Unmerry

In 1968 I followed my math Ph.D. thesis advisor Karl Stromberg to Kansas State University from the University of Oregon in Eugene to complete my studies.  Professor Stromberg decided to visit Eugene over Christmas break.  His new wife couldn’t drive and he was legally blind.  He asked me to do the driving.

We followed blizzards for 1,740 miles to Oregon.  The first day the snow was so deep that I lost the road and drove into a snow bank.  We were towed into the nearest town by a road grader, but we could only get one room there.  The couple took one bed and I slept with the wife’s two young children, one of whom wet the bed.  As bad as that was, I would have preferred to stay where I was to getting back on the road, but we went on through the perilous weather.  The other excitement on the trip was losing traction on a street in Baker in Eastern Oregon.  We were fortunate that the car slid down a vacant street hitting nothing, rather than running into pedestrians or a building.  No harm done, just horror.

We got to Eugene and then I took a bus to Portland where my father picked me up from a pay telephone booth (they were common then).  When I checked in with the woman that I had been dating while in Oregon, she was distant and cold.  I got the hint.  There hadn’t been any passion in the relationship and I wasn’t very disappointed, despite a desire to see her again.  My sister who had introduced us suggested she was interested in marriage, which didn’t interest me.

After that there was a low key Christmas with my mid-fifties year old parents.  Of that and the trip back, I remember little.  There was no drama, pain, or joy.

Epilogue – I got my Ph.D at the end of that school year back in Eugene.  I never heard from the girlfriend again.  I got married the next year while teaching at Morehouse College in Atlanta and remain married to the same person who among other things is my live in editor.  Professor Stromberg’s wife left him and he got a mail order wife I am told.  He has died; I don’t know anything about either of those wives – there had been some before those two.