My Special-delivery Groom

When I was growing up, there was a joke going around about a girl whose soldier boyfriend was stationed overseas. They exchanged letters every day, and after a year, she married her postman.

As a senior in high school, I was writing a boy I had met while visiting my cousins in Arkansas. I always cleaned house on Saturdays and often was shaking out rugs or sweeping the porch when the postman came by. He was our neighbor across the street and I had known him most of my life, so it was just natural for me to visit with him if he came by with the mail while I was outside.

So when a college boy became his Saturday substitute, I talked to him as well when he came by with the mail, if the timing worked out to do so. On Saturdays I often had a letter to the Arkansas boy ready to mail when the substitute came by. At first I wasn't interested in him, but I was not in love with the other boy, and didn't know if I would ever even see him again.

Eventually the substitute postman asked me out and we started dating on a regular basis. It was not love at first sight for either of us. In fact, I was really miserable the first few times I went out with him. One night while I was dressing for a date my mother said, "It looks like you're getting ready to go to a funeral instead of on a date. What's the problem?"

I said, "Well, he's a really nice guy, but he's so serious and I just don't know how to act around him." There was always a lot of joking and teasing going on around our house, and this guy just didn't seem to be one who would go for that.

At that point my mother gave me a bit of advice I'll never forget. "If you can't be yourself around him, you don't need to be going with him."

So that night I cut loose with all the pent-up foolishness that had been itching to get out every time I saw him. At first his face registered shock, but soon he got in the game and I learned he was really witty and had a good sense of humor.

Meanwhile he took another part-time job in a grocery store in addition to his Post Office job, and decided not to pursue his goal of becoming an aeronautical engineer. He finally realized that to do so would require his moving to a large city, and he had the country in his veins. He would just hang on to his Post Office connection and hope it would eventually become a regular job.

In January I ruined a knee playing basketball, and he was at my house every day for the next week doing anything he could to sooth my pain and ease my misery. His kind and caring presence was a great comfort to me and I realized it would be good to keep him around. He proposed a few days later.

It has never bothered me being known as the girl who faithfully wrote the boy in Arkansas, and then married the postman--fifty-one years ago.