Grayson and I met when we moved across the street from them in Savannah, GA.
I was 15; he was 17, and he was working the night shift at the Shipyard.  I
managed to be sweeping our stoop when he went to work and when he came home
the next morning.  We had a piano and two girls who boarded at their house
came over and one wanted to play it.  While there, she asked me if I would
go on a date with Grayson and of course I said yes.  We had moved after
school was out, and we dated the three months of summer.  I left Savannah
then and thought I'd never see him again; besides, he had a girlfriend in
the town he had moved from.
I didn't know it but he joined the Navy after I left, and his girlfriend
broke up with him.
His mother and my grandmother were friends so his mother had my address and
she sent it to him.  He started writing and I broke up with my high school
boyfriend.  When he came home, we were engaged, and married 6 months later.
Even though his mother cried when we told her when we were getting married
(his older brother had married one month earlier and she thought we were too
young).  However, after we married, she always told him that she loved me
first.  And she and Dad Love were wonderful in-laws,  Grayson was 20 three
days before we married, and I was 18 three days after we married; our dads
had to sign for us to get the marriage license!
Gwen

i love your story, gwen.

and i love telling this one.  early in the morning, on december 4, 1974, the
day after butch's 33rd birthday, he arrived at my house, with his
brother-in-law and his very skinny 14 year-old nephew, to cut firewood for
me.  (i had actually hired his brother-in-law to cut firewood for me. butch
came along just to help him out with the job.)  i actually thought butch was
kind of surly when i first met him.  it turned out he was just hung-over
from his birthday party, at his sister's house.LOL

while they were working, the pile of split firewood was growing and i could
tell it was getting in their way.  so, i changed into jeans and a
sweatshirt, donned a pair of leather gloves and began to stack the wood
under my tiny cabin's deck.  butch had been watching me do that and suddenly
said, "do you have any idea what's going to happen to that wood when the
snow run-off goes through here?"  he sounded grumpy.

well, of course i didn't.  i just moved into my cabin, as soon as my general
contractor said i could.  i didn't know anything about that area of south
lake tahoe and the area's snow-melt or snow run-off.  so, i told him, "no."
and he said, "your nice dry firewood will be sitting in mud, soaking up
water."

oh, ok.  that made sense to me.  so, i started stacking the wood on my
deck.  well, apparently, i wasn't doing that right or to his satisfaction
either.  so, he climbed the deck and started stacking it "the right way", in
a cross-hatch configuration and not in parallel, like i had been stacking
it.  "this way you won't be stressing your deck's railings, forcing the
rails to hold the wood in place, instead of letting the wood do it."  and
that made sense to me.  so, i thanked him, and followed his pattern, as i
continued to stack.  he went back to cutting wood.  occassionally, he'd stop
cutting and put the split wood onto the deck for me to stack.  then he'd go
back to cutting.

as i stacked wood, i couldn't help noticing the skinny child who was trying
so hard to keep up with two very strong, grown men cutting rounds and
pitching the rounds near the splitter, for the kid to split and toss onto a
pile.  i could tell those were heavy rounds and the kid was struggling with
them.  i thought those two men were going to work that poor child to death.
so, i hurried into my kitchen, put on a pot of coffee and made sandwiches
for all of them.  i figured this would slow them all down for a little while
and give the kid an obviously badly needed break.  (come to find out, years
later, butch didn't know i was watching his nephew.  he thought i was
watching his obviously well-buffed bod.LOL)

after my "snack break", they resumed working for a couple of more hours.
then they figured, since my deck was quite full of wood (i couldn't even
step out my slider, my deck was that full.), that it was time to quit.
butch sent his bil and nephew to go sit in the truck, after it was re-loaded
with the equipment, and knocked on my front door.  all he said was, "we're
finished.  if you find you need more wood, just call.  would you mind if i
kept your phone number?"  figuring he meant in case his brother-in-law
thought i had a problem with the wood or something, i told him no, i didn't
mind.

butch called me that night and asked me if i liked playing scrabble.  those
were the first words i heard over the phone.  my brain was working overtime,
thinking who is this guy and why is he calling me?  i almost hung up.  then,
he told me who he was.  i told him sure i liked scrabble and asked him why
he was asking.  he said he was coming over with his scrabble game.LOL  i'm
still laughing at his self-assuredness.  he simply knew what he wanted and
wasn't afraid to follow his heart.  it really was irresistable, to me,
knowing here was somebody who was so comfortable in his own skin.LOL  so, i
threw a gingerbread cake together and whipped up some heavy cream for it and
put on a fresh pot of coffee for the game ahead.  and he was there within
minutes.

after 3 consecutive nights of scrabble, he decided he was going to marry me;
and told me that i just didn't know it yet.  but he made the mistake of
telling me.LOL  i wasn't nice about it.  accommodating my "not being ready",
he backed off for awhile.  not long, though.

four months to the day i met him, we married.  the minister we chose to
marry us, in my sister's livingroom on her farm up here in sumner,
washington (who we were "just visiting" on holiday), had tried to advise us
against it, telling us we were "unequally yoked".  we were definitely a
match, in more ways than we even knew at the time.  our marriage lasted
until the last day of his life.  almost 28 years of marriage.  and in some
ways, longer.  he was a great guy.  and that's how butch "found" me "in the
woodpile", which is what he told everybody about how we met.

kate