A017  How We Met


     Ifd like to tell the story of how my father and mother met before they married. Ah...this was a story my mother told many times and to many people. This was the great romance of her life. Ah...itfs connected with World War Two. 
     My mother was an English teacher in high school for ten years. A good one, a popular one. Umm...and she wasnft sure of she would ever marry. She was happy in the job. And then the war started. Ah...at the same time, my father, who was a bit younger ah...was unemployed. So when the war started, he joined. He joined the United States Marines. He was willing to fight but they made him ah...a teacher himself of gunnery in North Carolina. 
     In 1944, my mother ah...heard that the marines were taking women, so ah...she was eager to help in the war effort, and she joined up. Ah...she was very frustrated because ah...her first assignment was in the cafeteria scooping ice cream. She was a highly intelligent educated woman. Ah...a university ah...degreed, and she didnft like this. So she went to resign. And they told her, gYou canft resign from the Marines, but ah...wefll put you in a class to study gunnery.h All of this was kind of military foolishness because these women were never going to fire guns, but ah...this is what happened. 
     So she was transferred to North Carolina and wound up in the classroom of my father. At the time, he was late twenties, umm...very thin, kind of good looking, like Gary Cooper, she claimed. Ah...all of his class were women and they all ah...liked him. Ah...and he was sort of frustrated but he enjoyed their company. They chewed gum and most of them were a bit interested. My...my mother had always been a good student so she tried to get his attention and she fell in love, he was her white knight.   
     But he didnft seem to notice her. Until, one night, she was in a barracks, it was made of wood and umm...it was cheap and flimsy and a fire started. And the fire spread very quickly in the first floor. She was on the second floor in her bedroom, and ran to either end, and the stairs were so full of fire, she couldnft go down. She didnft know what to do. She went out on the balcony of her room and the fire got into her room. And she was on the balcony, and ah...she said she expected to see her maker that time. Her eyebrows were singed. And she was going to die. 
     Down below, um...my father ran up with a latter. Ah...and put the latter against the balcony and...and ran up the latter and put her in the firemenfs carry, which is over the shoulders, and this was a feat because my mother was a little fat. And she weighted more than my father, who was quite skinny. Nonetheless, he...he got her down and he saved her life. It was for real. And this kind of bound them emotionally and that...after that he noticed her and he fell back in love himself. 
     And...so, within a few weeks, as people did in the war, they went and got married. They had to go to a different state with easier laws and the ah...they found a methodist minister who had only won arm ah...but he said, gAh...I only have one arm, but I tie a pretty good knot.h And ah...that was how they met. Seven years later, I appeared. Okay?