One Version of How We Met
back to Family
posted 2007 August 4, cbd
written 2006 November 8, cbd

Viannah had stumbled across the Noze Brotherhood on Wikipedia and had asked if I knew anything about them.

For those who don't know, the Noze is an underground organization that helps Baylor University take itself a little less seriously from time to time.

For those uninitiated about the Noze, don't expect anything to be sacred.  Think "Simpsons."

This was my reply to Viannah:

The Meeting

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This brings to mind a couple of stories that might ought to be told about our involvement with the NoZe.  (Satch!)

Yes, I did see the fountain turned pink.  Yes, I'd heard the stories about painting the sorority bridge pink and blue, and then after several iterations burning it down.  Yes, I did go to unRush and was with the crowd standing in ankle deep water threatening to go through the mile-long tunnel down to the river.  I didn't go.  I didn't want to get any wetter.  Also, I didn't submit any essays at 11:17 past milk at some box somewhere on campus.  Of course, if I had, I couldn't tell anybody, not even you ... :-)

And yes, even though I missed the Nasal K-nose-al event, one of my roommates, John Colson, did see it and told the story so well that in my memory I can nearly believe that I was there.

One of the stories has to do with meeting your mother for the first time.  The preamble of the story was the NoZe float in the homecoming parade in fall 1974.  I was standing on the south side of the street, across from Penland, while the parade proceeded west toward the freeway.  The NoZe float was a big pink box and hands were sticking out of the bottom holding paint brushes, alternately painting the center stripe in the street pink and blue.

We were all laughing at this when the fancy old car containing the remnants of the 1924 championship football team came up next.  Due to some consternation down the route with the NoZe float, the car stopped and there, sitting in it, was Jack Cisco.  Mr. Cisco had been my algebra and journalism teacher back at good 'ol HHS (Hubbard High School).  He had the room in the south corner of the basement.  It was his class that I got detention from when I published that inflammatory editorial about school board policy.  (I "got away" with this because dad had the only mimeograph machine in town.  His personal machine, neither the church nor the school had anything like that.)  It was also in his class that, regardless of the subject being taught, shut down for the pre-holidays month of December to celebrate Pearl Harbor Day (December 7) in the same way that people in our generation could take much of a week of September 11th as a remembrance.

So there was Jack Cisco parked out in the middle of the street in the middle of the parade and I took the opportunity to run out and shake his hand.  I was out of high school, after all, and I might never see him again.  And indeed, I never did see him again, so I'm glad I ran out in the middle of the parade to do that.  We exchanged pleasantries, the current Baylor Bears were in the process of winning the conference for the first time in 50 years ... since 1924, in fact, and then when the parade started moving again, David Dunaway, my pretty-much-hippie roommate (nick-named "Stinker") was motioning from the steps of Penland for me to come on across the street and meet his homecoming date, some other freshman who lived on the same hall in Collins as Pam Bjork and who had a job in the Penland cafeteria.

So I ran in front of the next car and crossed the street and was introduced to your mother.  We exchanged pleasantries for twenty or thirty seconds then she had to go back in and get back to work.

... This should sound familiar...

Or maybe the NoZe float was after that and the pink and blue stripe was the first thing we watched together, then she went in.  (She says it was.)  I don't remember the order anymore but I remember all those events were there together.

Then fast forward about two years to the Sunday in September 1976 when I declared my love to Viann.  In a letter in the style of Dickens of course.  I'm sure I'd be embarrassed by it now.  So, what had happened was that we had gone to Hubbard for something, I no longer remember what, and I had this letter written, and when I dropped her off I gave it to her.  Then, being practical and all, I went back to Kokernot (junior by now) and went about getting ready for bed.  Viann read the note and came back to get me, and I got out of the shower and put clothes back on and went down and we walked out to a park bench on the mall and ... talked.

It was true that we were close to our first kiss sitting there on that bench ... talking, but it hadn't happened yet and was unlikely to until I walked her back to the dorm sometimes later, me not being pushy after all.

... or was it a bench swing?  Well, one of the park seats out close to Judge Baylor.  So anyway, we were sitting there talking and suddenly we were interrupted by a band of five or six NoZe on the way back (or to, who knows) some hyjink (singular of hijinx!).  As this rowdy bunch passed by, the leader says, "Kiss your date!"  And then kind of like the band of "nee" the others started saying, "Yeah, kiss your date!  Kiss your date!"

