My parents really should have met before they did.  My mother went to public school in Macon with Daddy's sisters and was their friend.  My aunts took her home occasionally, but Mama didn't meet their older brother Van until the day she was traveling by train to begin Andrew College.  Mama got off the train when it stopped in Fort Valley, Georgia and walked downtown looking for Johnson's Store hoping to see my aunts.  Instead she met Daddy, flirted with him, and made an impression.

Van was at a point in life ripe to meet someone and get married.  Fort Valley had proved to be "slim pickings", a disappointment, in that regard.  He had tried to get serious with Elizabeth Hartley, the daughter of Mrs. Sally Lou Hartley who worked in the store part-time on Saturdays, but Elizabeth didn't care and had been rude to Daddy hurting his feelings.  When Daddy brought up Catherine Wood's name at the supper table, my grandmother remembered her, approved, and urged Van to see her again.

Van's terrible nearsightedness necessitated that he hire for someone to drive him to Cuthbert, Georgia to court Catherine.  A friendly, good-humored young black man nicknamed Snowball became Van's chauffeur.  Much later my mother confided that she never realized until after their marriage how visually handicapped my father was.  She thought the Johnsons were rich, hence the chauffeur.  Van's and Catherine's dates had to be chaperoned as required by Andrew College.  The housemother was extremely impressed by Van.  "I didn't realize you were dating a preacher!" she whispered to Catherine.  The courtship, however, almost fell apart later because of an outing to the nearby "Little Grand Canyon".  My parents were allowed to visit the Little Grand Canyon on a double date with another couple.  The other couple and Catherine wanted to hike down into the canyon.  Van didn't.  Catherine left him at the top.  He said he was so disgusted that he came very close to having Snowball drive him back home, never to return.  At the end of Catherine's freshman year, she and Van became engaged.

Catherine spent the summer in Ohio with her brother Sidney, helping his wife Gladys with their new baby boy.  Catherine bought her trousseau.  She told me that she had earned the money for her trousseau working for Sidney.  Daddy told me that Sidney considered it a loan and had hounded Daddy to repay it, which Daddy did.

Daddy enjoys telling about meeting Catherine's oldest sister Sissy.  The engagement was already announced.  During the visit, Sissy looked my father in the eye and told him, "If you don't like us, it won't be our fault."  Fortunately, he thought that was hilarious.  Mama also told me that during that same visit, she asked her sister Sissy what she thought of Van now that she had met him in person.  Sissy replied, "If you can lie by him, I can sit by him," and made no other comment.  (--Mama's family wasn't much help at all to her in making this significant decision about marriage.)

My parents were married on September 15, 1940 in the R.F. Burden Chapel at the Methodist Orphans Home Macon where my mother grew up.  Theirs was the first wedding in that chapel.  They went to Florida for their honeymoon, leaving the chauffeur behind this time.  Daddy wrecked their car near Kissimmee.  He hit a bull that was standing in the middle of the road at twilight.

In their early years of marriage, my parents rented a series of apartments that were in people's homes.  Van worked with his father at the store.  My mother lost two babies.  My brothers were buried in my grandparent's yard on Riley Avenue beside Fort Valley High School.  The first one was stillborn.  The second one was premature, born alive but hairless.  He might have lived except for the fact that the town's only ambulance was unavailable --it was transporting a dying elderly man to the hospital in Macon.  Van and Catherine eventually bought themselves a home, a white wooden house with dutch doors and a big yard on Forrest Drive.  My grandparents bought the two lots next to it and built a large, fine brick house, planting an impressive row of palm trees by the road in front of their house.  In 1946 when my sister was born healthy, Daddy was on top of the world.  After he brought Mama and Nan home from the Macon Hospital, he called his mother to let her know they were safely home.  Nan was crying loudly in the background.  Grandmama asked about it, and Daddy replied, "Ah!  That is music to my ears!"  (From then on every time a member of our family hears a baby crying, we say, "Music to our ears!" in celebration of the new life.)

I am writing this account in July,2000.  In September (God willing), my parents will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.  Mama has already told Nan and me that she does not want it to be a big event --that she physically isn't up to that: it would be too exhausting for her.  Their 50th wedding anniversary was a very big event.  My sister and I rented the main dining room at the New Perry Hotel and bought every relative plus local close friends a celebratory fancy midday meal.  There was a Memory Table with my parents' photo album, marriage license, wedding announcement, etc.  Speeches were made.  When called on to tell the secret of how he could have a marriage that lasted 50 years, my father told one of his funny stories to make his points.  He said that when he does his yard work and puts the limbs and leaves at the roadside, a truck of prisoners from the County Prison comes by to haul off the the yard trash.  One of the prisoners was a "talker", a very gregarious chap, who saw my then 75-year-old father sweating and doing very hard physical labor --and called out to him, "Old man!  How can you get to be so old but still can work so hard and make such a big pile of yard trash?!  Tell me how, so I can do that!"  Daddy replied,  "You can't drink liquor."  The prisoner cried out, "Strike One!"  Daddy continued, "You can't smoke cigarettes."  The prisoner cried out, "Strike Two!"  Daddy concluded, "And you have to leave fast women alone."   The prisoner cried out, "Strike Three!"  And Daddy hollered back, "That's 'out' in anyone's league!"  "But,"  Daddy concluded his tale, "the next week when the County Prison truck came by for my yard trash, that same prisoner was on it.  When he saw me, he yelled, 'Strike two-and-a-half!' so I guess he's improving his ways."

As best as I can tell from an up-close look at my parents' often imperfect but committed marriage, steadfastness has made the difference.  They complete each other.  She is his eyes; he is her ears, but that's just the beginning.  I have a lifelong memory of them often standing in the kitchen and hugging each other like it's comfort and pleasure to them.  Daddy often said, "Didn't I get you girls a pretty mother?!"  At present, my father's tending, together with some kind assistance from a few significant others, is the only thing that allows them to be able to continue living in their own home as they wish.  My mother is very feeble.