In honor of what would be Pat and Bun’s 72nd anniversary, on February 3, we are posting their “love story”, from Bun's perspective.

 

February 2014

By Darlene McManus

 

A recent email requested Pat to write something to be read at a couple’s wedding. His first reaction was to tell them, “DON’T DO IT!” But he changed his mind with some arm-twisting from me. Then we were asked by the local newspaper to be featured in their “Love” column. “No way, our story is not about love, it is about necessity,” we said. 

 

That was when I decided to write about how Pat and I met and married. Our first date was on my 18th birthday and was set up by my cousin, Bob. My family had recently moved in with Bob’s family to help run a gas station and motel in Sandpoint, Idaho. I was away at college, but Bob showed Pat my high school graduation picture, and Pat said, “I’m going to marry that girl.”

 

Cousin Bob built up this big story to pique my interest: Pat’s father owned the local hardware store. Pat was a big football star and drove a brand new car.

 

Sounds good, right? As it turned out, Pat’s stepdad worked at a hardware store, the car was owned by his parents, and Pat was a guard on the local high school championship football team, and in his own words, he was “a star!”

 

Two days after Christmas was my birthday and the day of our first date, rollerskating. It was a very cold night with temperatures down to 20 degrees below zero, and the roads were very icy. We were coming home by a back way. I don’t know why we were on that road, but I soon learned Pat often takes the “scenic” route, particularly when he is thinking about something else. We spotted a car in a ditch. Pat got out to help the drunken driver, leaving me warm and cozy in the car with the lights on and the heater running.

 

When he finally got the car and driver back on the road, we discovered that our car’s motor wouldn’t start. The battery was dead! Pat hiked back a mile or two to the main road and called a taxi, which never showed up. Then he sneaked into a friend’s garage, “borrowed” a battery, installed it in his car, and drove me home. It was rather late by then, and my mother was waiting up for me.

 

The next time I heard from Pat was in a letter sent to my college address. It was a poem about our freezing adventure. I was hooked.

 

We went together for two years. When I finished my business course in Spokane, I took a job with the hospital in Pullman, where I knew Pat planned to enroll in Washington State College. We were pretty much committed to each other by that time.

 

I recommend two years of courtship because in that time, we learned a lot about each other and our reactions to adversity. My reaction is immediate panic, with much worrying in between. Pat always smoothed everything out and made it better.

 

One time, for example, I had to work Christmas Day. Pat had stayed in Pullman so we could spend Christmas together. We could have had a turkey dinner at the hospital, but we decided we would go downtown after work to get dinner. The Chinese restaurant would be open, or so we thought. Everything in town was closed up tight. I had received a waffle iron for Christmas, so we decided to have waffles at home. Nobody had told me about seasoning the waffle iron! I don’t know how many times I scraped out waffles, crying all the time. Eventually, someone or something took mercy on me, and we finally had our waffles for our first Christmas dinner together.

 

Another time, we had to go to Moscow, ID, to buy our wedding license, since we were to be married in Sandpoint, Idaho, and were living in Washington state. We didn’t own a car, so we took the bus, got the license, and were back in time to catch the bus for our return to Pullman. The bus service had been canceled because of blizzard conditions! We didn’t have any money and knew no one we could call. Pat talked a kind taxi driver into taking us the ten miles back to my place. I must have had some cash to add to the money we got from cashing in our return bus tickets because we managed to scrounge up enough to pay him. I figured if Pat still wanted to marry me after those two incidents, I was in good hands. 

 

It should be mentioned that Pat was starving, and that was the “necessity” part of my story. In his freshman year, he had made good money working in construction. But the summer of his sophomore year, he could only find a job in a gas station at minimum wage. During the school year, Pat also worked at a local laundry while going to college, plus the $25 he received as a dependent of a deceased veteran. He also cleaned an apartment building to earn his apartment (or hovel as he referred to it). By the winter quarter, he weighed 140 pounds. The last meal he had before our wedding was Vienna sausages straight out of the can. We figured that with my salary and Pat’s jobs, we could pay tuition, food, books, etc. We did all that and saved $50 a month besides.

 

We were supposed to be married on Saturday, January 30. The flowers and cake were ordered, and the church was reserved. I had a new dress, and Pat had a new suit and tie. Then tragedy struck. Vic DeMers, Pat’s stepdad, died while shoveling deep snow at the family farm. The funeral for Vic was on what had formerly been our wedding day.

 

We returned to Pullman unmarried. My boss at the hospital let me sleep on a cot in his basement because I had already let my apartment go. Arrangements were made for us to get married in Moscow since we already had the Idaho marriage license, at the Catholic Church on Wednesday at the children’s school mass. The two mothers came, and my sister, who was going to Univeristy of Idaho in Moscow, and Pat’s cousin, Bill, stood up for us.

 

It was a great wedding. The only thing I remember is the whispers and tittering of the little children in the background. I thought it was a good sign. Afterwards, Bill and his wife, Mary Lou, invited us to breakfast at their home. The mothers and Pat and I went back to Pat’s (and now, our) apartment, and we had wedding cake and coffee before the mothers left to drive back to Sandpoint.

 

Pat cleaned the apartment house furnace because that was a daily part of what he did to earn our apartment. I don’t remember what I did. In the evening, we walked down to a local restaurant for dinner and then went to a Randolph Scott movie. Our married life had begun.

 

I guess there is a love story after all.

 

All the best, Bun