Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself - PART XX

Our wedding was memorable and everyone attending seemed to
have enjoyed themselves. I think we had about 125 guests, including some of our old and newer friends.  Marty and Jim were there.  So was George Profous. A few of Betsy’s friends also attended. Bruce and Roz Midler shared a table with the
other friends.  Betsy had met Roz at work a few months earlier and “Roz and Bruce” were to become our longest and best married friends (they eventually divorced and we got custody of Bruce!) – more like family.

I only lament that my best friend, Bruce Canell, was not at our wedding, nor was I at his. This all stemmed from that silly falling out - all over a jealousy involving a teenage love lost, just a few years earlier.  Thank god that he and I have long since put that immature chapter of our lives behind us and that our friendship has long since been restored and strengthened.

My best man was Jim Keehn, though I struggled with that decision. After all, Marty Anton and I went back a bit farther to high school.  Then again, Jim and I were college roommates and were almost inseparable for two and a half years.  Since Betsy was around most of that time, Jim was a close friend to us both.  I am sure that Marty understood and didn’t mind.

Jim made a great toast to Betsy and me that drew from his fire science education at SUNY-Syracuse. He alluded to the strong love and soul mate bond that he watched grow between Betsy and me and appropriately referred to it as a “fire burning in the forest that will never go out”.  After 33 years of marriage, two terrific sons and we – together - having overcoming many economic and health struggles, Jim’s words remain very predictive and reassuring.  We have watched many of our friends and relatives divorce, as we continue to count the years of endless love and ongoing commitment to each other.

Immediately after our wedding, Betsy and I returned to her parent’s apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens to open our gifts, mostly checks.  We then called a taxi, which took us to a Howard Johnson’s motel outside of LaGuardia Airport from where we would fly off on our honeymoon early the next morning.

The details of our wedding night are not for publication, so I’ll to leave that up to your imagination. I will just say it is consistent with the kind of behaviors most honeymooners enjoy on the first night of marriage.  All I can remember is that we turned off “Ben Hur” on television in favor of making our own private entertainment. ;)

We awoke early the next morning, had breakfast and headed over to the airport to board a plane to Puerto Rico.  Originally, we were to honeymoon in Bermuda, but a hotel strike cancelled those plans just days before our wedding. Betsy and I
were both very disappointed and confused.  Not knowing what to replace our trip with, Betsy’s uncle Herbie stepped in and offered us his apartment at via Del Mar in San Juan and his car in the underground parking garage.  We were very
grateful to him.

Betsy was a little tentative about boarding a plane.  Our luck, infamous avionic history had just been made as an Aeroflot airplane crashed in Russia killing 86 people on board.  To this day, Betsy really doesn’t need any excuse to be nervous about plane flight.  She avoids flying as much as possible. When we do fly, together, I usually have dig marks on my arm to prove that we made a trip by plane.  We’ve been on a few rough flights over the years and flying is just not Betsy’s thing.  I usually sedate her with unlimited coffee, served onboard.  Did I mention that Betsy has coffee and wine running through her veins? 

When we arrived at San Juan Airport, we were met by the hottest and most
humid air we had ever experienced, anywhere.  It made us want to get right back on the plane and fly home.  It was only March 26th and we were just not ready for such an abrupt temperature and humidity extreme.  We were both amazed that the airport terminal was largely open-air and allowed for the weather to come in. 

After leaving the airport building, we caught a cab to the Via Del Mar Este apartment building situated right overlooking the ocean off of San Juan. We were only a couple of blocks from the famous El San Juan Hotel, a familiar landmark in the newer city.  The Via Del Mar Este was a luxury apartment building in which Betsy’s aunt and uncle owned the penthouse and a smaller apartment a few floors below.  The view from the smaller apartment, where we were to spend the week, was breathtaking.  The ocean was that clean turquoise color that is only found in the tropics and the white sandy beaches of San Juan were filled with as many residents and vacationers as there were sea shells, both day and night.  Yes, at 3 am in the morning voices could be heard from the beach below our bedroom window.  It was obviously as safe on the beach as it was beautiful and romantic.

Aside from the usual intimate stuff that took place during our honeymoon
week, Betsy and I used the “remaining” time to do some sightseeing and enjoy
some of the island’s luscious cuisine.  Each morning, we enjoyed a lovely tropical breakfast at the El San Juan Hotel.  We especially looked forward to the
quarter pineapple we ordered each time. It was so refreshing. We also enjoyed
Spanish food at the El Cid, a very upscale restaurant; Chinese food at another
nearby hotel; and when money was getting a little tighter towards the end of
our vacation, hamburguesas and papas fritas from a nearby McDonald’s.

