51st Wedding Anniversary story

 

Our Wedding Anniversary is today!

Bill meets Sally

I often kid around about how I met Sally and I want to set the record straight. This is the real story. Romantics want to hear that it was love at first sight. But the truth is that I was so far away from thinking about love and marriage. I was only 18 years old and fishing, playing basketball, working, and trying to keep my college grades up so there was very little time for dating.

However, I do remember when we first met. I had pulled into the Sonic Drive-in in San Marcos for a Sonic burger #2. I always had the number #2. A friend, Donna, pulled up to the stall next to me. While I was talking to Donna, I was wondering if she was going to introduce me to the other girl on the passenger side. She finally introduces us and as we visted, we discovered that we had a common friend, Charlie Caddell. Charlie would be very important to our relationship in many ways. Charlie and I were playing basketball together in College intramurals and hanging out from time to time on the weekends on San Marcos River. Charlie and Sally had graduated from high school together.

Back to the conversation through the car windows…. I thought she had a sweet voice and seemed friendly but kind of reserved and I took that to mean she wasn’t that interested in me. As was the way at that time, I didn’t act too interested in her either, as that might give away that I liked her. I couldn’t afford to date and besides she probably had a boyfriend anyway. Time marched on. Then, one night after checking trotlines for catfish or maybe it was a bull-frogging night (we did both a lot), Charlie suggested that we clean up and go to Sally’s house to play cards. This was kind of off the wall, but I was game. It turned out that on some weekends when school was going on, Sally would come home and bring college roommates and guys would go over there to meet girls and play spades. We got there late but the game was still going strong. That night we played until 2 or 3 o’clock. I don’t recall who else was in the room that night other than Charlie, Sally and me. I was of the opinion that Charlie liked her, so I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship, so I never broached the subject of his feelings for her.

These occasional late night card games continued for a couple of months. I was always invited by Charlie and always jumped at the opportunity. It was fun, and at some point, it became obvious to me that she was starting to like me, and that Charlie was not the boyfriend. I remember well our first kiss. When I was leaving after one of those late-night card games, she had walked me to the front door, and we hung there on the front porch for an extra minute. We ended up in a kiss and my thought was that she was a really great kisser. It was more than a casual kiss. I was thinking that that was pretty daring while on the front porch of her parent’s home. In my mind, this is the point at which our history together started, and our love began to grow.

53 years later and growing…. Thanks for everything. You know the story wouldn’t be right without a Hallmark moment so here it is... One of my favorites of all time - “You complete me”.