The top picture is one of the very first pictures we took together. Of course, the baby is our first son, Ray Allen. This picture was taken at Fort Worth, Texas, in one of those "Take a picture for a quarter" machines. Ray was only three weeks old and we had decided to try out the new underground train that takes you from a parking lot to downtown Fort Worth. It was a fun day for us and I treasure this photo...

Dorothy Ann and I met in 1961 and it must have been love at first site because we were married two weeks later. At the time, I was working for my cousin, Olen McEntire, we were doing repair work on runways and ramps on government bases. Our first home was in Pasadena, Texas, then Fort Worth where our first son was born. Then Lake Charles, Louisiana and on to Denver, Colorado, and some other places in between.

Anytime I wasn't working we jumped into that old car and headed for the mountains out of Denver. Once we took a dirt road up into the mountains to an old fire tower. As we were enjoying the view I spotted some bad looking clouds headed our way. My first impulse was to get back down the mountain. However, Dot said, "I've never been inside a cloud before." So there we sat and I'm telling you those clouds were full of hail and lighting and it really worked over our old car, but thank God it didn't beat out any windows. And we could sure say we had been among the clouds!

All our worldly belongings were carried in our old Oldsmobile. After finishing the job in Denver, I asked Dot if she would like to go to California and because she was as much gypsy as I, she was thrilled. So I quit my job (had a pocket full of money, don't you know...) and we headed for the Gold Coast. As we were getting close to the coast, on a secondary road through the hills, between Bakersfield and Pismo Beach, she kept asking about when we would be seeing the Ocean. I kept fibbing and telling her it was just over the next hill but she didn't fall for that more than once or twice. Anyway, it was dark when we drove out on to the beach at Pismo, but a clear starlit night. We sat on the beach watching the waves for some time. It made the trip seem worthwhile. We rented a little house above the beach at Pismo and I got a job on an oil rig near Santa Maria.

I'll never forget the first time we went clamming on the beach. We had watched others and it appeared simple to do, we had our forks and a pail and in no time at all we had a pail full of nice sized clams. We encountered our first problem with the clams as soon as we returned to our home (how to open those suckers!). I tried to pry them open and beat on them to no avail.

We left those clams sitting on the side of the cabinet while we tried to think of how to get them open. As we were sitting talking about how to go about it, we saw one or two of them hanging out of their shells, hanging down the side of the cabinet. I jumped up and made a grab at them but it was too late, they were safely back in their shells.

 Anyway, to get to the heart of the story we finally got the shells open and then problem number two came up. None of the clam meat looked particularly appetizing. What we succeeded in doing was throwing away all the part that we were supposed to eat and keeping only the little button like stomachs. We fried them up but they were so tough we couldn't chew them.

That story reminds me of something that happened a short time later. We rented a house in Santa Maria that had these trees in the back yard with strange little crap apple looking fruit on them. We never considered the fruit might be fit to eat until some friends were visiting and they said, "Look at all those ripe avocados!" We developed quite a taste for them, and always thought of the trees in that yard, especially later when paying for the ones bought in Texas or Oklahoma.

Thus began our journey of life together. I've always loved my wife, but much more as I grow older and for all together different reasons. What drew us together in the beginning, turned into something much better after we were saved and started allowing Christ to have sway with our lives.

I kept working on the rigs and we made many more moves chasing the jobs. Some of our seven children were born in California and some in Texas and the last of the seven was born in Tehran, Iran. I'm proud of all seven of our children and our seventeen grandchildren, but most of all I'm proud to be the husband of my wife who was given to me by God.