Love, Marriage, and the ‘Old Gang’.

By Richard E. Noble

Ray, as with many others of my generation, had an “unfortunate incident” with his high school sweetheart in the back seat of his car at a drive-in movie one evening. I meet him at the local tavern one night and he told me that he was about to make the honorable sacrifice. He would marry Helen. About five or six kids and ten or twelve years later they were divorced.
Gus fell head over heels in love with the town tramp. Everybody knew it, even he knew it. “But you guys don’t really understand,” he told us. “She really likes knitting and baking bread.” Yeah, right Gus, we all thought to ourselves. Gus and the town tramp had two kids and have been married now for over forty years.
Billy was a sexually precocious little devil. He dated many - and often. He met little Nancy, an ingénue just out of high school. He taught her all the tricks he knew. One night his phone rang. It was Nancy’s Dad.
“I have just finished reading Nancy’s diary,” he said. “Nancy’s bags have been packed, and she is sitting out on the front porch. She is all yours. Come and get her, or I’m am going to come and get you.”
Billy rushed over, wedding ring in hand. They were married within a week. They have two daughters and have been married now for over forty years.
Tom married on the rebound. He had this hot affair going with one girl. She dumped him and almost immediately he married this girl none of us had ever seen before. They had two kids, and stayed married up until he died just a few years ago.
Ron was a romantic idealist. He had this ideal woman in mind. He would often describe her to us in conversation. She was a wonderful cook. Never served the same dish twice in the same month. She was sexy (possibly a nymphomaniac) and of course, beautiful. She loved kids and keeping house. She could sew, and could actually make and design all the kids’ clothes. She loved to throw parties and entertain. She was well educated and could keep up an intelligent conversation on any subject; brewed her own beer, aged her own whiskey, even made her own Hershey bars.
Ron is now approaching retirement age. He has been a bachelor all his life.
Georgie married a girl that we all thought was too good for him. She was beautiful, well educated and from a nice family. We were right. It took her about ten years but she finally dumped him. They didn’t have any kids.
My personal story is also rather unique. I was a BIG success, working in Miami, driving a BIG expensive car. Went to my FANCY office one morning and there was Carol laying in the parking lot. She was beat up, drunk, and whacked out on drugs. I took her home with me, as much I would do for a stray dog, and nursed her back to health and respectability. It cost me my BIG job, my FANCY office, and my BIG car, not to mention my personal FORTUNE. She has been a terrible struggle and a strain on my constitution, sanity, health and youth, but one day I know, though it may not happen in this life, God will make it right for me.