During this time Julie and I were planning our wedding too. I was working, she was working, but she did most of the getting things together. She had her sister Nancy, and friends, Donna and Nancy as bridesmaids. My side of the wedding was my dad as best man, with my brother Danny, Billy, my bud, and Julie’s nephew Ray as groomsman.
To put things in perspective, I was making about $115 a week and Julie was making around $70 a week. We took home $89 for me and $55 for her. That’s $144 dollars a week together. I had a $40 car payment and living was good. Rent wasn’t expensive for me at present, but that was to change as well. Julie didn’t want to live that far from work. She’d never gotten a driver’s license, so that meant I’d have to move to Wilmington somewhere close to her work so she could walk. We looked at Country Club Apartments on the other end of Franklin and I believe the apartments across from the UNC-W campus. I don’t remember what it was called then, but it was called The Glens when our son lived there. But he wasn’t invented yet, so that will have to come later. Anyway we settled for Country Club which put Julie about a block and a half from work. So we wouldn’t need a second car for now. Besides, I had to teach her to drive first. It didn’t leave her to walk both to and from. Whether she worked days or till closing I would get off of work and pick her up directly after I got to town when she worked days and I’d run back out at closing to pick her up then. I worked four ten hour days, so I was always off on Friday till Sunday. I’m going to get ahead of myself here so I need to back up.
April and May were all I needed in the trailer in Winnabow, but really I didn’t want to stay that long with the wedding plans requiring me to be in town and we didn’t want to have to wait to get the apartment in order after we got married. So I talked to the guy I was renting from and he allowed me to pay for all of April and half of May. Then I went to the office at Country Club and signed a one year lease for a one bedroom apartment. We were given an upstairs corner apartment facing the parking lot. It was perfect and I could move in with the half of the month’s rent for letting me move in the second half of May. I rented with furniture for now with the stipulation I could have the furniture removed to reduce the rent as soon as we had gotten our own furniture. The apartment really didn’t need a dining table, so we would eat at the bar. So I moved into the apartment mid May, but not before an interesting morning that awakened me from a solid sleep in the trailer back in Winnabow.
That morning was quite out there in the country side, except for the occasional passing car on Hwy 17 that was a major route from Wilmington to Myrtle Beach. Times were not as busy back then. But that morning a car with three or four people were heading back up from Myrtle Beach to Wilmington and the driver fell asleep and ran off the outside of the curve across from my trailer and hit a power pole. Of course I had no phone to call for help, but it wasn’t necessary. There was a house where they ran through their yard and it woke the people up there, plus the trailer my dad and house the guy he rented from was in a direct line with where the car ran off the road and into the pole. If they had not hit the pole they would likely have hit dad’s trailer or the guy’s house. I ran across the road and checked to see if I could help in any way, but apparently no one was seriously injured since when they ran off the road they ran through a ditch and across a yard, slowing the car to probably less than 25-30 mph. At that rate there were cuts and bruises, but no major trauma. The ambulance showed up pretty quickly and then the Highway Patrol and by that time I had to be up and getting ready for work anyway, so I got dressed and went on to work.
A week or two before I moved to Wilmington Julie came down some way and spent some time cleaning the trailer and cooking a dinner if I remember correctly. I almost think I had a small TV of some kind while there, but now I can’t remember. Anyway she played the domesticated role for a day there, but that was it. Not long afterward I moved what little I had to the apartment in Wilmington and now I was only a block from Julie and Cinnie. It was now just a little over two weeks till the wedding.
By then I had met Ronald and Becky. Becky was Julie’s second sister in the order of birth. Then I met Ruby, the oldest sister and one day we went to Carolina Beach and I met Nancy and Bennett. Nancy was the sister next to Julie. I had not met either of her brothers and wouldn’t for a good while later. But for the sake of introduction the oldest was C.J., then Elwood and the little brother Roy. C.J. was something of a construction worker/truck driver. Elwood was a preacher and Roy was career Air Force. He was a TSgt. He was always gone and I didn’t realize his wife Berta lived in Country Club Apartments at the same time. I was too busy working and making plans come together and besides Julie’s brothers didn’t seem to care that I existed. Back to the top of this paragraph I have to introduce you to Ronald Capps, Becky’s husband. I became close to him in a way from the start. He was an Assemblies of God pioneer pastor and had just gotten his ordination and license to preach in North Carolina. He was to officiate the wedding. Ruby’s husband became a good friend. He was John Adams. He was an insurance adjuster in Jacksonville NC for Crawford and Company. Nancy’s husband Bennett Langley was okay, but he was a bit shady.
