45 Years and a Trip to Piedras Negras

Gentle Readers,

You stuck with me last year when sometimes I meandered from writing about writing, and instead shared some personal aspects of my life-- the sorrow of my mom passing away and the joy of grandson Rory’s birth. Today is January 8^th--Juanita’s and my wedding anniversary every year, and today begins the 46^th year of our marriage. We tied the knot in Urban Park Methodist Church in Dallas on January 8, 1972, 45 years ago today.

Here is a photo of our very first “date,” an impromptu trip to Piedras Negras, Mexico after an afternoon University of Texas football game in 1969, a year the Longhorns won the National Championship.  Someone in the car—not me—said turn right and we all go home, turn left and we can go to Mexico. Well…we were very young, and you’ve got start a romance somewhere.

Nita and I are the couple in the middle, with the Mexican barkeeper’s head stuck between us. Yes, we landed in a cantina in Piedras Negras. What a beginning, huh? Who’d a thunk I’d be telling this story nearly half a century later.

I’d stick in one of those beautiful church wedding photos to commemorate our anniversary, but wedding photographers were beyond our means back in ’72. I could put in a beautiful wedding photo from either of our sons’ more recent weddings. But this is my blog, so instead you get to see the very beginning of our nascent romance, in a Mexican bar.

Looking at that old picture, the post-game trip to the border was an odd kick-off for us. Neither Nita nor I were ever “wild things,” even if we were children of the ‘60’s and met at the most liberal university in Texas. We were both raised Methodists, for heaven's sake. (By the way, I really can use liberal and Texas in the same sentence, but only when referencing The University, not the capitol building and its inhabitants.)

Odd beginning or not, I’m here to say 45 years later, that the sweet gal changed my life, that in the four and a half decades since we said “I do” to each other, the biggest joys in my life have revolved around her. She has blessed me in every way, and I love her as much, likely even more, this morning than I did on January 8, 1972.

Enough of the mushy stuff, and thank you for your patience.

There is a new McBride novel link in this post, because the main characters in my newly begun manuscript, Texas Ranger Captain James Callahan and Sergeant Constantine McCloud, are going to spend some time in Piedras Negras, Mexico. They visited in the fall of 1855, not after a football game, and 114 years before Nita and I got there.  Regardless, those old Rangers maybe even had a cold Negro Modelo cervaza in the same cantina where Nita and I had our first date.

But my new book characters won’t have as a good time as we did, because bullets were flying in 1855, and Captain Callahan ordered the whole town of Piedras Negras burned down the night he was there. I guess his beer wasn’t cold enough, or maybe it was too hoppy. Anyway, I’ll be writing more about that in future posts.

We woke up to 20 degree temperatures in Lockhart, Texas. Thought we were at the North Pole.  Have a good week.