Love Is In The Air. . . .Sweet, Sweet, Love . . . .#5

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  George served his four years in the navy at the Naval Training Center in San Diego, California. The picture shows him standing watch as a forward lookout aboard the only ship he served on during his navy enlistment. It is a 2/3 scale mock-up of a destroyer. It was commissioned the USS Recruit TDC-1 in 1949 and land docked a quarter of a mile from the San Diego Bay. It served as a Sea Daddy to new recruits and was affectionately known to them as USS Neversail. While in training, each company served one day standing watches aboard this ship. Every two hours, they rotated to a different station.

The next picture shows Ina with her "sailor man" after his graduation from Boot Camp. Isn't he dashing in his Navy Whites?

George left for Las Vegas to join the Air Force almost immediately after we had our "Bare Your Hearts" date. He took the train from Caliente and when he arrived in Las Vegas, went to the Court House where the recruitment offices for the different branches of the Armed Forces were located. No one was in the Air Force Recruitment Office. He waited all day for someone to come in. When he realized he would miss his train if he didn't get things resolved, he stepped next door and joined the Navy. On the way back to the train station, he passed a pool hall. Looking in, he saw several young men he knew shooting pool. They had played basketball against him as team members for the Las Vegas High School Wildcats. Stepping inside to say a quick hello, he saw the Air Force Recruitment Officers who had obviously been there all day shooting pool with them. He said to them, "So, this is where you have been all day while I was waiting to enlist in the Air Force." One of them answered, "Well, here you are and here we are, let's go and get it done." George told them it was too late, he had a deadline to catch a train back to Caliente, and so had gone next door and joined the Navy.

He came to see me when he got back and told me this story. We had a good laugh about it and he said, "Well, so much for my wanting to he an Air Force pilot, I will now be spending my days and many nights in bell bottom pants buttoning and unbuttoning 13 buttons!" He told me he would be reporting to The Naval Training Center in San Diego for Boot Camp in one week. We had several dates during that week and he left with a promise to send me his military address as soon as he was given one and that he would write me as often as he was able. "But", he said hopefully, "you should be able to write me several times a week." Boot camp lasted for eight weeks and when he had time to write, his letters included the usual horror stories about the rigors of it's training. He stood up under it well and seemed to meet the challenges with enthusiasm. However, he assured me that he was "missing me in the worst way!"

In the meantime, I had settled into my job at the Lincoln County Court House and really enjoyed working for Esther Rollins, the Lincoln County Clerk. The work was interesting and challenging. Esther was a wonderful boss and became a very dear friend. In addition to serving as her secretary, I was often called to the District Attorney's office to take depositions and type legal documents. It wasn't unusual for me to fill a complete steno pad with shorthand from a single deposition. I spent many nights working fast and furiously to have it transcribed and ready to type before my notes got cold. Roscoe Wilkes, the DA scared me to death and I suffered more than one nightmare over this. The first time I took a deposition from a witness in a murder case, it was a hair raising experience. Scary or not, Roscoe did teach me so much about how the justice system worked. I came to realize that the reason he was such a stern taskmaster was because he could not afford to get it wrong.

I missed George terribly. Through our correspondence, our love grew stronger and somewhere along the way, we decided to get married when he came home on leave after his graduation. He would have two weeks leave. This didn't seem like a lot of time for all of the preparations and events leading up to a wedding and leaving any time for a honeymoon. Mother and I began all of the preparations for the wedding and I took the train to Salt Lake City to find a wedding dress, my honeymoon trousseau, and George's wedding ring. It seemed fitting for my sister, Theresa, to be with me as I searched for the perfect wedding gown. After all, she was responsible for restoring mine and George's romance and courtship. I knew I wanted a satin gown with long sleeves and a train and that she knew where we should look. She would be making dresses for my two little flower girls. They were her daughter, my niece Lois Marie, and George's niece, his sister Margaret's daughter, Todd Ann. We needed to find the material for their dresses.