Julie and I spent more time with Becky and Ronald simply because of Ron performing our wedding. Ron was an all round good man. He was also my ideal in part because I was fast becoming a Chevy fan and he had worked for a Chevrolet dealer as a trained mechanic. He was also a fisherman. He had taken Julie floundering one night before I got home. I don’t know much about the details, though. He also liked to drag a net for shrimp and maybe a bit of crabbing, but I remember him mostly for the first two things. Later on in life he did some gill nets I believe.
Now for my first experience with Pentecostal Holiness. Being raised a Baptist I didn’t know what to expect. The only Holiness church in the neighborhood where I grew up was kind of a scary thing to me since I’d heard there were people who would fall on the floor and roll around, hence, I supposed, for the nickname. Anyway, Cinnie was a member of the Pentecostal Holiness church on 29th and Chestnut Street. Being a member I guess was the reason we were afforded the church for an afternoon wedding, which had now been settled for the 4th of June 1972.
Julie had chosen a photographer named Ed Browning. I looked at some of his photography and he was pretty good. He had a studio in his home somewhere on the north side of town as I remember it. Julie had gone there for formal pictures of her in her gown. Of course I wasn’t privy to those pictures as yet.
A week before the wedding Julie got off early or was off one day and had gone to the apartment before I got home and had cooked dinner for us in our soon to be apartment of newlyweds. You know. I don’t remember what she cooked, but I was pleased that she thought of me enough to cook dinner for me on her day off.
Romance between us was somewhat scant in that I mean she kept herself reserved. I suppose because of some goings on she had seen in the family caused her to take this approach before the wedding. I think I made her mad one evening over it and I went home that way, but came back to her house after a bit. She had gone to bed already, but Cinnie let me go into her bedroom and I woke her up and apologized for being upset with her. We did go park down by the Cape Fear River one evening near Billy’s home and started to make out, but she stopped and said we might better stop because she didn’t want things to get out of hand. Talk about frustration. . . I was glad the wedding wasn’t too far off.
Well the weekend of the wedding was upon us. If I had any doubts this was the time to rectify them.
Saturday morning Danny, Billy, Ray, my dad and me went downtown to the suit store and picked up our rentals. Want to know what they looked like? I’ll describe them, but I’ll eventually put pictures in here so check back. The suits consisted of black slacks with cumber bun, a white shirt with canary yellow trimmed ruffles down the front; black bow tie and canary yellow jacket. Very high style for the 70’s mind you. I still had my black dress shoes from my Army Class A’s, so that was taken care of.
On Saturday afternoon we went to the church for our rehearsal. John, Ruby’s husband was a Schlitz man. He also loved Pall Mall filter less cigarettes. Oh, and just to throw it in, a big football/sports fan. But that said to say this. He was to walk Julie down the aisle and give her away. Her brothers were big fat no-shows. So John being the eldest member of the family, albeit by marriage, took the helm. Now, he came to the rehearsal high as a kite. Whenever we got to a point of discussion on how to do something he was right in there with his opinion and Ruby would tell him to go sit down. He wasn’t troublesome, but quite funny to be more like it. He was only trying to be helpful in his way. Well, Ron was able to get us through the rehearsal nicely and we all departed. I don’t even think we had a rehearsal dinner. Things were much simpler back then. I know today this would sound cheap, but it’s just the way things were then.
That Sunday morning, I got up early. I got into my car and drove around town, down to the beach and generally rethought all that had come to pass. This was a year of big change for me. In January I was in the Army, then transitioning back to civilian live in a scant two months and now I was getting married. Was I ready? I supposed and concluded at the age of 21 I was ready and drove home with resolve.
My parents were at dad’s trailer with the brothers. My grandmother and Jamie were staying with some of her relatives over in Pine Valley. This revelation was something I had just learned. My grandmother was a Hardy and she had cousins living in Wilmington that I’d never been told about.
Julie had been whisked away to her Aunt Florie’s home on White Road just off of Gordon Road. Little did I know until after the wedding that she had the biggest case of nerves going on over there. Her aunt had cooked her a good lunch and she ended up throwing it up and had taken Valium to still her nerves. I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be, yet I was.
The hour was coming now to be to the church, but I had made some plans for hiding my car at Marlene’s parent’s home. Her mother was not an attractive woman by any means and I’m being nice here. I had Billy’s brother to chauffeur us away from the church in his red 1966 Chevy Nova, so my car would remain clean of all the wedding hoo haa that they put on cars. I wanted to go to Myrtle Beach without having to worry with cleaning it before leaving. I also had gotten wind that Vickie had threatened to boycott the wedding, so my ushers were to stop her from entering the church if she appeared.
Now was time. The wedding was ready to start.
