The day of our wedding I operated a combine, thrashing wheat all day, and I was late for our wedding pictures, making Carol wonder if I had second thoughts and skipped out, which I didn't. She didn't know that generally I was late for everything. I am part Indian; a small part though. Our wedding was at 8 p.m., and so by the time we finished, dealt with gifts, etc, we were a little late getting on the road. When we planned our wedding we didn't think about it being Labor Day weekend, so there were no motel or hotel vacancies. We drove and checked for vacancies, until we finally gave up and just drove. We drove until we were so tired that we couldn't drive any further, and we spent our honeymoon night on Bluet Pass in a Volkswagon bug. I was too tired to care, but Carol was embarrassed. The next morning we drove to Goldendale Washington which was my father's home country, and stayed in a motel. Then we drove a few miles from there to my aunt and uncle's place where we spent a couple of days, after which we headed for California, where my older sister and family lived in a suburb of Los Angeles. The starter switch stopped working, and after that we had to push that bug every time we wanted the motor to run. We had to turn off the motor while filling with gasoline, so Carol would push from behind, I would push at the driver's door, and then jump in, push it in gear, let out the clutch, and it most always started.
We stayed in one motel just inside the California border, and Carol stayed in the motel while I went to look for some icecream and a scoop. I was a farm boy, and so it was fun to go through the store, and I looked at everything before buying the icecream and the scoop. Carol was worried that I got lost while walking and had trouble finding my way back. She was relieved when I did return. We stayed a couple of weeks with my older sister and her family, husband and three young girls, who grilled us about being married until it embarrassed Carol to death. My brother-in-law helped me find a switch, so that we could start the motor without pushing. While we were with them they took us to the Mexican part of Los Angeles, and showed us all the interesting places. We had a lot of fun with them, and then headed back home. Just as we left Los Angeles the starter switch stopped working again, and we pushed that bug every time we wanted to start the motor until we got to where we were going to live our first year of married life. I put another switch in it, and that switch worked as long as we had that car. Our first few months we lived in a church apartment as we were involved in the ministry of the church, and I was still attending Bible College. We had some interesting experiences, and that was a long time ago, 42 years ago!