Now, under ordinary circumstances this would have been a fine opportunity.  Had we been going steady for some time, it would have been fine of course, and we would have kissed and everybody would have laughed and then we'd have gone on about our ... business.  Or, conversely, if we'd been more casual acquaintances, it would have been OK too.  This would have been an invitation to "take advantage" of the situation and we might have had a little kiss and everybody would have laughed and went on about their ... business.  Pam Bjork, for example, always wanted to be walked home from the library at night by one of "us" so that if one of these patrols caught her, she would be kissing, "somebody I know" at least, as she put it.

But the situation here was a little different and we were both truly surprised and shocked, and must have reacted in a way that appeared pretty shy to these pirates.  To his credit, the leader picked right up on this, miraculously and mercifully and instantly says, "Just kidding, never mind."  "Yeah, never mind, just kidding," another of them said.  And they went on towards Memorial / Allen / Dawson to pillage somewhere else while Viann and I adjusted to the awkward moment and eventually kept on ... talking.

Half an hour later, we did get up and go back to the steps of Dawson where I was going to turn her in for the evening and she stood on a higher step and we had our first kiss, without heckling.

And the rest, as you know, is history.  All BV, of course.... :-)  [Before Viannah]

The wikipedia piece is good.  I didn't realize that the NoZe originated in Brooks Hall, where I lived in the attic as a freshman and sophomore, but I'm not surprised.

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Then later I remembered a few other things.

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And, how could I forget this.  I was actually in Chapel the day that John Dean, the Nixon administration insider who was a big player in the Watergate outing, was speaking, when the NoZe crashed in and inducted him into the Bro. 'hood right there on stage (Bro. Dean of Dirty Tricks.)

John Colson (again, hmmmm, maybe he was a NoZe...) told us the story about how something similar had happened to Bro. Billy Graham-Cracker Noze.  He was going to speak in town and somehow his chauffeurs from the airport were ... NoZez.

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Then, there is the story of

The Proposal

edited and posted 2010 February 12, cbd
written 2008 January 18, cbd

Viann and I did not go through a "dating" phases.  We met as related above but became acquainted when we both had Psychology I followed by Sailing and Canoeing (PE, coach Minnefee) as sophomores.  PE following class on (must have been) Monday and Wednesday, we walked the mile or so from class to marina together many times.

Our first non-date was to see "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next" then in theaters, a psychology class assignment.  Others were supposed to come too but it ended up being just the two of us.  Just friends....  This film was troubling, and perhaps formative, to your mother as her mother had undergone shock therapy.  I did not know this at the time.

Also, just for the record, there was the day when we were about half way to the marina and a downpour started.  Being a cute Baylor Beauty, Viann managed to attract a rescue ride from a couple of other students (whom she knew, yes, guys) driving by in a truck.  There being no more room in the truck, I was left to sprint the mile or so to ... somewhere ... in the downpour.

The Brooks dorm basement routine was that KXTX Ch. 39 showed Star Trek reruns at 5-6 p.m. and the cafeteria closed the serving line at 6:15, so all the Treckies showed up at Penland (the cafeteria closest to the TV in the Brooks dorm basement) at 6:05.  I was typically still in there eating after closing, though they rarely ran students out until around 7:00.  I would often eat alone or with one other person, any friends I had being busy with their own majors (like theater) or on the other end of campus where most of the music stuff was and, no, I was not that kind of chummy with any of the legion of other roommates.  Viann would often be in the cafeteria running the clean up show during this time.  She would never fail to come by and say hello when she was there and I secretly looked forward to it.  I don't remember bringing books or reading material with me to eat (this must have started later with me...), and never music, though she would occasionally ask me to play something on the spinet piano they had there at the front of the room, and, less often, I would comply for a few minutes.

She said I made her laugh.  She still says that.  I say it's because everything is funny.

The prior fall, I'd had my worst GPA ever in college, a 3.0.  What was bad about it was that it was composed of 6 hours (two classes) of Ds and 12 hours (five other classes, mostly music) of As.  The D's were in English and History.  (My daughter Viannah just completed a double major in English and History in 2007....)  That spring semester, I was trying to get back on track.  Music wasn't the only thing in the universe.  I stopped going home routinely.  That semester I had a $10/week job playing piano at Mt. Calm, dad's "other" church that was between Waco and Hubbard.  I'd get up Sunday morning, go over there and play their 10 a.m. service, then go back to Baylor, eat at Penland, and read my Psychology chapter out of the book with the big Ice Head on it.  That, and the fact that Psychology made a little sense, is how I made an A in there to help with the GPA pull-up.  Sailing and Canoeing was the last Physical Education I ever took anywhere.  My final Baylor GPA was something like 3.43.  Not NASA material....

