Your children will commit themselves to you, O Jerusalem, just as a young man commits himself to his bride. Then God will rejoice over you as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. (Isaiah 62:5)When I was 21, it was a very good year, Frank Sinatra sang.
At age 21, I was in the army in Germany. In January, I came home to get married to Ella Lee Mochman. She was 19. We had our honeymoon in the Flagship Hotel in Galveston. It cost me $50, more than I could imagine (it was 1971).
After a week or so in the States, we went back to Darmstadt, Germany, and found an apartment. It was on the third story of a house (common arrangements in Europe) and overlooked a beautiful park attached to a Russian Orthodox church and a Russian University. It had three large windows and three tiny rooms, one of which was a substantial bathroom with an enormous tub. Ella would sit in the one in the main room, a room that was about 12X12 and held a table with a banquette and two chairs, some chests (Germans do not use closets) that held our food and such, and a tiny kitchen that would close up in a cupboard with a small refrigerator underneath. The bedroom was big enough to hold a longer and narrower than usual bed. However, we were newlyweds and it bothered us none.
We had a red Volkswagen Beetle with a sunroof and traveled everywhere we could when I time off. It was fun and set us as a couple. Nothing makes your marriage more independent than being 5500 miles from your in-laws.
We saw castles and museums, walked n beautiful woods, ate what to us was exotic food (bratwurst mit brochen or sausage in a hard roll, french fries in a cone served with mayonnaise or tartar sauce, pastries of indescribable taste), and just about went broke. My paycheck was messed up twice and if we had not some extra from wedding presents, savings and the like, we would have been in trouble.
When I got out of the army, I went back to my old job of coin collection for Southwestern Bell Telephone, taking money out of pay phones. This was a job that was great, as you went everywhere. After all, in 1971, literally everyone had a pay phone in their store, bar, nightclub office building, etc.
Ella and I both grew our hair. Hers was in a gypsy shag cut that was beautiful. But then, I liked her a lot. Mine was the standard long hair with muttonchop sideburns and a long mustache. She had a 1968 Ford Galaxie 500. We loved just hanging around together.
We had a great time, living in a quadruplex apartment in Houston that was owned by an old family friend of Ella’s. Ella went back to work near the end of the year and went back to her old job at Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Corp in downtown Houston, just around the corner from the SWBT main skyscraper.
I had a massive wreck in October which should have killed me but barely scratched me when I flipped my step van end over end on the Gulf Freeway south of Houston.
We had our first Christmas together. We went shopping at Almeda Mall. We separated to buy each other’s gifts. I paid for them at the store which would hold them for me. She was miffed that I bought nothing. I had the day after Thanksgiving off although she didn’t. I went and retrieved them, had them wrapped and set them on an endtable in the living room (we had no tree up yet). When she came home it was a shock.
I loved her and she loved me and we, in many ways, remain on that honey moon that began when I was 21.
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