After talking to Greg last night and we were talking about how long we knew each other. It got me thinking about when we started with Marathon. We first met Greg shortly after we started. He was working up in North Louisiana at Cotton Valley at that time. He later moved down to Lafayette and that is when we really got to know him and Kelly.
Both Jennifer and I defended our Masters Thesis in late March 1991 and we (more me than Jennifer) were itching at the bit to get to work and start making some dough so we could retire early. Yes I was already thinking of retirement before I even started.
We did not stick around to walk the stage to get our Masters diploma's. We started at Marathon on April 22, 1991.
So we got everything packed up. Marathon sent a moving company to come pick up our stuff (which barely took up a quarter if that of the truck). We had made a quick trip to Helena to see Dave, Pat, Kate and Hannah who had just been born before we got out of town.
The day we left Butte we had one of those spring blizzards, it was a heavy wet snow and Homestake pass was a bitch, but once we hit Pipestone it started getting better. We were in our 1981 Mercury Zephyr. We started heading South and we had quite a trip down.
At one point, we stopped in Salina, Kansas and they had a London Fog clothing outlet store. We each bought dress up rain coats to have for work and umbrellas. Both were trench style coats. I think I maybe wore mine once and it ended up in a thrift store somewhere in our moves. Jennifer kept hers all these years. She wore it a few times but not a ton. It is still in our coat closet today.
In Oklahoma we went to our first Starvin Marvin/Marathon gas station. Let's say we were less than impressed with that station but we had many laughs about that stop over the years.
The reason for laughing was there was this group of ladies in there when we were. We think they were probably sisters. They were pretty large gals and they were selling Pralines in that store. One of the gals in a very heavy Southern drawl hollered across the gas station to one of the other ladies. Girl did you see the size of dem Pralines! We got get us some of dem. Well that just cracked us up. Jennifer would always do a good impression of it when we talked about that stop.
We continued on and we damn near got lost in Farmers Branch Texas. This was long before GPS's and smart phones. It was my first exposure to driving in that kind of traffic and Jennifer was doing the navigating. So it was a little stressful in the car.
At that time she was not the best map reader (she got better over the years), but we had a little tiff over her navigation skills and a few tears (from her) as we worked our way through that. One thing Jennifer did not have was a good sense of direction and a problem remembering her left from her right. The wedding ring helped a little with that but she always had to think about it. She was so damn smart, but she had a issue with that.
Some idiot had not secured his boat to the trailer. It was a good size boat (it had three big outboard motors) and lost it in the middle of the interstate and that screwed up traffic royally. Plus Texas had done a shit job of giving you notice of exits. Anyway we finally got through that mess and we made it to Shreveport Louisiana.
They had been having heavy rains in that area and the ditches were completely full but thankfully none of the roads were closed and we continued on South to Lafayette and made it in one piece and were still married. Farmers Branch certainly put the "for better or for worse" to the test. That would have been embarrassing to be getting divorced the first day on the job, especially since they had hired us as a married couple.
Other than Farmers Branch the trip was smooth and a lot of good memories of starting our work career.
Well enough for today.
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