All because a beautiful girl became smitten with a young boy who asked for a drink of water on a hot summer's day while he worked in her father's wheat fields.
All because two people fell in love with each other.
I can't remember when I first heard the story. Perhaps it was when I asked my mother one day if I could have some strawberry pop to drink. It might have been when I wanted to do something but was afraid to try. Shoot, I guess it maybe could have been when I did something I shouldn't have and had to fess up to it in the end.
No matter how I learned about it, I never forgot the story.
In the early morning hours, the young girl who would some day become my mother, waited in the darkness of her bedroom on the family farm in the sand hills of rural Harvey County, Kansas. A small packed bag was on her bed and her eyes were on the road, waiting patiently for the 17-year old boy she loved to come and take her away. They were running away, eloping with one another because that was the only way they could see to get married to one another. My grandparents had told their 19-year old daughter, "no way" and had refused to give their permission for a wedding between the two to happen.
It didn't matter.
They were going to do it regardless.
My father, a young man of 17 years, was underage to legally get married in Kansas. He needed his parent's permission in order for that to happen. His kind mother, the woman who would end up becoming my Grandma Scott, gave her signature as well as her blessing. Without it, the day would have been even more difficult.
I'm not sure why they went to the courthouse in Wichita, Kansas. It was a journey definitely farther away than the much closer courthouse in Newton. Funny, I've wondered about that all these years. Now I get the feeling that maybe they were worried my grandparents would wake up and find my mother's note to tell them what they were doing. Newton would be just up the road a ways and they could possibly have tried to stop them. Who knows? It would seem to make for great story telling in the generations that would come after them.
Generations like mine and those of my children. Hey, even now my grandchildren.
So there they were at noontime, sitting on the steps of the Sedgwick County Courthouse as a legally married couple. It was hot that Wednesday, not unlike the day we will all be experiencing here in this part of the country. With probably all the money my father had left in his pocket that day, they went to the pop machine and bought a cold bottle of strawberry pop to share between them. I can imagine what it felt like to be passing it back and forth between the two of them as they wondered what to do next. In the end, when the last sip of the refreshing beverage was taken, they did the only thing two young people in love and now married could do.
They went home.
Mom never did say much about what happened next when they got back. It doesn't matter. They lived in lean times for awhile but they were both very good with the practice of "making do" with what they had. In the years to come, 7 children would be born to them and they would do their best to raise them up in the way that they should go. Their marriage held firm for 42 years before my father succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 59. My mother would live many years more, passing away in 2007 at the age of 87 from kidney failure.
I am older now. I have already lived nearly 3 years longer than my father and if I make it another 25 years, then I shall catch up to where my mother was. In the world out there, I qualify for a senior discount in many places. My body is still strong but slower and I suppose that is normal according to the place in time that I am in right now. There are wrinkles on my face and streaks of gray within my hair. No matter what though, one thing is most certainly true.
I will always be their little girl.
Wonderful Story. I will share it with Rachael =)
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