Up and Down, Up and Down, oooops!

Beginning married life didn't come without challenges. Being there was no "breaking-in" time on a honeymoon we jumped right into a daily routine which began the week following our wedding. For Jim it was up at 6:00 A.M. in order to be at work at the base (Hill Air Force Base) by 7:00. Wanting to be the perfect wife, I, too, was up to fix him breakfast, pack him a lunch, and give him a kiss good-bye. Then it was "What am I going to fix for dinner?" This was one of by biggest concerns before I was even married. I really wasn't sure what Jim really liked, what he really didn't like, or what our limited food budget would permit. When I was living at home, our meals pretty much consisted of easy, inexpensive, and repetitive menus that my mom could prepare. My dad was pretty much a meat and potatoes man, and the meat was usually some form of hamburger. I wanted to impress my new husband with great meals that he would love...a challenge.

Then there was the challenge of laundering Jim's uniforms the way he liked. Most of the time he wore fatigues to work, but when he wore a uniform it had to be pressed military style...sharp creases in the pants and three evenly spaced creases down the back of the shirt. The uniform was made of a thick cotton fabric that was very difficult to iron in the first place. Just getting the wrinkles out was a challenge. But then I used a ruler to get those creases in the shirt just right. Jim has always been very conscientious about his appearance, and I have always been appreciative of that, but I didn't enjoy ironing those uniforms. But I understood that being a staff sergeant in charge of an electronics maintenance shop required him want to present a proper example to those who worked under him.

My next challenge: What to do with all the time I had on my hands alone at home every day. That problem wasn't hard to solve. I began looking for a job. I really didn't have to work because Jim's income was sufficient to pay the bills, especially since we were able to shop the discounted prices at the commissary and our medical care was part of the military benefits. But a little extra money would be nice to purchase some of the "wants" that we had. I found a job at JC Penney's operating an elevator. Yes, back then you couldn't just push a button and the elevator would go up or down and stop at the designated floor. A person actually had to use a hand control to operate the elevator and line it up exactly level with the floor where it stopped. I was paid the minimal wage of $.75 an hour. The job was a little boring and after month of going up and down and jerking at each floor (I was getting better) the constant motion all day long began to get to me and I began feeling sick to my stomach. I fought the feeling day after day by keeping my pocket full of dry crackers which I would try to eat inconspicuously while operating the elevator. The nausea got even worse and after throwing up on the elevator one day, I quit my job. As you have probably guessed by now, it wasn't motion sickness I was suffering; I was pregnant! The next three or four months were not fun for me. I was really sick and tired. Then to top it all off, the change of hormones in my body brought on a major episode of my skin allergies. What a way to begin a marriage!

Through this tough time, Jim was an absolute angel. He was so empathetic with my feeling so bad that he had the same nausea every morning right along with me. Seriously! Sometimes I would tell him that I felt fine when I was about to throw up just to keep him from getting sick. When he would go to work, I would run to the bathroom. Nights were better so we would go to an occasional movie, go for a drive, or just sit on the couch or lie in bed and listen to the radio. Although our apartment came furnished, it did not have television. TV was relatively new and not common in all households. My sister had bought my mom one while I was in college, but I did not have the opportunity to watch it much when I came home. But TV now would have been a nice diversion from listening night after night to: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows". This was the famous introductory to the radio show "Shadow". Other shows we listened to were "Gunsmoke", "Dragnet", "Adventures of the Thin Man", "George Burns and Gracie Allen" (not one of our favorites), "The Green Hornet", "The Bing Crosby Show,"etc. We also got a little tired of hearing the same old musical hits of our day, "Open the Door, Richard", "Sh-Boom, Sh-Boom", "Sixteen Tons", "Earth Angel", "Cross Over the Bridge", "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man", played over and over on the music station. Soooo, we splurged and made our first major purchase of our marriage, a television set. Now we could watch the shows that made this period of time still called "The Golden Age of Television" or "Vaudeville TV many of the variety shows starred those who had become famous on the vaudeville stage. Now we were able to watch "The Red Skelton Show", "The Jack Benny Show", "Ted Mack's Original Amature Hour", "Arthur Godfrey", "Milton Berle", "Ed Sullivan", "Lawrence Welk", "George Gobel", "Perry Como", etc. I can hear you laughing now. Probably most of you have never even heard of half these people who had shows "way back then". But at least we didn't have to put blocks on any of the channels (all two or three of them), and it was a welcome change from radio. Life was good. We really were excited about becoming a family of three. AND planning meals was becoming easier.