Toeay, July 20, marks 37 years of wedded bliss, or as The Sweetheart likes to say: “Seven of the happiest years of my life.” Ha. Ha and Ha. I also had a great birthday, if you have read Part I, you can do the math…I’m 55 now, a legal senior citizen. (If you haven’t read Part I, you need to. Go here!)

Welcome to Marrying The Haymaker: The Finale!

As always, The Sweetheart delivered his gorgeous yellow roses for the occasion. They are prettier every year.

 

I have never missed receiving a dozen yellow roses every single year for the last 37 years.

This year has to be the prettiest of them all. Except for that one year we were in Chattanooga and he left to go get us something to eat. Gone forever and a day, I was starting to worry. He finally came back and with one hand behind his back, I knew he had been out trying to find yellow roses.

Sheepishly, he reveals his gift of artificial yellow roses.

I didn’t know if I was allowed to laugh because it might hurt his feelings. Quickly he explained how many flower shops and grocery stores he had visited to get the expected bouquet but no one had yellow! (Yellow is not my favorite color or anything, it was our wedding colors and he has been faithful to be romantic every year!) I must say, as beautiful as this year’s roses are I still cherish those artificial ones from WalMart. Well, of course I kept them!

So, back to our honeymoon story: There we were, standing at the threshold of life, or just the beginning of ours. The Haymaker swings open the door to our hotel room and we both look around in stunned disbelief:

There is no bed in this room!

Now, I remember that this is a family blog, and a Christian family blog, so do not be alarmed. But, every hotel has a bed! We walk around in this big empty room and see it has everything else a hotel would have and we just cannot imagine what they would have done with it and why. My knight-in-shining-armor picks up the phone and calls the manager. The conversation went something like this:

Hi, this is Mr. Elkins in Room 222. Uh, we don’t have a bed in our room.

(Silence. Then snickering could be heard. Composure being regained…)

Yes, Mr. Elkins, there IS a bed in the room.

(Slight choking and more muffled snickering under their breath)

Well, we are standing in the middle of the room and there is no bed.

Mr. Elkins, look to your left, beside the nightstand and follow up the wall. You will see a handle; pull it slowly. This is called a Murphy Bed, they fold up and out of the way.

Oh. Yeah. Cool. Sorry to bother you.

Seriously? A Murphy bed on your honeymoon?

I had never seen one except maybe on television and had a fear of it flying up on its own in the middle of the night and no one would ever hear from us again.

We were about to enter the Twilight Zone.

Why, in the name of all that is sacred, did you not ask if they had a bed in the room when you reserved the room? I gave him a break though and realized that just isn’t something you feel the need to ask when making a reservation at any hotel! The Haymaker assured me they were safe, and since at that young and naïve age I believed him, we decided to stay.

We collapsed from exhaustion, spitting the occasional chad out of our mouths and wondering just what had we gotten ourselves into.

We spent the first night of our honeymoon in Nashville, Indiana. Where to go from there for a week? Why, the Music Capital of the world, Nashville, Tennessee!

Our first stop along the way was breakfast. I will never forget the waitress asking me how old I was. I don’t remember WHY she asked me, maybe she thought I was being kidnapped or we had ran away from home. I was proud to tell her I was all of 18 and one day. Ahem.

The Haymaker had booked us a room at an uptown, swanky place in Nashville proper. Spence Manor, in the 70’s, was a super nice suite place; at the time it was Nashville’s only five-star hotel! It was known for its Webb Pierce guitar-shaped swimming pool!

When Elvis would come to Nashville to record, he would rent out the entire top floor of the Spence Manor. U.S. Presidents and musical legends including Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Willie Nelson and many more frequented this establishment.

Before the Spence Manor Hotel was converted into condominiums, it was one of the most desirable hotels to stay at in the Nashville area, perfectly located on world famous Music Row.

