Rain, more Rain and Our 40th Anniversary…

We are sitting tight here at Dickens RV Park in Moncure, North Carolina watching the rain caused by hurricane Joaquin. With initial forecasts all over the place for where Joaquin was headed we added three more days which will have us leaving on Sunday. Whether or not we leave then depends entirely on the rain and hurricane…

In the meantime we have been sneaking out from time to time for some fun between rain events. One day we were even able to sneak back over to Pittsboro and Rock Ridge Park and played another round of disc golf. We got a whole 18 holes in before any rain and made one more visit to the Carolina Brewery for $3 buck pint night.

Besides running up to Raleigh to make a Costco and Camping World run we haven’t been doing a whole lot else. However, a big anniversary of ours is on October 3rd. We were married a long, long time ago when we were just children. Once Saturday rolled around we have now been married 40 years, yes that right FORTY YEARS! How did we get to be old enough to be married forty years!

What a great ride our forty years have been. The day we got married in San Antonio in the early 1970’s we were pretty poor. I had just gotten out of the Air Force and was attending college on the G.I. Bill. Sharon was waiting tables in a Pizza Inn. Money was indeed tight but we always found a way to have fun. We even rolled newspapers for a weekly circular on Wednesday nights just so we could have some fun money.

Sharon went to dental assisting school and I kept getting college degrees (after all school was fun to me). We moved from San Antonio to College Station for me to finish my schooling. Our son was born in Bryan and after getting by Bachelor’s Degree we moved to Austin so I could work for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Disgruntled with all the bureaucracy after a few years we moved back to the Bryan-College Station area where our daughter was born.

The next several decades saw us raising children and making a living. Once both of our kids left home and got on with their lives we started planning the next chapter in our lives… and here we are! Forty years of ups and downs, sideways and laterals. Was it all fun? Heck no! But I wouldn’t trade any of it for any other life. Through all the trials and tribulations a forty year marriage takes on two young people there has been nothing better than the forty years we have spent together.

In retirement, forty years after we first got hitched we are probably closer now than we have ever been. Do we still have flaws? Of course we do but the only difference now is that we not only more tolerant of each others flaws we actually embrace some of them. I love my bride, Sharon, heaps and hope to remain married to her another 40 years or whatever I am so blessed to get…  No better place to spend those next years than with Sharon in the passenger seat on the road of retirement…