Ron, Mary Ann, and Marsha

One of the groups of rafters on the trip was Ron, Mary Ann, and Marsha.

Ron and Mary Ann are married and Mary Ann and Marsha are best friends. The three of them have traveled a good number of places around the country.

Mary Ann and Marsha were finishing each other's sentences or confering with each other for details on previous trips.

Ron was a hoot with his sense of humor and stories as well.

Ron's favortie joke about Mary Ann is that they have had 10 good years of marriage. Of course, they've been married for 35.

Mary Ann's retort was that it seemed more like five good year to her.

While we were at Ft. Tuthill, Ron and Mary Ann had their 35th anniversary. Since we were sitting around, I asked them how they had met. Here's how I recall the story.

Mary Ann and some friends were staying at the YWCA in Tennessee. One night four of the girls piled in their car and decided to go to the local base for a dance. The car died in the parking lot. Four servicemen stopped by to help out and since their were only four girls, the rest of the men just passed on by. They weren't able to fix the car at that time, but they went into the dance together and paired off for the night.

Ron was with a friend of Mary Ann's who had a boyfriend back home. Mary Ann was paired off with a guy who was from Kansas but told people he was from California because it sounded better.

After the dance, the guys followed the girls back stopping at every gas station until they found someone who could fix the car. Once they got back to the "Y", they decided to go out to eat at the diner nearby.

When they sat down at the table, Ron strategically placed himself across the table from Mary Ann.

In the middle of the meal, Mary Ann felt this foot playing with his foot. Mary Ann looked up and saw that Ron was wearing what she described as that "sh*t eating grin of his". She smiled back at him. And so their evening went.

Well, there was no phone where Mary Ann could be reached at the Y so she wrote down the number of the pay phone on a slip of paper and palmed it to Ron when they shook hands at the end of the evening.

She had one more date with Kansas, but after that it was pretty much all Ron.