The Honeymoon

If you are going to plan a marriage don't set it up in London on the 30th of January. The weather was terrible. It rained the wind blew and it was cold but the Honeymoon was wonderful! No No No don't even think that, for goodness sakes we had known each other for two years. It was great because I took a leave and rented a car. Denise had shown me all of London from Buckingham Palace to Petticoat Lane And now she showed me all of England.

One cold windy morning I took a walk on a pebbly beach in southern England, Denise took a pass on this one. I saw an old man beating on the bottom of a boat with a hammer. I said to him what are you doing. He looked up and said "aint you ever dun no corking." I said I'm an American. He didn't look up he just said "well there you are." I had a lot of these strange conversations with English men. We didn't wear our uniforms in London because we were loud mouthed bragging Americans with too much money who came to England to steal all of the girls, at least that was what the navy in all of it's wisdom thought. I didn't have any of these problems. I didn't have any thing to brag about, I didn't have too much money and I only stole one of their girls. I never met an English man I didn't like. When Denise read this she said "there were a few cab drivers who weren't too fond of you." The last stop before we went back to London was Plymouth where Denise grew up. We went to the place where Denise had stored her parents' things. She got her mother's Queen Ann desk and a full length mirror to take to America. It was a sad time when we left, I think Denise knew it was the last time she would see her home.

When we got back to London we bought Emma Lou and Chico. Emma Lou was a 1931 Austin. Her first American owner named her Emma. All of the cars in England were black and when Tom Collins bought her he painted her red and add the Lou to her name to make her southern, he was from South Carolina. She had a rag top and a rumble seat. Denise Chico and I rode around London in a red convertible. Chico was a black French poodle puppy who would share the next fifteen years of our life.

My tour of duty was running out and I found out if you had married in England you could sign over for another year. The only question I ask was where do I sign. When your young a year seems like for ever. That was when a very strange thing happened. I would leave the embassy in my tailored suit, white shirt and tie with a Windsor knot. I would hum to myself "I get a funny feeling down inside of me when I'm walking up and down, maybe it’s because I'm a Londoner that I love London town". I walked along the streets of Mayfair where for a thousand years some of the most important people on earth had walked. The strange thing was I began to feel like I belonged there. When I got to 58 Park Street Denise and Chico would welcome me home. Denise's mother had told her she did not pay for her education for her to become a servant for a man. Denise was not a cook but she bought a Escoffier cook book and I would never eat salt pork and soup beans again.

Things could not have been better but I would wake at night and know the Honeymoon was coming to an end.

Back to Reality

We had a lot of fun that last year in London. I worked with a bunch of sailors and someone was always having a party for some reason or the other. The burn a hole in the rug and spill a drink parties were always good ones but the best were the lease breaker. Some sailor was always getting him self tied up in a lease of some apartment. When it came time for him to move the only thing to do was have a lease breaker. They were always loud and raucous affairs and if a fight spilled out in the hall, that helped. The landlord would always show up and break the lease and kick him out.

Denise has always been the one in this union to plan ahead, I have never been worth a damn at it but she didn't know what to plan for back in the states. I had to think about it. I knew we would need a car. Denise has always believed that you paid for something and then got it, she never believed you got something and then paid for it. I took advantage of a deal the navy had with a car dealer in New York and bought a 55 Ford Fairlane while it was still on the drawing board. I made a down payment and started to making payments. I would have it paid for when I got discharged and we could pick it up at LaGuardia.

You would be surprised at how hard it is to write this when you have someone walking behind you and complaining about a split infinitive.

The photo lab was the least military place in the US navy. We didn't wear uniforms and every one just jumped in and got the job done but I decided if I was going to make car payments I would take the test for third class Petty Officer and pick up a few more bucks. I got every question about photography right but the navy sandbagged me, they asked me a bunch of questions about ships and the sea and stuff like that. I had never seen a navy ship. I flunked it. If you want to learn about ships and the sea and you are married to the daughter of a gentleman who oversaw outfitting naval ships and was the head of the naval compass observatory and Her mother was a governess, then you're in luck. Denise taught me more about the navy than I ever wanted to know. I aced the test the next time. Flunking that test the first time was the best thing that ever happened to me. The next fifty years I went to a lot of schools and took a lot of tests. Denise made up exams and made sure I was ready for every one of them.

We were still in London for the coronation of Queen Elisabeth. I wanted to tell this right so I asked Denise what she called someone like Kath who thought the royal family was great, she said "daft". I never met Denise's parents they both died during the war but at times like this I get the feeling I'm hearing her mother speak. The coronation procession was to go down Oxford street so I walked the two blocks up there in the rain and stood on a stack of wet news papers so I could see over the crowd. I don't think Denise would have looked out the window if it had gone by our flat. I saw the Grenadier guards in their red tunics and tall bear skin hats. bands so large they stretched out for blocks, the heads of state of most countries in the world and every thing from the Queen of Tonga to Queen Elisabeth in her solid gold carriage drawn by six white horses. I was impressed but when I told Denise about all of the important people who were there to see the Queen. Denise said she wasn't standing in the rain for anyone, I think she agreed with the English correspondent, Christopher Hichens, who said if the Royal Family's brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow their noses. I never went to see another parade some how a high school band and the mayor riding in a convertible just didn't seem exciting. Most English men wore hats, some of them bowlers. I was never the bowler type so I stood there bare headed in the rain. That evening I was thinking about it and the thought crossed my mind I would soon be wearing a hat. A coal miners hard hat; that brought me back to reality.