When I was eighteen years old I went to work in the mines on a track crew. We laid the rail road track underground that the coal was hauled out on. After a year I decided if I was going to swing a sixteen pound spike hammer for the rest of my life I would join the Navy and see the world first. Besides I was about to be drafted into the army. I took the bus to Fairmont to join and on the trip I decided to buy a camera so I could send home pictures of the world. I didn't know anything about cameras but that decision changed the rest of my life. The recruiter ask me a lot of questions and one of them was what is your hobby. I didn't have a hobby but the camera was hung around my neck and I said photography. When I finished boot camp I had an interview to find out what I wanted to be and I told them a mechanic. The interviewer said if you are going to be a mechanic why don't you just enjoy the next four years and work in your hobby, let us send you to Aerial photography school. I wanted to learn to use my camera so I said ok. They shipped me off to Pensacola Florida and taught me to be an Aerial Photographer. I soon found out the highest I would get off the ground was a tall stool in a dark room. When I graduated from photo school I volunteered for overseas duty and holy hell I found myself in the Brooklyn Navy yard going aboard an air force transport on my way to London England. My orders said I should report to the American Embassy at Grosvenor Square London W1. Right then I decided the navy was all screwed up sending a kid from a coal camp to London when I couldn't find my way around Fairmont W.V.

The Navy driver dumped me off at a small hotel called the Yellow House and told me I would have a room there as long as I wanted it. I dumped off my sea bag in my room and ask the guy at the desk how I got to Grosvenor Square. He told me to go out to the cab rank and tell a cabby where I wanted to go. I met my first London cab driver. Now as dumb as I was I know when I'm being driven in circles but I was afraid to say anything. When we got to the embassy the cabby said that would be two shillings six pence. I ask him if he would take American money and gave him a dollar. I found out later I gave him seven shillings.

I walked into the embassy trying to look like I knew what I was doing and showed the Marine guard my ID. He told me where to find the photo lab. When I got there the chief told me the uniform of the day would be a business suit white shirt and tie and I would get a clothing allowance and subs and quarters which was money for all of that stuff. I met Mike a black guy I knew in photo school. Mike talked to the chief and said come on, the first thing we have to do is get you out of the Yellow House, it's too expensive. We got my sea bag and I rented a room where Mike lived. The land lord told me they were having a New Year's party and I was invited. Mike told me not to wear my uniform and gave me a shirt. the land lord loaned me a sweater. The party was BYOB so I went to a pub and bought a bottle of whiskey and showed up in my jeans Mikes shirt and Mr. Garners sweater, nothing fit. I got a drink and stood around holding it. This was my first day in London and all of sudden there she was sitting with another girl in the back of the room. The most beautiful lady I had ever seen. I got another drink for courage and worked my way around to the back of the room. I said I had just moved in and told them my name. Denise introduced herself and said her friends name was Kath and they shared a flat in the building. We talked and I found out that they worked for Shell Oil Co and Denise was the secretary for the personnel manager of Shell. I was way out of my league but the booze had kicked in and they laughed at the way I talked and we had some fun.

The next evening I knocked on the door of their flat and Kath said come in. I forget the excuse I had for showing up but Denise hated the borrowed clothes I was wearing and she took me to Saville Row to a tailor and I was measured for the first suit I ever owned. I knocked on their door a lot and we went to movies and musicals at Piccadilly circus. Denise taught me to order from a menu and how to walk with a rolled up umbrella, clicking it on the sidewalk every second step. I never understood why she decided to civilize me but it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

I found out that Kath had a brother in Canada and that she and Denise were planning to emigrate there. I have always been a realist and I knew some day this paradise would come to an end. Denise and I were spending all of our time together when we weren't working and we talked about when I got out of the Navy I could come to Canada and visit them. Then lo and behold Kath met Harold who worked in the photo lab and before I knew it they had announced they were getting married. Harold was going back to Florida.

I had to face the greatest dilemma of my life. It was one thing for Denise to dress me in a Saville Row suite and to teach me to act like a gentleman and it was another thing to ask this well educated English girl who lived in the greatest city on earth to marry me and live in a coal camp.

Kath and Harold were married and Kath moved in with Harold at 58 Park Street one block from the US Embassy and I was still waiting every evening at Lancaster Gate underground station for Denise coming home from work. I haven't talked much about my work at the embassy because it was top secret and hazardous duty. It was top secret because the US Navy said it was but anyone who knows any thing about the navy knows that every thing is classified. The blue jacket's manual which tells you how to pack your sea bag is classified secret. It was hazardous duty because the marines guarded the top secret film they brought to me to be processed. One day a marine brought me a canister of film and insisted on going in the dark room with me, when I turned off the light there was a lot of screaming and yelling to turn the light back on. When I switched the light back on he was pointing his 45 at me. I convinced him that I wasn't trying to steal the film and I had to have the lights off to develop it. All of the military stuff never took with me. I thought all of the saluting and spit and polish was silly. I thought everything I did in the navy was a waste of the tax payers money so I will get back to the important stuff. I got a letter from home that said the mines were working every day and half of the people had moved out of Jordan. Consol would no longer run the filtration plant and they would turn off the water and electricity, My parents were moving to Fairmont. I had never lied to anyone, Denise knew exactly what I was but I started to lie to myself. I thought if my father could afford a house in Fairmont so could I. Pittsburgh was only a hundred miles away and we could go there shopping. That took me to the most selfish thing I have ever done. One evening I said to Denise, I don't guess you could marry me and live in a coal town. She said she was sure she could be fine living any where. I never said the words, Will you marry me?

I had bought her an American type writer at the ships store and we were visiting Kath, Harold ask Denise how she would ever get it repaired. Denise said she could get it repaired when she got to America. Now Harold jumped right on that and ask her if she was going to America with me and she said yes. I rushed off and bought an engagement ring.

In 1952 if you were a God fearing, Law abiding American citizen you could have a hard time convincing the government and Joseph McCarthy that you were not a communist. If you were a 120 pound English girl with out a family and all alone in this world. they were sure that you were just waiting to overthrow the US government. So Denise had to be investigated before we could get married. I swear one of the questions was, did she intend to overthrow the government by force. She said no but I liked Noël Coward's answer best he was visiting the US and was ask the same question and wrote "sole purpose of visit".

If you have ever seen My Fair Lady you know how important your accent is in England, A cockney accent will place you at the bottom of the ladder and an Oxford English accent puts you at the top. Denise went to the best schools and her's is Oxford. It didn't matter what accent an American had, they just put you down as being from one of the colonies. The thing that moved us up in the world was the address of Harold's flat, we were going to move there when we were married and Harold and Kath went back to Florida. When we got our marriage license we gave that address, 58 Park Street Mayfair. We were married in the registry office where Elisabeth Taylor married Michel Wilding, of course a lot of people got married all around the world where Elisabeth married different men. From that day till now I think Kristofferson's description of Bobby McGee describes Denise best "for the past fifty-one years Denise has shared the secrets of my soul, standing right beside me Lord in every thing I dun and every night she keeps me from the cold".

More to come if the creeks don't rise.