The Next Step in College and Courtship: Marriage! Twilight Musings Autobiography (Part 11)
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After the short-lived summer harvest job, I made the rash decision, driven by passionate love, to make my way to Laquita’s home in Burnet, TX, where she had returned to take up her job with the town’s downtown drugstore. She was what was known back then as a “soda jerk,” a term that had nothing to do with the worker’s character, but rather originated from the jerking action required to operate the big handle controlling the output of carbonated water required to produce the fizz for various drinks. This was a job that required some social grace to interact with customers and the skill to mix the elements of an ice cream soda or a cherry coke in the proper proportions. None of the premixed drinks one gets now from the fast food places! I hitch-hiked from Abilene to Burnet (about 180 miles), my longest trip of that sort and the last time I ever did it.
I surprised Laquita in the drugstore while she was at work, a surprise that had a negative tinge for her because I had grown a mustache during the first part of the summer. I had no idea what I was going to do after I got there, so I stayed a couple of nights with Laquita’s family before finding a room to rent there in town. Laquita’s father, whom I called Mr. Alec, liked me because I got up early one morning and went with him on his rounds tending his chickens and his garden. He was a simple, pleasant man, a hard worker who had a job with the City of Burnet on the maintenance crew. He invited me to have meals with the family, and would even have been all right with my staying with them, but it would not have been proper (nor even wise, I think), for me to have done that, in view of my romantic interest in Laquita. Laquita’s mom (whom I called “Mom A” liked me, too, and was gracious to me, but I think she would have been more comfortable with me being back in Abilene.
Mr. Alec was able to get me a job with the city maintenance crew, where the tasks consisted most often of cleaning the street drainage gutters (“curbs and gutters, gutters and curbs” Mr. Alec would say) and unloading sacks of lime at the water purification plant. This last chore always left me itching at the end of the day, as the lime dust would get under my clothes and irritate the skin. Mr. Alec liked to tell stories, so I got to know him better as we worked together. He was not a church-going man at that point (he underwent a conversion later), and in fact (I found out later), he used his Sunday mornings to engage in illegal cock-fighting, using game-cocks that he kept apart from the other chickens at the back of the family property. I was informed later by his grandsons, who were also living with their grandparents at the time, that he had a fairly profitable business breeding and selling game-cocks.
Our last project before the job ended was working in an open field just out of town which was going to become the town’s airport. We were assigned the task of clearing away the biggest rocks so that the runway could be built. It felt a little bit like being on a prison chain-gang, but I’m glad to report that there were no shackles or ball-and-chain.
Of course, I went to church with the family at the local downtown Church of Christ, where the Alexanders (especially Mom A) were active members of the congregation. I was welcomed there and enjoyed getting to know the people, who accepted me quickly because of my association with Laquita and her family. Laquita’s oldest brother, Marion, was the father of the five boys living with the grandparents, and he would visit on weekends, usually going to church on Sunday also. He was a very lively and charming fellow, but he loved to tease Laquita and me about our relationship. He was a good salesman and he was able to pay for the boys staying at his parents’ house. It was rather chaotic at times, since the boys ranged in age from teenagers to the little boy Paul, who was only about five or six at the time. Marion’s wife was mentally ill and was unable to care for the boys. Marion was a very responsible father, and he spent time and money to engage in activities with the boys, like playing “rounders” with a softball and bat in the vacant lot across the street from the Burnet house and going fishing on one of the local lakes. Laquita and I sometimes went along on these excursions.
I don’t remember many details of the time Laquita and I spent together that summer. There certainly wasn’t much chance for private time at her home. Our companionship was mainly going to church together and hanging around her house at meal times. Both she and I were working all day during the week. There was one occasion, however, that I remember our going for a walk along a dry creek bed that ran right by her house (it had water in it only when it rained). We got to a sort of secluded spot with some trees around, and I made bold to initiate our first kiss--at least it’s the first one I remember, late as it came in our courtship. It was rather tentative and shy, but a very meaningful development in our relationship. I was not a sophisticated courtier!
One of the memorable experiences during this period was my reading for the first time C. S. Lewis’s classic work, Mere Christianity. I don’t remember how I had gotten a copy, but, as with many other people, it changed my thinking in basic ways. Never had I read such a cogent but simple argument for the existence of a God who is the source of all moral principles. I had now a philosophical foundation for the faith I had so far accepted as a given. My boss on the maintenance crew was a thoroughgoing sceptic and a rather profane man, and he rejected my faith as a mindless illusion. He was an enthusiast for geological research and had amassed a collection of fossils that he was eager to show me to bolster his argument that the geological record and the theory of evolution explained the origins of life, leaving no room for religious fantasies. God must have protected me from his influence, for my new perspective from C. S. Lewis overshadowed his arguments.
When I arrived back at A.C.C. in the fall of 1958, I teamed up with three other guys to live in a little bachelor apartment about a five-minute walk away from the campus. My companions in this enterprise were my two Bible-selling buddies, Fred Selby and Carl Reed, along with a college cafeteria worker named Claude Crawford. Our landlady was named Mrs. Pettigrew, or as she was affectionately called, “Momma Pet.” This certainly beat living in the barracks, and it was a good healthy walk back and forth to campus.
Laquita was back in her dormitory, and since both our living places were off limits to the opposite sex, we had to hang out in the library and go to church together three times a week. We attended, as did many students, the Graham St. Church of Christ, which sent a bus to the campus to transport the students. The preacher was a dynamic faculty member named Carl Spain. We learned a lot from him about deeper Christian thinking and behavior. He paved the way for a shift by the Churches of Christ to a more Spirit-filled understanding of Christian living, and he emphasized the doctrine of grace, which to that point had not been at the forefront of Church of Christ thinking. I was glad to have had some personal contact with Dr. Spain when I led singing for one of his Gospel Meetings at the Stamford church I attended.
I was not a happy camper that term. I was greatly desiring to get married, now that we were committed to it. Laquita (and her mother), however, wanted to wait until she had graduated, or was at least within a year away from it. But in my immaturity, extended celibacy was pretty low on my list of desired disciplines. I was selfishly impatient, so I rashly decided to use the “nuclear option”: “Marry me now or that’s it.” She knew it was a dumb thing to say, but somehow she swallowed her pride and good judgment and gave in, so we scheduled a December wedding. She has said many times since then, “I knew God had brought us together, even if you were being silly.” If she have been then the more gently assertive woman she became later, she might have said, “O.K. buddy, I’ll give you a chance to forget you said that, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.” But she gave in to my stupidity, and the Lord prevented any bad results from my blunder. Definitely not one of my better moments, though.
Somehow we managed to arrange for the wedding and a little reception at Laquita’s home afterward. I had to borrow money from my uncle in order to fund my part in the occasion, and I borrowed my friend Fred’s car. The only honeymoon facility I could afford was a lakeside summer camp with a cabin available at off-season rates. However, our happy few days there transformed it into a memorable spot, the beginning of our long and greatly blessed life together. I’m so glad she (and the Lord) didn’t allow me to throw her away.
Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)