During our time on the island, we toured and shopped Old San Juan and visited
El Moro Castle, located on the headland overlooking the entrance to San Juan Bay and built to protect the city of San Juan from seaborne enemies. 

We also took a bus tour to the outlying regions, where we saw many lovely
sights as well as some rather upsetting ones, including seeing numerous people
living in squalid conditions.  Never before had we ever experienced seeing people living in cardboard-constructed shelters alongside filthy swamps.  We felt very fortunate for what little we had to start off our marriage – it was more than most of these poor souls could ever dream of having, including basic needs.  We felt awful for the people having to live that way in a Commonwealth of the United States.

Betsy and I had some wonderful times in San Juan; sunning on the beach; dining
in some fine restaurants; and simply enjoying each other’s company in the
vacation apartment.  The world went on around us as Magic Johnson was going head-to-head with Larry Bird in the NCAA national championship game; President
Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel signed a peace treaty; and America's most serious nuclear power plant accident was playing out at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. The latter caused us to fear that we just may not have a place to call home after the honeymoon was over.  It was a very scary time in America, especially in the Northeast, where the fallout would surely go if there were to be a full-scale core meltdown. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Our return to the mainland finally came on April 2nd, a Sunday.  My bother-in-law Harvey picked us up at Newark Airport on what was a warm and beautiful day, very atypical of the early spring.  In fact, Harvey told us that it had been a very warm and dry week, while we were away.  So much for the expected benefits of a warm tropical vacation in late March and early April.  In any case, Harvey brought us to my parent’s house on Taylors Mills Road, where we were “debriefed” by the family about our honeymoon prior to being ceremoniously dispatched to our new apartment in Stonehurst in Freehold. 

While we were away, my parents set up a mattress and box spring on the bedroom floor and also left us with their old black and white television set-up on a swivel-stand.  Aside from these few things, the rest of the place was understandably very sparsely furnished – mostly empty, in fact.

That first night – Sunday – Betsy and I snuggled on our mattress on the floor of the first place we would ever live together as a married couple.  We were a bit tired from our time away, as newlyweds tend to get about 50% - 75% less sleep than long married couple.  Please do not try to scientifically challenge these numbers, because the long married researchers were too embarrassed to actually print them.

On Monday morning, Betsy and I awake to our first “every day” as a working, married pair.  We both had work in the city and we caught the bus – early - right outside of our apartment on Stonehurst Boulevard.  It was very convenient, but still required us to rise before 6 am and return home after 7 pm, weekdays.  We couldn’t complain, because we were fortunate to both have jobs and only took up two seats of a bus filled with many older people that had been commuting daily for several years.

Our first official day of life as apartment dwellers turned out to be quite a memorable event.  We went off to work in the city and dealt with the usual kind of stuff – nothing extraordinary.  However, after leaving our offices for the trip home all hell seemed to break loose!!

When I got my first job at Bloomingdales, my mother-in-law bought me a very expensive, leather attaché case – a Hartman.  It was beautiful and I had taken good care of it, so far.  But, on this day I was to leave it behind on the homebound bus, which continued south after Betsy and I departed it.  We didn’t know what to do and I was very worried that the case would be lost forever, along with its work-related contents.

We didn’t have a telephone hooked up in our apartment as of yet and it was long before the age of cell phones.  I had no choice but to make the long trek to the 7/11 on Schank Road, nearly a mile away, to use their payphone to call the Lincoln Bus Company.  They could report on and guarantee nothing about the case, yet, since the bus had not returned to its garage for the day.  I began the long walk back to our apartment.

While I was away, Betsy attempted to cook our very first meal in our apartment as husband and wife.  She was making lamb chops.  After an hour in what she thought was the oven, those chops looked no different than they did just out of the freezer.  They weren’t even warm to the touch.  I immediately diagnosed the
problem. You know the drawer that some stoves have to hold extra pots and pans? Well, that is where Betsy attempted to cook those lamb chops.  When she realized what she had done or – actually, not done – she began to laugh and I joined her. 

When those chops finally made it into the real oven - the one that actually cooks something - they caught fire (grease) rousing our new neighbors, Sara and Charley, to come to our rescue. We roared with laughter after the oven fire was put out.  These few laughs took away some of the sting from the thought of losing my attaché on that bus just a couple of hours earlier.

Fortunately, the next morning the case was located on the bus and immediately returned to me, after I positively identified it.  I suppose many newlyweds have their own “horror stories” from their early days of marriage.  God gives us these things to provide some humor at a very important time – trying to make it on your own as a young couple thrust into the world as it were.

We enjoyed our new apartment - eventually furnished nicely - and we lived there for a very satrisfying year and a half, as our rent rapidly rose from $235 per month to $535.  New and interesting changes would soon take place in our lives, as we settled into married living; with love growing and flourishing.  To be continued…