Leaving Home

      Joyce and I met in May of 1963. We dated through the summer and one night I had this dream. It was me and Joyce getting married at an altar with me in navy dress blue uniform. I had mere thoughts of being in the navy at the time, so the dream seemed very odd. In fact I did not even know what a navy dress blue uniform looked like prior to that dream. I was at the time thinking about going into the military just to get out of the house and be on my own. I wanted to go into service when I graduated from high school, but I was only 17 and my parents would not sign for me to join any branch of service. The marine corps recruiters came to our home before I was out of high school and while I had wanted to be a marine since I was 11 years old, the bullshit and bravado they expressed in our home turned me off completely, despite the fact that the dress blue marine uniforms were awesome. I met Joyce and those thoughts dissipated for a while. Then in mid-summer I found she was going away to college in September and I could not bear to be in the old neighborhood without her being there with me. I went to the recruiting offices in Clayton Missouri on my 18th birthday and had already rejected the marines, did not want to be in the army, so that left the air force as my primary choice, but the air force recruiter was not there that day. I had a navy recruiter come by my workplace at the gas station earlier that summer to recruit me and there he was in his office that day. I signed up on a delayed enlistment to leave just the day before Joyce was leaving for state college at south-west Missouri state. Again I could not bear to be home without her. The popular song when we were married was "Going to the chapel of love" and it is still with me today and I still listen to it today.
      It all turned out well with my navy time and learning how to make my living for the rest of my working life. Joyce and I got married just like in my dream and we have been together for 54 years now. We have had some great times and some not so good times, but we weathered the storms and are still trucking on today.
      I can never know what might have been different had our relationship fallen apart