My elopement

 

My father´s lawyer told me not to fight being a 20-year old stubborn child, just tell the judge I would be a good girl, go home and go back to college.

One week earlier, my mother had dictated a letter breaking my engagement to my high school sweetheart. Before I sealed it, I wrote on the inside of the envelope, "I don´t mean this." She drove me to the post office and made sure it was mailed to him at the Naval School of Music where he was beginning his obligatory military service.

I needed to get to D.C. so we could marry. 

Two days later I left for my summer job at an amusement park, but instead of going there, hid on the top floor of the Reading, MA library. While I was waiting for my college roommate to arrive from Springfield, I read The Man with the Golden Horn. The plan was for my fiancé to drive from D.C. and we'd elope.

I had another college friend, Paul, call my mother to tell her I was safe, but wasn't coming back without telling her where I was or where I was heading.

Paul succumbed to police questioning but warned me in time to alert my father, who drove from Scituate MA to Springfield. My father's attempt to reason with my mother failed, and the police arrested me based on her legal complaint that I was a stubborn child. 

Since I didn't look like a dangerous criminal, they allowed my father to drive me to the station where we waited for the arrival of my mother and a Reading Cop, Herb Perry. He had driven me to kindergarten before joining the force. It was a long silent drive back to Reading from Scituate.

The court hearing the next morning was quick. My mother had withdrawn her complaint. I spent the next three weeks planning my elopement whenever I could talk to my fiancé from a phone booth.

I packed my car for college, leaving most of my things in it. Instead of registering for my sophomore year, I had the necessary blood test and went to judge to have the three-day waiting period annulled. My fiancé drove from D.C. to Lowell and I found him outside my dorm at 6:30 a.m..

His buddies, Best Man Steve and Kenny who would be my Maid of Honor, were waiting for us outside the church in Reading. The white wooden church at the head of the common was a postcard cliché of a New England small town.

Kenny and Steve had arranged for Rev. Snook to marry us. His secretary had placed flowers on the altar for us. But there was a problem. We had to register at the town hall, kitty corner across the street.

"I told your mother if you came in, I'd call your mother," Boyd, the town clerk, said. He was probably in his late 40s. bald but with a white fringe.

"Do you have to call right away?" I asked.

His eyes twinkled. "I do have some filing to do, maybe 15 minutes worth," he said.

Back to the church.

Rev. Snook wanted to counsel us and counsel us and counsel us. At fifteen minutes, I called Boyd and asked for a reprieve.

"Tell you what," Boyd said. "Call me when the deed is done."

I've after ceremony photos of Kenny and Steve in their suits, my fiancé in his uniform and me in my favorite yellow dress, the closest thing I had to white. 

Before we headed back to D.C., I called my father to tell him. He insisted we stop for lunch where I met him, some cousins and my grandfather for the first time since I was a little girl. They had thrown together a good meal and found $300 to help us on our way. That was a huge amount of money for us. 

Within a week, my new husband had his orders to be a trumpet player with the 7th Army Band in Stuttgart, Germany. 

Our marriage lasted seven years and produced our daughter. As Edith Piaf sings, Je ne regrette rien. I regret nothing.