped the trailer that we had in Long Beach, California at a seaport and were headed back out of there for Salt Lake City, Utah.  My driver/tour guide said, “Hey!  There is a sign that says Marriages, No Blood Test Required!  Want to get married?”  I looked at him confused and he explained that we could get married without a blood test, did I want to.  I looked at him a few minutes, shrugged my shoulders and said, “Sure.” Hey, I have known him now for three weeks, so what the heck!   Now I am sort of excited, sort of worried.  Okay, a lot worried.  Should I marry a guy I have known for only three weeks?  I saw his parents one time and we know how that went.  His boys did like me.  I never met his daughter.  I guess considering the facts, naturally yes is the answer!  I told him I would buy him a steak for a nice pre-wedding breakfast.  We are both happy now but that does not last long. The restaurant we stopped at was not the best choice.  I realize that the breakfast steaks are not always top quality, but I am not so sure that it was even a steak that we had.  Was it even a type of meat? We started teasing about what it might have been and then there was no way we could even take another bite.  Just the smell of it should have stopped us. It was the most terrible place ever!  I can honestly say that I have not had anything that bad to eat and it still holds the title for the worst thing we ever ate, rather, tried to eat. We left the restaurant, still feeling hungry, but with a complete loss of appetite.  We head on over to this place ….

As we are nearing our destination, we stop to  freshen up for the wedding.  Have I mentioned that I do not like truck stop showers either?  There is something about  going in right after a stranger that bothers me. They are pre-heated and pre-steamed up from the prior person which is unpleasant. It just feels sort of yucky. I was afraid the doors would not remain locked.  I made my now fiance. stay outside of the door and stand guard.  I even had to have a pair of flip flops so I would not stand on the floor after others.  As I thought this was a short trip,  I did not have many clothes with me.  Okay, I will admit it, I had nothing to wear!  I packed enough for two days so this means that I left in what I had on and brought one change of clothing with me.  I do not know what I was thinking.  I guess I thought this guy was the best truck driver ever and that  he could just endlessly drive and get there and come straight back.  I have no concept of time or miles.  He was having such fun laughing over this situation, wondering who would ever think it was that short of a trip!  He said that even if he drove the entire time we would have not made it back in two days.  We had stopped in New Mexico when we were there  and he bought me a rather pretty top so I could just wear that.  I had a pair of clean jeans and I had bought a package of underwear.  Well, I must have picked up the wrong package because three of me could have fit in them.  Now what?  I put the underwear on and that made my jeans appear to have a baggy diaper or a big wadded up piece of material in them.   I was in no way going to wear these! He had a new package of underwear for himself and his was closer to my size than mine. Nice, I am going to be married wearing  men’s underwear.  Is this what they mean by wearing the pants in the family??  If so, I was going to be starting the marriage out right! They were fruit of the loom briefs.   Go me! I am such a class act. I have come to realize two things about this truck — things do not seem to go right…. EVER!  and that once you get in that truck, you seem to never get out!!!

All cleaned up and ready to go! We were so excited, we were singing, laughing, joking and trucking right along.   Suddenly  red lights are flashing behind us.  I am sure they are not an escort to the wedding, but hey, it could happen.  We pull over and the officer was not very kind from the beginning.   We had no trailer on and the truck had  a jiff-lock.  This means that you could raise the back axle and you then have the same number of axles as a car.  The speed limit for cars now applies to you. The officer informed us that we were speeding.  My fiance told the officer we were not, we had the jiff lock up and he started to explain it, but this officer did not really care about any of this.  He  basically handed over the the ticket and said tell it to the judge.  As we start back up, the CB radio goes wild.  They are all saying things to him like we tried to get you and let you know, you would not respond to us at all, what were you thinking.  For some reason, this was making us laugh.  I guess there was not much else to do but laugh. He explained to the other truckers that he was just excited as he was going to be getting married and that we had the CB radio off,  the music radio on and we were singing and goofing around.  They were so nice!   Well wishes and congratulations started flowing along with condolences on our ticket.  It was fun talking with all of them.  It actually is rather fun to ride along with a truck driver.  The things you experience are endless. These people have a camaraderie.  Sure there are some bad as there are in any given group, but most are so good.  They sacrifice so much to earn a living and are stereotyped incorrectly.  They are people like everyone else and are under appreciated.  What a lonely, yet dangerous job this can be. There are so many wrecks out there and they are at such a risk, yet they look after everyone.

Realization — This is going to be an expensive wedding after all and maybe not so quick and easy.  Maybe it won’t even happen.  Who knows what else can go wrong?  Our spirits are a little dampened now but we head on over to this place … The Out Post Wedding Chapel, Victorville, California.  Interstate 15 and Hwy 395. …….

