MAY 19, 1946

May 19 came again this year, and although I am alone now, with my beloved spouse gone on ahead of me, it would have been 63 years since we were married. The past 12 years have been very lonely ones, but I have so many good memories to keep me going. Not everyone has a husband as good as I had. When he passed on I could remember so many little things we had done together, and how we laughed and cried together.

The day we were married in Hillsboro, Oregon was a very hot day. We were being married in my folks home, and there was no such thing as air conditioning at that time, so we knew everyone was going to suffer with the heat. At the last minute we decided that since they had a lovely front yard, with two large trees, we would move the wedding outside where people could be more comfortable. Bob was surprised when he arrived to find we were having an outside wedding. My cousin Margaret Clemens and her husband Kenneth did the flowers for us, and we had beautiful large baskets of flowers to decorate the area.

After the wedding we loaded up my little 1930 Model-A Ford and tooled on down the road for our honeymoon. We went down the Oregon Coast. We kept seeing signs that read "Stop at Hotel Newport, the newest and best on the Coast". So, we decided that was where we were going. About two hours later we arrived at the Hotel that was so widely advertised on billboards all along our trip. As we walked into the lobby to sign the register, Bob told them we had two bags to carry up. They promptly told us where the stairs were, and that there was no bell-hop service. That should have been a clue to us. We also had to pay in advance. (another clue)

We walked the stairs and found our room. I gasped when we walked in because it was so small we could barely get in and put the luggage down. There was an old iron bedstead, a 3 drawer chest, and a chair which was on top of the chest because there was no place to put it on the floor.
We were timid kids, and didn't know how to handle this situation. Oh, yes, I forgot....the bathroom was down the hall. We picked up our bags and carried them down the stairs and outside to our car. We could not sleep there. We drove a few miles down the road to Toledo where they had an old hotel, which was a palace compared to the Newport hotel.

Our new home was going to be in Walla Walla, Washington where both of us would be employed by The Birds Eye Snyder frozen food company. This was quite a few miles from the Oregon Cost, and we had to stop every few miles to let the Model-A cool down. Those cars didn't use much gas, but they got hot very easily, and one had to take care to let them cool down every once in awhile. We finally got to Walla Walla, and were happy to get to the end of our journey.