This past Saturday would have been my 50^th wedding anniversary had my husband lived. We were married in 1962. We met when I was fifteen and he nineteen. He was from a neighboring county. All of his friends thought we were a perfect match. We started “going steady” when he gave me his high-school class ring from 1959. It was the fashion in those days to wrap your boyfriend’s ring in angora wool which was teased into a puff. Cool, daddy, cool.

Our dates were Saturday night events consisting of going to the Dairy Queen or Frisch’s drive through, or to the local theatre where we watched movies like “All Hands on Deck,” with Pat Boone and Barbara Eden and “Sanctuary,” starring Lee Remick and Yves Montand. We thought we were so grownup. After our dates we would park under the sugar maple tree at the end of my driveway. When my dad thought we’d been out there long enough he would turn the flood light off and on.

We were each other’s only sweethearts. When I graduated from high-school we became engaged. My ring had an actual diamond chip and was precious to my heart. We were married that October. Two weeks later Chuck was drafted into the army. Eleven months later our first son was born. Two other sons followed giving us three wonderful boys.

When Chuck returned home from active duty we set up housekeeping in nearby Lexington,Ky. He became an engineer and I a registered nurse. We were given forty-three years together. Our love never waned. I can truly say I loved him just as much the day I kissed him good-bye as I did when we shared our first kiss under that old sugar maple tree.

On what would have been my 50^th wedding anniversary I celebrated good memories.

I’ve been on deadline with my latest book, Tattler’s Branch, but this week I took a short break and went to visit Peaks Mill Christian Church in Frankfort, Ky. I had been invited to speak and sign books following their Ladies Salad Supper.

Peaks Mill Christian is a lovely white church with an old fashioned steeple. The building would be right at home in my novel which is set in 1911.  In the front of the church is a beautiful flower garden with zinnias and marigolds, two my favorite flowers. Oddly enough, I’d just written a scene in which these flowers are featured. Odder still, was the big red hound dog laying around (yes—I know it should be lying, but hound dogs don’t lie around, they lay) in the church yard. Just that morning I’d added a red-coated hound dog to my book. He has a small but important part.  The church, the flower garden, the dog—it was as I I’d stepped right into the setting of my book.

The church is small (to my mind—just the right size) with lovely leaded windows and old fashioned wooden pews. The ladies had decorated the fellowship hall in fall colors. There must have been a hundred gorgeous salads spread out for all to enjoy. I had to try the deviled eggs, some yummy potato salad, and a slice of a home- grown yellow tomato. Delicious.  Dessert was individual dessert breads. Each small loaf had a sticker with one of my favorite Scriptures printed on it.  “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us. . .”

The songs we sang before I spoke were stirring, old-time hymns. It was not hard to imagine the generations past who had stood in that same place singing those same words of worship.

I love country churches with old-fashioned steeples, old fashioned songs and old-fashioned faith.  Since I write historical fiction, I’m always trying to capture the essence of the old time ways… 

Thank you, Peaks Mill Christian Church, for welcoming this old-fashioned writer with good, old-fashioned love.

Photos by Ray Wilmoth