On this date in 1987, Miss Laura and I got married.
As with anything that involves Miss Laura, that day was an adventure.
Miss Laura's mother, the late Winnifred Giggleman, was a stern woman who managed her family with the tactics of a Marine drill sergeant.
The first time I met her was for Sunday dinner in 1985. Winnifred sat opposite from me and glared at me through steely, squinted eyes. I held her stare.
The rest of Laura's family ate in strained silence. Winnifred and I stabbed at our food blindly amid a tango of chinaware clinks, neither willing to break the stare-down.
After about 10 minutes, Winnifred finally blinked. From that point forward I was her guy. I could do no wrong.
The events of Oct. 9, 1987, sorely strained her affection, though. Miss Laura and I weren't going to merely elope. We were going to backpack to Maine.
Nobody in Laura's family knew a thing about it until she dropped it like a bomb.
I'm amazed that we pulled it off.
With so much to do, we didn't get our marriage license until late in the afternoon.
Our next chore was finding someone to perform a wedding ceremony. By then it was about 3 p.m., and most anyone that had the authority to conduct a marriage had left work early. We were on the verge of panic when a name popped in my head.
As the sports editor at the North Little Rock Times, I had a good relationship with Terry Hartwick, who was then the mayor of North Little Rock. Cell phones were still in the future, so we dashed over the Broadway Bridge to his office and found him between appointments.
Hartwick hastily rearranged his schedule and called Jackie Neal, the city clerk, and his secretary to witness the ceremony.
"Where are your rings?" Neal asked.
Rings? We didn't think to get rings.
"Oh, lord. You've got to have rings!" Neal gasped. She quickly fashioned a pair from paperclips. We still have them, and that is why to this day Miss Laura and I don't wear wedding rings.
Neal, who had never met us before that moment, wept joyously as Hartwick read Psalm 23 and pronounced us married. She hugged us and served us Cokes and some leftover cake from the breakroom. We dashed back across the bridge and filed the license just before the courthouse closed.
A week or two earlier, I had tried unsuccessfully to reach Joe Mosby, the late, great outdoors editor at the Arkansas Gazette, to see if he were interested in doing a story.
As I cleaned out my desk at the Times, Mosby finally called and invited us to come his office at the Gazette for an interview. The adventure captivated him, and he set up a photo shoot.
Then he asked if I wanted to write columns about the journey from the trails and backroads. He offered a generous rate and set in motion a series of columns that laid the foundation of my career.
Now it was time to face Miss Winnifred, or Mumsey.
Without a word, Laura started loading her gear into my car. Mumsey stalked outside and growled, "Girl, what do you think you're doing?"
"I'm going to Maine," Laura chirped.
"You ain't, neither" Mumsey snarled. "You ain't goin' nowhere with him. You ain't married."
"We most certainly are," Laura said with stony bravado.
"What? When?"
"About 30 minutes ago."
"Let me see your marriage license!"
"We've already filed it," Laura said.
"Where's your ring?"
Laura showed her the paperclip, and Mumsey blurted an expletive.
Arthur, Laura's father, sensed trouble from the start. He pawed through Mumsey's nuclear war stash of canned goods as if trying to dig out a place in the pantry to hide.
Mumsey stormed into the house with Laura in tow and announced Laura's news.
"Sounds good to me," Arthur mumbled.
"What? Arthur, DO something!" she trumpeted.
"Like what, Honey?" he retorted, dragging out the syllables to "Honey."
You had to know Art and Winnie to understand that "Huuunnnny" was like throwing a match on gasoline. That provoked a protracted shouting match that enabled Laura and me to slip away unnoticed.
We returned in the morning, and all was forgiven, largely because of the half-page article about us in the Gazette's sports section. Mumsey made us a hearty breakfast and trimmed Laura's hair before Tony and Diane Hagerty (now Diane Wingard) ferried us to our starting point.
Few thought we'd last. A few months, tops.
We made it to Maine and back, and here we are 29 years and seven children later.
Happy anniversary, baby. Here's to many more.
Sports on 10/09/2016