The New Year 1969

The new year of 1969 dawned with lots of promise for our love. We had a new family, a new car, we both had jobs, and money was not a problem. My employer had to remind me to cash those paychecks, because the folks in payroll needed to resolve the holes in their accounting.

But I came home to find Carolyn crying sometimes, and when I asked what was the problem, she told me that Aunt Laverna Satterfield was calling her up and pushing her to demand that I marry her legally. To me, it was more confirmation that she had pushed us together from the start. I liked her, and I could not fault her for making the match, but I didn’t like to be pushed around by anybody. 

Laverna would by any definition be a “controlling” personality. She liked to be in charge, and enjoyed telling people how they should be living their lives. I asked Carolyn if she trusted me to keep my word and never leave her, and she said yes. But she was caught in the middle between her lover and an aunt whom she also looked up to and loved. I didn’t like the resulting bind she was being put in.

So I called Laverna and told her to stop pushing Carolyn, that our relationship was not her concern now. We were two adults who were making our own decisions, and didn’t need someone else butting in and creating dissension in our marriage.

She got very mad at me, told me how wrong I was and how much Carolyn wanted to be married “for real.” I told her I wanted to hear that from Carolyn herself, and not from her. It was not her role to interpret to me what Carolyn wanted. I also told her that if I came home from work again to find Carolyn crying, I would ban her from calling again ever, even if I had to take out the phone. Then I hung up.

Thus began a couple of months of no contact with her. But she was still in contact with J. T. Morse, Carolyn’s now ex-husband, who was living in Texas now. I don’t know whose idea it was, but she “let us know” that he was considering filing for custody of Darlene, because of our “illicit” relationship. She had no trouble with our relationship as long as it was secret, but the idea of us living together openly offended her sense of decency, I guess.

Carolyn and I discussed what we should do, and I suggested that we should quietly go get the license, just to make sure that Darlene would stay with us. The license wasn’t for us, but for Darlene, whom we didn’t want to lose.

The only people we told were John and Rhonda Rogers, my brother and his wife. We knew he could keep a secret, and we explained why we had decided to get the license. I didn’t want Laverna to have the satisfaction of still being in control of our lives.

After going downtown to the courthouse, medical test results in hand, we got the legal license, and asked if they knew of someone who could perform the ceremony for us. They gave us the name of a retired judge in the town of Orange, California, and I called him and made the arrangements. I think his fee was $50, but it’s been a long time.

We showed up at his ornate Victorian style house on the evening of March 15 with license in hand, and with my brother and his wife and our daughter as witnesses, we participated in a brief ceremony, exchanged our vows, and afterwards we took a few pictures for keepsakes. Then it was handshakes all around, and we left in our cars to go home. 

On the way we saw a Baskin Robbins ice cream store, so on the spur of the moment we turned in and all of us bought banana splits. Carolyn wasn’t sure that Darlene could eat a whole banana split, but I assured her she could eat as much as she wanted and toss the rest, but this was our wedding reception, and it was for her benefit, anyway. She had no trouble eating the whole thing, and was delighted to have her first banana split.

That’s how we came to celebrate two anniversaries, one on November 18 and the other on March 15. Carolyn and I always liked the November date for celebrations, and that’s the one we told everybody else about. But many years later I got into family genealogy and learned that the paper trail is important, too. I can imagine somebody researching our family and running into trouble trying to find our marriage record in the wrong year. But we both know when we first vowed to love each other forever!

The following months went by smoothly, as we settled into our home, and grew closer and closer together. 

The only really exciting event that comes to mind was one Sunday morning we drove down to San Juan Capistrano and turned up toward the mountains, riding on my motorcycle, enjoying the curves on Hwy 74, called the Ortega Highway. There is nothing better than motorcycle riding on twisting mountain roads, and we got too complacent cresting a ridge following a Triumph sports car with the top down, also enjoying the road. When I saw his brake lights come on, I applied my brakes, too, but not hard enough. Then I saw the problem.

Both sides of the road were covered by hundreds of bicycles, riding single file in two lines, and the sports car had hit his brakes hard. As we came over the hill too fast, and light because of the hill, I locked up the brakes, fishtailed wildly first right and then left, and I was picking out a place on the Triumph trunk lid to “pop a wheelie” and crash into. All escape routes were blocked by bicycles. Luckily for us, the guy in the Triumph heard the tires screaming, got off the brakes, and accelerated away, giving me enough extra space to get slowed down.

Carolyn had hung on tight and ducked down, so I'm not sure she saw everything I saw, but she knew that what happened was not cool. I resolved to be more careful in the future, and try to be more responsible, and maybe a little less exuberant. 

Very early in the year, on a weekend when the weather was clear over the Grapevine, Carolyn and I and Darlene drove up to Merced in the car to introduce our family to my mother. My mother liked Carolyn immediately, and Darlene, too. I offered to sleep in a separate bed, since I told her we had vowed to love each other forever, but did not have a license. She told me to sleep where I wanted, and it would be OK with her, even though she had her own preferences. She belonged to the same church as Laverna, but wasn’t nearly as eager to force her beliefs on others.

While we were in Mom’s house on the second day, there was a knock on the door, and standing there was Cathy, my ex-girlfriend. She was smiling, and said she was curious and wanted to meet my new wife. So I called Carolyn and Darlene out to the front room, and introduced them as my wife Carolyn and our daughter, Darlene. After a few brief pleasantries, she thanked me, wished us well, and left. 

Carolyn was mystified at her boldness, and I explained that we had been very close and intimate for over four years, and she knew me well enough to know she would be welcome at my mother’s house. Later, I found out that when I introduced eight year old Darlene as “our daughter” she knew it was permanent, and that I was really gone.

We went over to my grandmother’s house, too. Of course, she also liked Carolyn and Darlene, and assumed we had eloped as she had many years earlier, when, at 25 she eloped into the next county to marry a divorced man she had just met two weeks earlier, and who was nearly twice her age.

As we left her house, Carolyn said we would be seeing her again soon. She calmly said no, she would not be here when we returned, and that the next time we came it would be for her funeral.

Carolyn was very surprised, but she didn’t argue or show her surprise until later, when we were alone. My grandmother was a very plain spoken person, a Jehovah’s Witness, and I wasn’t too surprised.

On April 14th we got word that she had died and we came back up for her funeral. She had been exactly right. 

Now that we had the marriage license my mother seemed a little happier, which was OK with me. (I think John had visited earlier and showed her the pictures he had of our wedding at the judges house.) We stayed overnight at her house again.

We saw Cathy, my former girlfriend, at the funeral for my grandmother, since her great aunt, who had raised her, had rented a house from my grandmother for many years. That circumstance is how we had met years before. At the graveside service, she came over and hugged my mother and then me. She lingered a little too long for Darlene’s comfort, but Carolyn understood and didn’t mind. She knew she was the winner, and she chose to be gracious, not jealous. 

In June, shortly after reaching the top journeyman machinist level, we decided that we both would prefer to live away from the big city. I was sure that the only way out would be to quit my job and get out of town to search for a job in the country. We were both raised in a rural environment, and we sorely missed the peaceful ambience of rural living.

My Uncle Jim Rogers had invited us to come up and visit him sometime at Clearlake Oaks. He had a big house on Clear Lake with its own boat dock, and had several bedrooms and extra room, even with his wife and six children. So I called him and he was happy to invite us in as I looked around northern California for a machinist job. 

We moved out of our house in Midway City, California, in July, leaving what few household possessions we owned behind, to start a new life far away in the north. 

This was to become a pattern in the coming years. We were young, and not ready to settle down yet. There was a big world out there, and we wanted to see it all!