We had a suite, and for a couple of kids from Smithville and Handy we thought we were living the high-life; for a couple of days anyway. We ordered room service one night, a deep dish pizza. We had never seen anything like it. Yes, we had pizza in Bloomington, great pizza, but evidently we had never seen Chicago-style deep dish because we took a picture of it!

Cutting edge socialites, who knew that eventually we would take pictures of our food every time we go out?

Blazing the trail, we just didn’t have a way to share it with the world. But due to our insight and foreknowledge, we now can reveal it to you:

Aren’t you glad we did now?

We had a great time seeing Music Row and everything Nashville had to offer. Then, fast forward 20 years, as a surprise for our 20^th anniversary, The Sweetheart (he has now turned the corner and earned his “I-finally-look-old-enough-to-have-kids” badge) booked us a weekend at Spence Manor again. I hadn’t a clue until he pulled into the parking lot what he was doing and I was shocked he had thought of it!

He was gone forever-and-a-day but finally comes back with the key to the same room we had occupied 20 years earlier. We grabbed our bags and head to the elevator but something just doesn’t feel right. I hadn’t been in the lobby but noticed a few people hanging out on the stairs at the entrance, weird, strange colors were on the walls and some things looked a little in need of an update.

He opened the door to our room and we were greeted as though time had stopped. This wasn’t the 90’s, we were back in the 70’s with the same furniture, pretty sure the same carpeting, and strange, faded, floral sheets on the bed. It was super dark in there and after opening up the curtains and taking a look around we realized that Spence Manor is no longer a five-star hotel but looked like a pay-by-the-hour establishment! Even the guitar-shaped swimming pool looked in need of some TLC.

Mortified, simply mortified, I thought I would just sit down and cry. The Sweetheart is apologetic, how was he to know? He had only paid for one night, thankfully, and why didn’t we just wait until morning and then we would go find another place to stay.

Say what?! I couldn’t even sit down on the furniture or walk into the bathroom. I didn’t care at that point that it was late, that we would lose our money, they could keep it as far as I was concerned, I just wanted OUT.

We grabbed our bags and headed right back out, found a nicer place to stay and enjoyed the rest of our weekend. It was the thought that mattered. (Side note: I have discovered they have revamped Spence Manor again and we may not be able to afford to go back for our 40th anniversary! Very top-notch condominiums, looks like they have done it right.)

This Haymaker-turned-Sweetheart still thinks of the sweetest things like that.  Last year, not only did he have yellow roses and beautiful cards waiting for me, he had thought of the ultimate dinner plans.

“We are going to go back to where it all began.”

Oh no. I hate it when he does that because my memory is gone! I can tell he is excited he has thought of something BIG and he continues,

“You do remember where we went on our very first date 39 years ago, right?”

Nope. Not a clue. My only recollection of it is the drive home in his Jeep.

He had not forgotten. Back-in-the-day, Bloomington, home of the Indiana Hurryin’ Hoosiers, had a great restaurant called The Gold Rush. A little rustic on the inside, wooden beams, high-back booths and a round fireplace in the middle of the room, it was the ultimate in romance in the 70’s. And it was probably out of our price range then but we went anyway.

Today, it is still a nice steakhouse but we had not been there in years. We walk in and they seat us in the same booth we had sat in 38 years before! The place could use a little bit of updating but the food is still very, very good and it’s extremely clean. Steaks cooked to perfection, wonderful specials and these to-die-for little fried biscuits with apple butter. It was delicious.

And it was all coming back to me…okay, a couple of things were coming back to me.

What I did remember was that The Haymaker was a romantic way back then and The Sweetheart hasn’t lost his touch. We’ve been through some rough times but we somehow always remember how it started and why: two young people were crazy about each other from the moment they met and that is one thing that has never changed.

Fun fact! You guys made Part I the #2 post of all time on the blog! Woot! It is still second to my eldest and his bride’s way-too-funny story about their engagement. You can read it here!