The relationship progressed over the summer of 1976.  This is a significant side story related under The Big Bike Rides With Rob.  Briefly, for reasons lost to the mists of time, I was passing through Baylor on the way to a week long bicycling adventure with Rob when Viann needed a ride home.  I took her to her brother's place in Austin, about half way home for her and about two hours out of my way.  I wrote her a postcard from that trip and signed it, "Love, Courtney."  This got her attention.  She asked her mother what it could mean.

After the "Love, Courtney" postcard (and yes, I did mean it), we were on the way to becoming an item.  I took Viann to a wedding that dad held in the parsonage at Hubbard.  (Civil Air Patrol Col. Scott)  That drive was the scene of the now famous, "I love plowed fields" conversation.  Dad was home by himself much of that summer since my mother and Wilda were in Borger with mother's dad who was hospitalized with prostate cancer.  In September, after mom and Wilda were home, I had Viann at Hubbard for something, but still on a "just friends" basis.  The chain of events, as described somewhat in the web posting above, was that we drove back to Baylor and I let her off at her dorm (must have been Allen), slipped her my "David Copperfield" love letter, and went back to my dorm (Kokernot) to get ready for bed, clueless that anything further might happen that night.  I hoped we might talk over the letter maybe Tuesday or that she would write in response or, worst case, that she'd be kind and just drop it if her feelings were otherwise.  But, within half an hour she came to my dorm and sent some hapless passer-by (male, required for male dorm access back then) upstairs to get me out of the shower.  That was the beginning of the "kiss your date" episode and was the time at which we did actually become "an item."  Right at curfew, of course.

What she said at the time of parting, if I remember correctly, was, "I don't know where this is going to go, but I do love you too."  And then we kissed for the first time there on the steps of Allen, she standing on the next higher step (as we sometimes do now) because we fit better that way.

Anyway, it was two months later, late November, when we (in dad's same truck) took a day trip to Enchanted Rock, which had been the destination of that five-day bicycle trip the previous summer.  We drove down, went in, climbed around, met other tourists, went through the cave near the top with a kid ("Rodney," wasn't it?), stood a the top, looked around, came down, and drove back, parking in the gravel lot behind Martin dorm, the closest place where there was space.  (This is now the site of the "new" Baylor Bookstore.)

I had been intending to propose that day (all day!) but had no idea how to do it.  I didn't know until years later about getting on your knees or what to say when you did.  There was no opportunity for this sitting in a truck anyway.  I had not confidently purchased a ring to present as one is supposed to do.  I had no idea how to go about this or how to expect her to respond.  And so that's how it turned up that we were sitting there in the truck, back from a nice day trip, time to say good night and go in but still sitting there talking.  So, I was doing the best I could, obliquely steering the conversation around to our distant future, a line that I hoped might lead up to the more immediate future quickly enough when she said, "I'm tired" and had to go in.  (She still does this.)  In fact, I think I probably had in mind something about how this was supposed to go and might have gotten there in twenty or thirty more minutes, had nothing gone wrong.

Something was about to go wrong, however, and luckily Viann, acting as she always does, being very helpful and cooperative in this awkward (but not really, we were ... friends after all) situation, greatly abbreviated the epic recital by picking up on the lengthy threads of my oblique discourse (unconsciously wanting this to go in the same direction as I did, it seems in retrospect) and asking the fateful question, "Are... you saying what I think you're saying?"

The discussion was beginning to touch on our grandchildren and I was hinting around that we might share the same ... grandchildren...

It was essentially at this instant, we staring at each other:  she smiling expectantly, I in shock, that someone behind the truck started yelling, "Hey, your lights are on!"  "Hey buddy, your lights are on!"  This someone turned out to be Tommy, my theater-major roommate.  He was on the way home from set strike of a Baylor Theater production and he recognized the truck and knew who was in it.  On pretense of saving my (dad's) battery he was heckling us!

And no, my lights weren't on, it was better than that, my foot was resting on the brake peddle, so only my brake lights were on.  What a way to propose:  with the brake lights on.

