That summer of 1962, I didn't just up and decide that I would marry Buddy. An event occurred that told me that time for living was dear and to be cherished. My girlfriend, Glenda & I were spending a Sunday afternoon together at her house. We were making plans for that evening. Her Mom and Dad were there. They were busy doing stuff, so they kept coming in and going out of the house. Their house was across an empty field from a small shopping center. Most days the empty field was used as extra parking for the little mall. However, since this was a Sunday, the field was REALLY empty....all except for an old, flatbed truck. Now, this field took up approximately three or four acres square. There was the mall, the field, the street, then Glenda's house....in that order.

We were in her kitchen making sandwiches, so it must have been around noon. Her Mom and Dad had come in and were in the bathroom washing up. There was a wall between the kitchen and the living room and that wall had a framed picture of the Virgin Mary on it. The house was built of cement blocks. The next thing we knew, our lives had changed forever.

Glenda was near the kitchen stove and I was right across from her at the kitchen sink. We hear a huge explosion, the house shakes, and plaster chunks and dust were flying everywhere. Glenda dropped to the floor and I bent over the sink covering my head. We were shouting, "It's a bomb! It's a bomb!" Our hearts were in our throats and pounding mightily. The noise and shuddering stopped, although there was still plaster dust in the air.... thick and choking. We looked at each other and we could see the stark fear on each other's faces.

Our first coherent thoughts were for Glenda's parents. Where were they? Were they all right? We cautiously went out of the kitchen and toward the living room. Glenda's Mom screamed at us to stay right there and not move. The sight that greeted us was awesome indeed.

Stopped directly in front of the picture of the Virgin Mary was the flatbed truck. Its airbrakes had failed and it had started rolling across the empty field. Well, the field was a bit slanted down toward their house, so the truck had gained momentum and came crashing into the front of their house, at about 45 mph, and stopped in front of that picture. Glenda's Mom said that as the truck came to a stop, a single tear rolled down Mary's face.

We checked each other all over, then surveyed the damage. It was an horrendous mess. The Fire Department, the Police, and an ambulance all showed up at about the same time. They insisted that Glenda's parents be taken to a local hospital to be checked over. They wanted us to go, too, but we were fine....just shook up. The Police officers measured how far the truck had come. They looked for skid marks. There were none because the truck had no driver in it. They measured the huge hole in the front of Glenda's house. They told the four of us that the truck should have gone right through the living room/kitchen wall and into the kitchen. They said it was a miracle that none of us were hurt or worse. The truck had hurtled at such a breakneck speed that it shoved a bedroom wall up at an angle. Needless to say, we knew that Glenda's Mom hadn't been hallucinating when she saw the tear roll down Mary's face. It was a bona fide miracle.

That day, we learned to be cognizant of how precious life is. We were young for such a lesson. We were only 18 years old. Glenda realized how very much she loved her Mother and Father. It had the same effect on me. I'd always been grateful to my parents for adopting me and taking care of me and loving me, but this event made me cherish them. It also made me realize that it was time for me to get on with my life, so I decided that I would marry Buddy.

My parents were very against this plan because they felt I was too young to marry, yet. They thought I should have some years of freedom before tying myself down to marriage and children. But, I was a headstrong, "know-it-all" teenager. Early in October, Buddy and I decided to elope. We hopped on a Greyhound bus and headed for Chicago, Illinois.

Oh, what a wonderful time we had to start with. There was a band on that bus, so for the first two days music filled the air. I sang my heart out. We pulled into a small town in Montana and got a flat tire. Would you believe it? Our bus didn't have a spare! Nine hours later, another bus pulled in with a spare tire for us. All the passengers were tired and cranky by the time we finally got on our way, again. On we rolled through the night, sleeping fitfully. We stopped, again, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By this time, we felt like very old people. Our backs ached, our muscles ached, our heads ached and we were hungry. This was to be a short stop because we had to make up some of the time we lost while we were sitting in Montana. We were tired and sweaty. We needed showers badly! That Montana dust was stuck to our bodies and clothing.

The next stop was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We couldn't take another minute on that bus, (we'd been on it for four days) so we got off in Milwaukee. The next thing we had to do was find a place to live. We didn't know the city and it was getting to be late afternoon. As life would have it, we ended up in one of the poorest sections of Milwaukee. We found an apartment and took it. We had to have a place to sleep that night. We paid a month's rent, in advance, which left us with about twenty dollars. That was all right, though. We were young, in love, and were going to be married.

The next morning, we decided to take a closer look at our new neighborhood. It was called, "The Puerto Rican" district, but there were folks from all races there, and ALL were poor. The place we rented was in a large, old house that had been converted into four apartments....two upstairs and two downstairs. We had used our money to pay the rent on the apartment, so we didn't have the means of turning on the gas and electricity. We also didn't have money for food and cigarettes.

The next day, we went to a "Rescue Mission" and got emergency rations. There was cheese, butter, canned foods, flour, rice, beans, and some cans of sterno. They even included some votive candles. We had no pots and pans, no dishes, no silverware and no drinking glasses or coffee cups. We tried to heat a can of soup over the sterno can in the kitchen sink. We had no can opener, so Buddy had opened the can with his pocket knife. We found some old newspaper and added it to the flame from the sterno. We thought that might make it hotter. We ate tepid, undiluted soup that night. We even managed to slice off some cheese. It was a veritable banquet. We ate by candlelight and thought we were royalty.

Now, we had to find jobs. I found one first, at the "Telenews Theater" in downtown Milwaukee. I ran the snack bar. Buddy found a job a couple of days later at a tannery called, "Pfister & Vogel." Have you ever smelled a tannery? Not a pleasant aroma! Buddy's work clothes reeked from the process of tanning cow hides. He worked nights, and I worked evenings. We both had to walk to our jobs. That was a scary thing considering the area in which we lived.

We had to wait for our first paychecks before we could afford to get married, but on October 9, 1962 we got married at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. We had our wedding dinner at Walgreen's Drugstore, then went home and prepared to go to our jobs. We were ecstatic! Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Clark were on their way to a bright and glorious future.

Part 6

to What's New?