A few days before Christmas, the year 1989, a young man went on a road trip, with a single woman and her infant child.
They were both, in the Army, stationed at Ft. Knox in Kentucky, a field hospital unit, she a surgical technologist, and he, a radio and telephone operator. His family lived in Garland, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, and her’s, in the village of Stanley, Louisiana, several miles south of Shreveport.
The plan was for someone from her family, meet them in Shreveport, and he would continue on to his boyhood home in Garland. He had a new truck, and she had an older, less reliable, small car. Since it was on his way, they traveled together.
He dropped her off, her sister meet them in a Shreveport parking lot, and he drove the rest of the way to his parent’s home in Garland.
It was a very very cold Christmas, especially for the south. His automobile, which was suppose to be the reliable one, broke down while in Garland, this extended the stay and left her without a ride back to Ft. Knox.
The automobile was repaired during the day, so he drove at night, to meet her, her infant child and her sister, at the same parking lot in Shreveport, that he had dropped her off at a few days prior. She had to be back at the post the next day, the drive, eight hundred miles, so there was no waiting until morning.
They drove through the night, slept for an hour or two, in the truck cab, in a Nashville, Tennessee, parking lot. The truck was a 1989 Ford Ranger, to say that the cab was small would exaggerate its spaciousness.
While they slept, freezing rain swept through Nashville, Tennessee, so the highway was made treacherous.
They made it back to Fort Knox, Kentucky with no time to spare.
The young man fell in love with the young woman and her infant child, during that difficult road trip. Six months later they would be married, at the town square gazebo, in Mansfield Louisiana. The reception was held at her mother’s wooded home near Stanley Louisiana, a shock to the young man’s mind but he was in love.
On June 30, 1990 a young mother from a backwoods community in Louisiana, and a young man from a major metropolitan area in Texas were joined together in holy matrimony.
This life long union began, un-expectantly, on a road trip, on a day like today, a few days before Christmas.
