LITTLE ROCK — Charles Barnett watched Shirley Archer from the bleachers while she was in physical education class at school in Clinton, but it took a dare to get them on a date.
“She was a pretty girl with blond hair and she caught my eye real quick,” he says.
Shirley was playing softball, a game she loved, and she didn’t notice Charles, then about 17.
Charles didn’t say anything to anyone about Shirley, but her friend, who was dating Charles’ friend, asked him if he would like to go with Shirley. Charles answered, “Why, sure.” And the girl dared him to do it.
Shirley says the girl had tried to set her up with a boy before.
“I had never gone with anyone before,” she says. “I was real bashful back then, to the point that when my sister’s boyfriend would come over I would hide. So I said no, I wouldn’t go. But she just kept on and on and she dared me, too.”
They double-dated one night, just riding around and talking.
“There wasn’t that much to do,” says Shirley, who was about 16 at the time.
Shirley felt more at ease with Charles every time she saw him after that.
“I guess it was love at first sight,” he says.
They were together for about two years when Charles proposed the first time.
“I bought her a ring andshe thought it was a Cracker Jack ring and she threw it away,” Charles says.
Shirley remembers that well. They were in the school parking lot the night he handed it to her.
“I just felt of it in the dark and it felt like old plastic,” she says. “I said, ‘That ain’t nothing but an old Cracker Jack ring’ and I threw it out the window. I don’t know to this day what it looked like. I think he kind of got upset with me.”
Charles had an appointment with a dentist in Morrilton a few weeks later, and Shirley was going with him.
“He just asked me if I wanted to go get a blood test,”she says. “Back then, you had to get a blood test and wait three days.”
They got their test results on a Monday, and it was late in the evening when Charles got off work and came by to pick her up.
They were married on June 13, 1960, by a justice of the peace.
“We had to get him out of bed at 9 o’clock in the night, and he had a pair of long handle underwear on and he just slipped a pair of dress pants over them and never put a shirt on or anything,” Charles says.
The justice of the peace charged $2 for his marriage services, and Charles had a$20 bill.
“He didn’t have any change and I couldn’t afford to give him my $20 bill,” Charles says. “So we got married on credit and I paid him the next day.”
Charles went to work in Indiana for a little while right after they married, and they later moved together to Kansas. A year away from Arkansas was all it took for them to decide it was better back home, so in 1961 they moved back. They live in Dennard.
Their son Dwayne lives in Trace Ridge. Anotherson, Kevin, died shortly after birth.
The first ring Charles gave to Shirley wasn’t a Cracker Jack ring, but it was inexpensive because he didn’t have much money to spend. She didn’t get another ring when they married, and she didn’t have one for the first 10 years or so of their marriage.
Charles had begun to make a good living by the time a jewelry shop owner in Clinton made him a great deal on a men’s diamond ring.
“She let me have it for her cost because she had ordered it for another fellow in Clinton,” Charles says. “It just fit me and I bought it. But on the way back to work, I got to thinking, ‘This is not going to look good, this flashy diamond ring and my wife doesn’t haveone.’ So I turned around and went back to Clinton and got her one.”
Shirley didn’t know for quite some time that he had bought his first, he laughs.
Charles jokes that one thing that helps a marriage is that absence does make aheart grow fonder.
“I try to work 18 to 20 hours a day,” he says.
He retired the first time in March 1985, from ConAgra, he says. Now, they have a trucking company, a wood yard and a sawmill.
“It’s been quite an experience down through the years,” Charles says. “It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s good.” If you have an interesting how-wemet story or know someone who does, please call (501) 378-3496 or e-mail:
The first time I saw my future spouse, I thought:
He says: “Wow.” She says: “Am I really going with him? He was a little skinny guy with a lot of curly hair. He’s baldheaded now.”
My advice for a long, happy marriage is:
He says: “Give and live and let live.” She says: “Get in church, because times are going to be hard. Sometimes you’re going to have to give more than 50 percent.”
Before we exchanged our wedding vows, I was thinking:
He says: “This is something not to be entered into lightly. It’s going to be a lifelong experience.” She says: “Am I doing the right thing? I was taught to be sure because we didn’t believe in separating.”
High Profile, Pages 43 on 11/21/2010