But, whatever, I took my foot off the brake pedal and we rolled down the window and chatted with Tommy for a couple of minutes, in that way that you do when people who are in shock try to make small talk.  Viann, of course, was natural at this, pleasant and routine as ever and I ... well, was in shock.  Then Tommy went on to Kokernot, unaware of his intimate but unintentional involvement in my oblique proposal ... er... proposal strategy, and then we rolled the windows back up and picked up the pieces of the epic conversation and got on with our ... future.  And, within twenty or thirty minutes we were on the same page about it all.  Yes, at some point there we did in fact get engaged.

(And, yes, the plan still is to have the same grandchildren.)

In retrospect, though not normal or formal, this was a lot better than other proposal stories I've heard where the guy, so befuddled by the whole one-shot high-stakes process had gotten the girl's roommates or even his future mother-in-law to act as a proxy!

The engagement was secret at first but only for a few months.  After all, there was no ring yet.  In early December I went to a jewelry store and bought a ring, for about 1/3 of what I was expected to spend on such a thing, about a hundred 1976 dollars.  (Later, nearing the wedding, she bought my matching ring, the one I still wear, for about $50 and I got her matching wedding band.  Around ten years later, when we lived in Rex's house, Viann discovered one day that the tiny $100 stone was missing.  We went down and replaced it with a $1000 stone, which is still there now.)  Over those holidays we didn't tell anyone.  She only wore the ring when we were together, and in private.

It was hard to keep a secret like this though.  I think it was sometime in January, certainly sometime that spring, when we were in Hubbard on a Sunday and we had gone there to tell my parents.  As before, since I had no idea how to do this or how to bring up such a momentous announcement, it was nearly 10 p.m., time to get in the car and go back to Baylor, when Viann cleared her throat and I had to stammer around and say something.  Then, we all had to spend another twenty minutes hugging and laughing and congratulating each other and so on before we could go ahead and leave.

I don't remember telling Viann's parents but her dad didn't approve.  I think what happened was that I wrote him a letter explaining and declaring things, Tomball not being a mere afternoon's drive close.  This approach, and the information contained in it, were not well received.  There were several dimensions to this.  First, it was his tradition and expectation that I would come in person and ask him for his daughter's hand.  This derives from the long standing tradition that women are property, first of their fathers then of their husbands and that marriage is basically a legal transaction between the father and the groom.  At the time I was in rebellion against this arcane tradition, to the extent that I realized it existed at all.  I would not have been able to do an acceptably good job of it either, considering the "proposal" itself and other similar social situations.  In any case, my feeling was that the engagement was between Viann and me, free standing adults, and we didn't have to ask anybody for anything.  We would however make announcements and involve the appropriate people, of course.

Also, my prospective father-in-law didn't know me very well.  Musicians don't have a good reputation as providers (you know the joke, "What's the difference between a large pizza and a professional musician?  A large pizza can feed a family of four.") and the ones who are providers don't have a good reputation for taking care of the people they love or used to love.  The stereotype is of people in abject poverty living hand to mouth or worse because that lazy guy wants to sit around and play piano all the time rather than get a real job.  Or of becoming successful but then running away with or having an affair with some other woman in the current gig or whatever.  The tabloids are full of everybody's indiscretions in the business and we all look on in horror and think everybody is that way.  No telling what his experiences or impressions were along these lines.

But, it was at that point in life when I was deciding not to pursue music anymore.  Music would continue to be important but would never again be central.  But communication wasn't good yet and Mr. Owens didn't know my intentions.  And anyway, he would have then just asked, "Well, what are you going to do then?"  He felt that I should establish and prove myself before marriage, something which, in retrospect, seems reasonable.  I think I had my first "real job" about a week before the wedding.

But I turned out to be OK.  Our first year as a married couple went fine.  We took care of ourselves, held down jobs, and Viann finished school as planned.  (Birth control, another long story that I won't go into here, was more acceptable and workable in our generation than it had been in the one before it.)  Our second year we moved to Tomball as Mr. Owens was terminally ill.  He learned that I could work with pipe and dig holes and put things together and bring in an income and generally be useful and honor my obligations, more or less.  And his daughter says I've taken pretty good care of her, to the extent that she allows it.  So the feared catastrophes didn't happen.  God has been good.

Some  years later I asked your mother about all this.  "Well, I wasn't going to marry a loser," she said, "I knew you were OK."