One Saturday, I was sitting at the Moose Club with my two cousins enjoying the afternoon. In walked two giant guys, at least to me. I am not really a short person, but while I am sitting in a chair, they looked extra large to me, one was 6’3 and the other 6’7. The one nearest to me, the shorter of the two, was talking with my cousins. I could not see the tallest one as he was behind me and there was no way I was going to make any sudden moves. The one I could see had shoulder length or longer hair, some sort of leather cap on that looked like an Elmer Fudd hat (I guess that is some sort of a motorcycle cap), his goggles were off of his eyes and propped on the cap, he had on a leather fringe jacket, leather chaps and boots. What a site he was and I don’t mean this complimentary. I was very uncomfortable with their size and could not wait for them to leave. When they did leave, my cousins say to me that he is the guy they are wanting to set me up with. I was shocked! I asked them if they hated me or something or if I had done something to make them mad!!! They went on and on about how nice he was. Yuck! I wanted no part of any of this. Thanks, but no thanks! They were truck drivers and Harley riders, not my type at all, haha! (As if I actually had a type, I really do not know if I do or not.)

The following Saturday night my mother, sister and her spouse and I went to the Moose to have a steak dinner with my cousins and their families. We are enjoying our meal and in walks the guy and this time the only leather he is wearing is his coat, no hat, goggles or chaps. I can’t even believe he comes and funny the only available chair for him is across from me. Grrrr! (My cousins later tell me that he asked of me and they told him I was coming this night. They seemed to be quite proud of this and had on these really smug, proud grins. My sister, always the friendly, fun, kind person, chats away with him and keeps trying to include me in the conversation. He tried to buy my meal which I would not allow! I was not going to be indebted to this guy for anything. After the meal, the band began playing and this guy wanted to dance with me. My sister and everyone kept “pressuring me to dance”. I love to dance, but really did not want this guy to even begin to think that I liked him, but I did dance with him a couple of times so that I could dance at other times as well. I would feel terrible telling him I did not want to dance and then dance with others. To my dismay when the dance was over my sister invited him to her house for steak and eggs with the rest of us.The guy was being funny and fit right in and the entire family loved him. My mother was absolutely nuts about him!

One day he showed up to where I was working with my cousin and brought us a soda. This guy! Seems that my cousins kept filling him in on my whereabouts. He showed up one morning at the restaurant we were eating breakfast at before work and even treated us to breakfast. You cannot say this guy does not try and is not nice. He had to go on a run to Texas and when he got back in town he drove out in his semi and brought me a very expensive, nice, gold necklace. I tried to not accept it, but he would not take it back. He then started telephoning me and not really being a mean person, I would talk to him. He did make me laugh although he was somewhat annoying at times. He had these two little sons, such cuties, who were here for his visitation period over the summer. He wanted me to go see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with them at the theater. Ummmm, NO! Give it up buddy. I was not really interested in going to that sort of movie anyway. Why would someone without children go see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, (Heroes in a half shell, turtle power. Funny, I do know the show obviously.)

During our talks I had mentioned that I had never been in a semi and thought it would be fun to ride in one. Boy he wasted no time jumping on that! He asked me to go on a trip to Florida with him. I guess that could be tolerable and maybe entertaining. I asked my cousin’s husbands if I would be safe traveling with him and if he would not hurt me. They assured me he was nice and I would be okay and that he had better not ever hurt me. (I am not sure they could have taken this huge guy, but I accepted their reasoning and felt comforted.) Well, I have now known this guy, that I do not like, for two weeks and was on my way to Florida with him. He was friendly and fun to talk with so, what the heck, it beats setting at home. Florida was everything bad that you could imagine. There were ugly lizard things walking up the windows right outside the table we were eating at. What an appetizing site (sarcasm) and a rather ugly thing to eat with. You could see those ugly little suction cups that they were stuck to the window with and everything.

We were in Wildwood, Florida, and we pulled in to a truck stop for me to go to the bathroom, inside I found a small bird on his back struggling to turn over right beside the stool. I ran out and got my friend and said I could not go in there with that bird! He came in there and checked and told me it was a bug! OMG!!! A bug as big as a small bird!!! He said it was a Palmetto bug. I have no idea what it was called and do not really care. All I cared about was that it was on it’s back and I was not going to sit on a toilet and have him right himself and fly around while I had my pants down! I am positive that I do not care for Florida and I want to go home! Needless to say, the guy did not get rid of the bug and we drove elsewhere to use the bathroom. There was one fun thing, though, I got to sit at the tables where the truckers do and use those phones that were at their tables! I got to call my mom and my sister and chat with them while at a restaurant. I called my niece, anyone I could think of because this was so neat! How cool and I felt so important calling from a dinner table! This thrill is gone and a thing of the past now that there are cell phones. There were even little individual jukeboxes at the table and we could play our own music.

