Wedding Day.

This morning as I was tidying up my bedroom I glanced up and looked at the pictures hanging on the wall. There is a picture of myself taken when I was 21 years old. Beside that picture is one of my "Honey" in his Air Force uniform. We were not married when these pictures were taken, in fact we didn't know each other at all. I met him after WW2 was over. I was working as a bookkeeper at the bank and I had a friend that worked with me who was his friend. My friend asked me to go on a picnic to the lake and be a date with his friend Bill. That was the beginning of a long, long love affair. We had a very good time on the picnic. He had just returned home from being in the Air Force for three years. He enlisted when he got the letter from Uncle Sam saying that he needed him. All young and some older men got those letters, and they had to enlist or have a good reason that they would not be able to serve. Bill chose the Air Force because there was a base in his hometown, and he had worked on the base when he graduated from high school. He got his orders to report for training in December. He was sent to Colorado Springs, Colorado in the coldest time of the year. That was pretty hard on a southern kid. They had to take hikes in snow and rain. Their barracks were cold, the wind and snow would blow in the windows. When his training was over he was sent Kearney. Nebraska. He was assigned to office work and did office work until the war was over. In the last months of the war he was sent to Guam. He worked on the island where they were getting ready to bomb Japan. He was never in or saw combat duty. After the US bombed Japan the war was over. He said he typed up his own discharge papers. The pictures on the wall brought back memories of seventy years. I can remember the little wedding we had at a friends home with family and friends there. We stood before the fire place in the living room. There was a big spray of gladiolus on each side on the mantle. We were so nervous, I got the giggles when I had trouble slipping the ring on his finger. The minister was a friend of ours. Our wedding cake was made by Bill's mother. Everything was so simple, but so sweet. We were married for 51 years,7 months and 12 days.