Tea House of the August Honeymoon

Janice and I decided to get married during the Stanton County Fair when the paper shut down for vacation. During the interim, after I took over in June, our relationship was more or less long distance. Since I had lost my license for six months, I let Janice have the 1951 Chevy and she would come to Stanton for the weekends.

One Sunday evening she came into Wahoo and noticed some men waving at her from a gas station along the highway. She knew them and waved back but they seemed to be a little frantic so she stopped. At that point she smelled rubber burning and got out of the car. It seems a tire had blown several miles back and Janice had driven quite some time on it. The rim was so hot the guys at the gas station had to wait a while before they could change it.

E-mail at that time, of course, was not even a science fiction item so the U.S. postal service was the best means of communications. We still have the letters we wrote each other during those two and a half months before we were married. I counted some 45-50 letters when I dug them out.

Al and Joe, my college buddies, decided they should throw me a bachelor party. I took the bus to Omaha the day before the wedding and met them for a night of bar hopping. It was probably the dullest night I have ever spent in my life. Attempting to pick up girls was not an option and what do you talk about after a few hours?

Consequently, we went back to our hotel fairly early but I made my friends promise they would get me to Stanton by noon the next day. We were not to be married until 7:00 p.m. but Janice wanted me there in time to meet with our attendants and make other preparations.

Whether it was inadvertent or intentional on Joe and Al’s part, I never found out, but we slept late and it was nearly noon before we got out of Omaha. Obviously, it was much after twelve o’clock when I arrived and Janice was not too happy with me. Not a good way to begin our life together!

We were married by Rev. J. Frank Bartleson at the Methodist church in Stanton on Aug. 21, 1955. Janice’s sister Phyllis Wagner and my last college roommate, Duane Noble, stood up with us.

We didn’t want to start out on our honeymoon at night so I had booked a motel in Norfolk, some 15 miles from Stanton. I had rented a house in Stanton and it was ready to move into but for some reason, I didn’t consider using it that first night.

We went to the Black Hills in South Dakota. Our first stop there was Hot Springs and of course rude jokes emanated from that post mark when friends received cards from us.

Our trip was cut short when I ran out of money after about four days so we went on back to Stanton to set up housekeeping. That weekend, Phyllis and Janice had arranged for a wedding reception at the Presbyterian church in Wahoo.