The long and busy eight weeks finally passed, and once again, I waited "with butterflies in my stomach", for George to arrive. We were going to go to a movie with Gino and Wanda. They had just recently been married. We would be seeing the new movie, "An American in Paris'', starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. It was the perfect choice, a sentimental, tear jerking love story. The movie's theme song, "Embraceable You", was a perfect testimony of the occasion. In the back seat on the way home from the movie, George handed me a small velvet box. I opened it and saw a beautiful engagement ring. It was white gold with a large diamond in the center and a smaller one on each side. Actually, it wasn't a very large diamond, as be fits the budget of a "just graduated from Boot Camp "sailor boy", but to me it looked huge. And, I want to say right here, George looked absolutely dashing in his bell bottom pants, buttons and all. We sealed our engagement with a kiss and it was the sweetest kiss I had ever received.

Gino and Wanda then burst into song, singing: "Bell Bottom Trousers, coat of navy blue, Ina loves a sailor man, and he loves her, too. When they walk along the street, anyone can see, they are so much in love, happy as can be."

Gino and Wanda had planned this when George told them he was going to give me my ring. It was a romantic, fun, and hilarious night. Hilarious because neither Wanda nor Gino could carry a tune, but we had to applaud their enthusiasm.

Next up, was to obtain our marriage license. The legal age for a man to marry in Nevada was 21. As George was only 20, he had to be accompanied by a parent in order to be issued the license. Esther came up with what she thought to be an ingenious plan. She affixed the Seal of the State of Nevada to a marriage license application and authorized me to issue and sign it. After doing this, she conveniently went to lunch leaving me in charge. When George came in with his father, I issued our marriage license and his father cosigned with him to make it legal. I accepted his money for the fee and gave him a receipt signed by me. Those remaining in the office, and my future father-in-law, thought it was hilarious and teased George unmercifully.

The next momentous event to take place was George's baptism. Knowing how much it would mean to my parents and I, he wanted it to take place before our wedding. On May 22nd, two days before our wedding, on a cold night when the water in the unheated Baptismal Font at the Pioche Chapel was full of ice crystals, Delores' boyfriend and our dear friend, Peter Horlacher, baptized and confirmed George a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The spirit was strong and it was beautiful.

To be continued. . . .our Wedding Day. . . .

Uncle Wiggily Takes Ten Hops. . . .

My father, James Allen Wadsworth, was a true English Gentleman. A gentleman is defined as being of good family or social position, well educated, a man of the highest honor, courtesy and morality. He was all of that. He was also handsome, determined, and tenacious, while at the same time being a gentle, kind, and under-standing husband and father. If he was a little in awe of the beautiful "sprite" who was his wife, he never-the-less loved her deeply and was very proud of his "Loie".

Dad was a true Englishman in yet another way. He was blessed with an English sense of humor. He could be

very funny without even realizing it. Over the years, this gave much pleasure and many a laugh to his family and friends. I can still see the staid look on his face as he would deliver, or receive, a joke. In his own time, this

look would be followed by a chuckle, which would start suddenly and softly, and soon develop into a rumbling

"belly laugh".

We were a happy family. My siblings and I benefited from our parents loving, involved, hands on style of

parenting. We were a reading, story telling, and game playing family. We did these things together. From the

time we were small we were read to and taught to love books. We always had games. One of mine and

Delores' favorites, from the time we were very young until we were into our preteens, was the Uncle

Wiggily board game. In this game, the players advanced along a colorful story telling trail, from Uncle Wiggily's

Bungalow in a hollow stump to Dr. Possum's House. The first player to arrive there was the winner. Two

decks of cards were placed in the center of the board, one deck yellow and one red. On their turn, a player

drew a yellow card which either had them advance or tell them to draw a card from the red deck, which would

move them forward or backward. The cards were very entertaining, written in catchy little verses.

