Happy Anniversary!

Photo was taken July, 1973.

Today is our Anniversary. It's hard to believe that we have been married for 36 years. It's seems like yesterday that we made the decision to go to Reno, NV and get married. We....or rather my mother-in-law was planning our wedding. They just kept getting it bigger and bigger. Rich and I wanted a very simple wedding......not an event like they were planning. We decided one morning that we didn't want what was being planned.....so we decided to elope.

After we made our decision Rich called his Mom and told her our decision. She wasn't too happy with our decision. Next, I called my Grandma and told her our decision. She said if we were happy with our decision.....then she was. She asked that we come out and see her before we left for Reno. We went out to see her and she gave us some money.

We left that morning for Reno. Rich hadn't been to Reno and I had only been there as a child with my parents. We arrived at the outskirts of Reno about 10pm that night. We were so tired that we decided to get a motel room and find the courthouse the next day. The motel is no longer there as they put in a new freeway exit and tore down all the buildings in the area.

The next day armed with instructions from the motel manager we found the Washoe County Court House. We discovered if we got married before Noon it was $10 cheaper. We could also be married by the Justice of Peace right across the hall. We filled out the paperwork and got our license. Then we waited in the hallway with several other couples to be married for the judge. We were married at 11:47am...we just barely made the Noon deadline.

After we was married we counted our money that we had left. We put aside our gas money and had enough left to have lunch at McDonald's closeby. We couldn't go inside the casinos........Rich was old enough but I wasn't.

After lunch and a little sightseeing we headed back to Oregon. We didn't really have a home because the people we was staying with had been evicted. We ended up spending our Wedding Night at Rich's parents.

We stayed with them for a couple of days. Then my Grandma asked us if we wanted to stay in their travel trailer until we could find a apartment to rent. We moved out to Grandma's and continued to look for jobs.

That was how we started out 36 years ago.