Our Courtship

He worked at the local newspaper office. I worked for his employer’s wife as a mother’s helper. He had served his apprenticeship and was now a full fledged printer earning a magnificent sum of eight dollars a week. My wages were three dollars per week. Mrs. Miller found reasons for sending me to the office frequently and he was easy to talk to. It wasn’t long before he asked me to go to a movie and I readily agreed. Movies tickets at our local theatre were twenty-five cents, usually. The first movie we went to was called “The Housekeeper’s Daughter” starring Joan Bennett. I don’t remember a thing about the story. The next week he called again and this time the movie he wanted to take me to was “Gone With The Wind”. I protested that it was too expensive. This time he would have to spend fifty cents each on tickets and the movie was so long that there was an intermission and I knew he would want to buy refreshments, but I didn’t take much persuading and we went all out for that evening of entertainment. This time I did remember the story. From that evening forward , he was a daily caller at our home and my mother did her best to keep him fed. Most of our dates were merely a stroll down town and back as we had no car. We heard on the radio that Major Bowe’s Amateur Hour was coming to a bigger town about thirty miles away and both of us decided we would like to attend that function. Money would be a problem on our wages, so we decided to save up for it. One of us bought a dime bank and we each put any spare dime we could, into the bank. It held five dollars. We managed to have five dollars worth of dimes by the time the big day arrived. Dad lent us his car and off we went. I don’t know what the tickets cost but we had enough to buy them plus enough to indulge in an ice-cream soda at the big town soda fountain. 1940 was the year our story started. In March of 1941 he left for Detroit, Michigan where he had heard he could find work at a decent wage. He sent a telegram that he’d found a job at $50.00 a week. He had a minister and marriage license. I had never been away from home before but I traveled to Detroit and we were married in July of 1941. Honorable Mention .