It wasn't all fun and games, though. From the time we were small, we also had certain chores to do. One of

mine and Delores' Saturday chores was to dust the whole house. It was no easy task. There was a lot of dust

that would settle in a house with as much traffic as ours had each day. Mom had her ceramic elf and sea shell

collections and there were a lot of pictures and books. Dad's upright Grand Piano and piano bench took a lot of dusting. With such a large family, there was always odds and ends of stuff scattered about. Rather that take the time to return it to it's proper place, we had a habit of just grabbing an envelope from one of the compartments in the little desk/table/magazine rack that sat at the end of the couch and cramming the stuff into it. Some one always seemed to be hunting for an item that had met that fate.

Ours was a large family, which presented challenges even in the best of times. These challenges reached a

critical point during Word War II. In May of 1942, our government introduced rationing because certain things were in short supply. Food, clothing, shoes, gasoline, tires, and heating fuel, were all rationed. Even if you had money to buy these things, you couldn't just walk into a store or pull into a service station and purchase whatever you needed or wanted. Rationing was the government's way to make sure everyone received their fair share. This rationing lasted for three years.

Families were issued Ration Books filled with red and blue stamps and another referred to as the airplane stamp. This became a kind of currency. Red stamps were used for meat and fats, blue for processed foods, shoes and other clothing used the airplane stamps. The size of the family determined the number of stamps and coupons in the book. In addition, each family was issued a Gas Ration Book and a Sugar Buying Card. A point system was used to purchase these needed things. It was joked around that it took "a heap of learning" to figure it all out and most often it was a "trial and error" situation; for instance, How far was four gallons of gas a week going to take you? What were the alternatives to using sugar in cooking? In a large family, the simple act of buying a pair of shoes became a difficult task; Who was most in need of new shoes? Who could wait until the next allotment dates?

With so many of the young men going off to war, Panaca's farmers and ranchers suffered. Money and labor were in short supply. One day Dad received a notice from the bank stating that he was overdrawn on his account. Being a proud and ethical man, he was upset and embarrassed. To cover the overdraft, he immediately sold, for much less that it was worth, one of the pigs he had been counting on to feed his family. He put the money in an envelope he pulled from a compartment in the little desk/table and mailed it to the bank in Pioche.

A few days later, he went to Pioche on business and before returning home, went into the bank to make sure

they had received the money and his account was free of the overdraft. Having been a school teacher and holding political offices in the county and state, he was well known throughout the state. The bank manager and most of the other employees, were long time friends of his. When he entered the bank, he instantly became the focus of attention. As he went along greeting people with a handshake or a clap on the back, there were a lot of smiles, chuckles and outright laughter, from both employees and partrons. This puzzled him and he was wondering if he really was the cause of every one's merriement.

The question was answered when the bank manager called from his office, "Jim could you step in here for a moment?" Dad said later that it immediately became so quiet in the bank you could have heard a pin drop, and

then he heard his friend laughing. He handed the envelope he was holding to dad as he said, "You really out did yourself this time, Jim!" Confused, Dad looked at the envelope and recognizing his own writing, looked inside. It held several different items. They included the slip he had filled out for the deposit to cover the overdraft, a blue rationing food stamp to be affixed to the Sugar Buying Card for 5 pounds of sugar, an advertisement for Buster Brown shoes proclaiming, "I'm Buster Brown. I live in a shoe. That's my dog. Tige, He lives there, too.", and a yellow card from the Uncle Wiggily game, which proudly stated, "Uncle Wiggily takes 10 hops, while in the woods the ice cream pops!"

Dad didn't have a clue how this could have happened and so didn't try to explain it, but just left the bank followed by a lot of friendly ribbing and laughter. Mom said he didn't say anything when he got home. just sat in his rocking chair with a Max Brand western. Quite a while later, mom said she heard a chuckle and then a deep rumbling belly laugh, coming from the rocking chair in the living room. When she went into the room, he was still laughing as he handed her the envelope. He said, "It is a mysterious coincidence, but I guess the joke is on me!'

This quickly became our family's favorite story and these many years later, it still makes us laugh.

Even though I never admitted it, I have always felt that I was most likely to blame, albeit in innocence, for setting Dad up during one of my dreaded "dusting" experiences. Or could it have been Delores?