But just barely

She said yes, to his surprise

Friday, December 27, 2013

I got married to Susan Wade in March of 1969-but just barely. Here’s why.

I met Barbara Lambert at the University of Southern Mississippi in the spring of 1965. We got married in the first Baptist Church of Clinton, Miss., in the summer of 1966.

Our marriage came apart in the northwestern part of Arkansas and the political turmoil of 1968.

Barbara returned from a conference in Georgia late one night in May 1968. She was in tears. She was there to tell me that she couldn’t stay even the night. Her political passions had mingled with romantic ones. The object of her current affections was a guy named Joe. Having informed me of this, she headed for the cheating side of town. I got back in bed, put on Bob Dylan’s album John Wesley Harding and proceeded not to sleep the whole night.

That summer I began trying to put my life back together.

I took a course titled “English Drama to 1603.” It met in the Physics Building. The teacher was a Professor David Hart. One of my fellow students was a leggy, brown-eyed belle named Susan Wade. She sat a couple of rows ahead of me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

I didn’t know much about Susan. Some other guys and I, all of whom admired her good looks, referred to her as “the mysterious Wade girl.” Her mystique was enhanced one day when, as we left class, a Cadillac driven by a tall, handsome, older man, who looked old enough to be Susan’s father, pulled up and the mysterious Wade girl got in it.

The man would in fact prove to be Susan’s father, up for a visit from El Paso, Texas. We all had him figured for a sugar daddy at the time, however.

So I was attracted to Susan that summer. However, I didn’t even think about asking her out. I’d grown up an egghead, the likable guy with thick glasses who knew guys who dated beautiful girls-but didn’t date any himself. True, I’d gotten lovely Barbara Lambert to marry me. But, then, as has been witnessed in a preceding paragraph, Barbara’d had second thoughts. I was not up for more rejection that sad summer.

So I contented myself with ogling Susan.

Came the fall, one Friday afternoon I saw Susan in the library. She didn’t see me. Suddenly I was desperate to make overtures to her. I saw that her books were lying abandoned on a table and she was off in the stacks somewhere. I retreated to a cubicle and wrote a terse, ambiguous message: You have clearly been working very hard on your books lately. Why don’t you get away from it all for a while by coming over to 18 North Duncan Street either Friday or Saturday night (or both)? Johnny Wink

When I went to slip the note in among her books, they were no longer there. I put the note in my pocket and headed for home.

The reason I was able to make the allusion to 18 N. Duncan St. is that, although I only knew Susan to say hi to her, she had come to a few parties given by Doug and Brenda, my erstwhile brother and sister-in-law, who lived above me in the house on North Duncan Street.

As I walked home that Friday afternoon, about to leave the bounds of the campus, the prospect of weekend loneliness hit me like a freight train. Doug and Brenda had left for the weekend for Memphis. I needed a wee bit of hope in my life. I changed directions, went to Old Main, went to the English office, and deposited my note to Susan in her mailbox.

I knew she might not check her mail at all that weekend. But Saturday morning was a possibility, and I needed at least a hint of hope in my life.

Friday and Saturday nights came and went and Susan did not come.

When Doug and Brenda got home, I told them about my goofy little gambit. Doug feigned anger, telling me that I had an obligation to phone Susan Wade and to explain that ambiguous note of mine. I knew he was simply doing that to get me to approach Susan. Brenda took a gentler approach and finally convinced me to call.

I did. Susan had gotten my message on Saturday morning and had thought about coming over on Saturday night-with a date! Because my wretched message was so ambiguous, she thought she was being invited to a brace of parties on Friday and Saturday night.

Her date was David Strellec, a mutual friend and fellow graduate assistant. David had heard of no parties being given at 18 N. Duncan St. that weekend (surprise, surprise!), and his feelings were a little bit hurt. He’d always been invited to them in the past. He voted for doing something else.

I’m so glad he did. Can you imagine my chagrin if the two of them had shown up? This is where the titular “but just barely” comes in.

The mysterious Wade girl proved to be quite friendly on the phone. I screwed my courage to the sticking point. I asked her out. She agreed to go out. This was in September of 1968. We were married in March of 1969. Our one child, Gene, was born in January of 1970. We came to Ouachita in August of 1973.

When Susan and I shoot pool these days, we listen to CDs. Whenever we come to our two albums by Steppenwolf, a group from the Jurassic Age, we both smile when we get to the lines from a song in which a guy asks a girl out, not expecting she’ll answer in the affirmative: “Looked at me with big brown eyes/She said yes to my surprise.” -

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Johnny Wink, the son of a sailor man, has been for many moons a teacher of English and Latin at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.

Editorial, Pages 15 on 12/27/2013