Going home is not going to happen! The truck broke down next. All I can remember is that we were in some parking lot for hours. It was too hot to sit in the truck so we had to sit on the dolly. A dolly is the part where the fifth wheel is that you hook the trailer to. This spot is only available for sitting when there is no trailer on. It was not comfortable at all and it was oily and dirty and it was very hot out. It was finally repaired and we were on our way. This was to be a short trip, we were only going to be gone one night and back home the next day. His boys were up from Florida visiting Illinois, remember? He was just taking short trips so he could be with his sons. Well, by the time we got the truck running, it was time to head back to Illinois. Sadly, the boys were on their way to Indiana to fly out to Florida. So we high tailed it to Indiana instead so that he could see his boys off. Keep in mind that I am a bit uncomfortable as the boys nor their grandparents (this guy’s parents) know that I am with him. We meet them in a truck stop to have lunch. When we are about to get out of the truck, he says they are going to have a fit when they see you crawl out of this truck. Great! Now I feel wonderful. I will never forget the look on his parent’s faces when I stepped out of that truck and it only gets worse. The flight was not until the next day so they were spending the night in Indiana. The parents were beside themselves with what to do. There was, of course, nothing I could say or do. They are not my parents or my children and I was not even suppose to be around. We went to eat and afterwards the boys got to swim in the hotel pool. They were such a joy! I got some pennies out and had them dive for them. We had such a great time. They were showing me all of the tricks they could do. I immediately fell in love with those little boys. We talked, laughed and played. I could see the parents discussing the situation with my friend and I could tell they were not happy. I could catch some of the looks on their faces. They decided they would get adjoining rooms and they and the guy were in one room while I was in a room with the boys. This was a hard decision for them. They did not want the guy and me in a room together. They did not know me and thought it would be uncomfortable with me in their room, for all of us! I only know the guy, so this was very uncomfortable for me sleeping with a group of people I do not know at all. I assume it would have been inappropriate for me to go back in that sleeper on that truck with the boys there, but I am sure that I would have liked that better. Why should things improve at this point, we find that the air conditioner in our rooms does not work. The boys were complaining of being hot and it was miserable. I wanted to complain! There is nothing worse than being hot. There seemed to be no air movement at all. (Here I am thinking of that sleeper on the truck again, the air conditioning works good in it.) I kept telling them to just lay still and it would get better, although I knew it would not. I kept trying to comfort them and then we would talk and talking turned in to giggling. Then Grandma starts telling us to be quiet. I am an adult and am being told to be quiet at bedtime, being chastised by someone I just met and yet being treated like her child. I don’t know if that should make me feel better or not. Anyway, all of this made us giggle more and more. I advised the boys to hide their giggles in the pillows and tried everything to get them to sleep. It was fun laughing and trying to hide it and it reminded me of being a child and yet was so uncomfortable at the same time. That was a great time with the boys and a good memory, but I just needed to get home.

I have failed to mention one thing here. After everything that could go wrong on this supposed fun, first time trip in a semi went wrong, somehow I ended up falling in love with this guy. We had discussed this in Wildwood, Florida, before we left there. I was so upset about falling in love with him that I cried. Can you believe that? He also cried because he was so happy about it. Well, that did not take long did it? From dislike to love in two weeks?! Sounds like a Harlequin romance book or a Hallmark movie. I was crying and told him there was no way I could love him already. He said being in a truck and having everything that went wrong go wrong, was like being married for ten years. He said it was not like we were dating and seeing each other in good situations, we had been stuck together every minute with nothing going right and we still enjoyed being together.

So, my point here is that I think I am in love with a guy that I am sure his parents do not think well of. They think I am some sort of questionable lady, riding around in a truck with a guy I hardly know. He has two little boys who know nothing about me either. What a way to meet his family! I tried to be as friendly as I could to the parents but it was just too awkward. I did become “besties” with the boys. That was easy since the guy and his parents spent the time discussing what to do about me and I had nothing else to do but play with the boys. They were fun and very sweet, though. It was time for them to board their plane finally and we could get me back home. When we got to my home my mom and sister and family were in the yard excited to see how the trip went since they all love this guy so. I got out of the truck and the first words out of my mother’s mouth were that I had no make up on and looked beautiful. She cracks me up! My sister’s first words were that it was “because she is in love.” I quickly stated that I was not. Although I had admitted it to him, I somehow still wanted to deny this fact, especially after the night I had. I really did not want this to happen for some reason, probably because he is not what I considered to be my type, I did not get off to a good start with his parents and he had these children.

However, not to be discouraged, this guy calls me the next day and says he has a run to California. I guess I must have mentioned that I had never been to California and I always wanted to and he felt like he needed to take me there. He insisted I go because he only picked up this run for me. Oh boy! I am getting in deeper and deeper here and this is not something I want at all! Well, here we go….. wait until you hear how much goes wrong on this trip to California and what all happens! See you here on Sunday!