lots of ways to travel

I was asked to recall our marriage, here goes.

June 4, 1951 (late in the afternoon)

It was a long time go that Doris Jane Majors and Roger Lee Kroth got married. Since that time I have been a Best Man, an usher, gave away a couple of daughters, and thus have seen a number of weddings.
We had thought about and discussed this event for some time. I had been in the Navy and then in the Norwegian Merchant Marines, Jane had been a teacher in a small rural town in Kansas.
I had been a student at the University of Iowa and was on the tennis team. The G.I. Bill was a way of living, and I had things planned out so that when the spring semester finished, we could get married between semester and summer school. Time was something that controlled us and not the other way around. There were little things that we didn’t plan on. Some states require a blood test and a wait of three days. We decided to go to Arkansas because they didn’t have that requirement.
Obviously we were old enough to make our own decisions. I suppose our parents had plans that we ran over as we made our plans. I guess we more or less just told them what we were going to do. We packed our bags and got dressed up and said goodbye to our parents in Winfield Kansas. And we headed out to Arkansas.
As the day wore on we talked and looked at the maps and realized we were going to have to find a Justice of the Peace or we would be living in “sin”. We looked for big towns and country courthouses and finally found one in Huntsville, Arkansas in Madison County.
We went into the courthouse and told some one our plight and a judge was rounded up. He lined up a witness, and there was a sheep there who didn’t qualify as a witness. I think it was the judge’s wife who made it legal and the judge got the papers together and it was one of the shortest ceremonies ever.

He read from his book and then said. “I now pronounce you man and wife. Kiss the bride. Ten dollars please” and we did those things in that order and went out with our piece of paper ready to check into any motel.
Our honeymoon was driving around Arkansas and Missouri, which is beautiful in the spring. Eventually on our way to Iowa City we ended up in Peoria and went to a tennis tournament and watched Tony Trabert play.
There are weddings and there are weddings, and we’ve seen many in our years. I’ve learned a number of things in our 55 years together. We lucked out on some things. For instance, I probably should have made a list of things to accomplish. I didn’t have a note to make sure we had a place to live in Iowa city. But we had a trailer in the Married Housing unit. That was nice but to our dismay we found we had a communal shower and bathroom for all of the trailers in the area. We learned a lot in the following years. Fortunately we had a pretty common layer of core values.
We saw a sign in Arkansas ,”Seldom Seen” Arkansas. And we left that and traveled together for over 55 years… Of course, not alone… we picked up some children along the road less traveled. Sometime I would like to go that way again.