Waitin’ on a Woman … the Girl in
the Door
Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal August 6 2017
In the summer of 1965 six college
guys and their supervisor walked across the grounds of a youth camp in northern
Wisconsin. Their supervisor, the camp
director, had just said to them, “Would you like to go meet the girl
counselors?”
On this first day of camp, excited
campers were getting settled in, admiring the camp that was nestled in
beautiful woods 90 miles north of Green Bay.
As we approached the girls’
dormitory, I saw a beautiful, college-age young woman standing in the door. It was obvious she was a counselor since
several “junior high” girls stood around her vying for her attention.
We are now 20 yards from the
door. I know because I measured it on
the last day of camp. While my
colleagues walked on, I stopped dead in my tracks. Boy Scouts honor and hand on the Bible, three
words bombed my very consciousness, shattering all reality except for the girl
in the door, and rendering me a 6-foot-2, 194 pounds of mush. The three words were “There she is.”
Yes,
there she is, and now I can stop wondering why those nice high school girls and
those hundreds of Dixie darlings at Southern Miss never interested me. How could they not? They were pretty, kind, mature, smart, fun,
and … but it doesn’t matter now because there she is.
Flashback. I was old when I was young, overly serious in
just about everything. For instance, I
started praying for the right girl to come into my life when I was 15. Caring little for dating, I wanted God to
parachute into my life the right girl so that we could get on with it. Back to Wisconsin, was this now happening?
That evening I learn that Nancy
Milligan is from Murfreesboro, TN and is a senior at Middle Tennessee
State. I was a senior at Southern
Miss. She’s dairy cows; I was cotton and
corn. She’s an English major. Me too.
Her parents are salt of the earth, steady as a rock country folks, unshaken
by what life hands them, toughened by the Great Depression. Mine too.
Uh-oh, she’s been a delegate to the
National 4-H Congress in Chicago. This
scares me a little. She’s obviously
smart and endowed with some special skills.
I’m a pretty ordinary guy. But
we’ll see.
Murfreesboro, she says, is just 30
miles south of Nashville. That excites
me since I’ve never been to the Grand Ole Opry.
Maybe … no, that’s not smart figuring the Grand Ole Opry into a possible
relationship. Better keep things a
little more elevated. She might not even
know who Minnie Pearl is.
She milks cows, she says, and …
carries butter to the bottom of a deep spring where it’s kept refrigerated? Yikes !
I’ve wrung the necks of chickens in order to have fried chicken for
supper, but taking butter down into what amounts to a cave in your back yard? That’s not country; that’s primitive. Makes me feel better about never having been
a delegate to the National 4-H Congress.
Her lips are wine-colored, but her
parents wouldn’t want me to use the word “wine.” Mine wouldn’t either. Her eyebrows are exquisite and she seldom
plucks them. They’re just … that way.
She has one brother and three
sisters. Boy, did she perk up when I
told her I had six brothers and ten sisters, a fact that would give her mother
pause when Nancy tells her about me.
On the last day of camp, I muster
the courage to get Nancy Milligan’s address.
Two states apart, two country kids couldn’t afford to visit each other
very much. That explains why our wedding
two years later was only the tenth time we had seen each other.
This month marks my 50th
year of marriage to this Tennessee milkmaid.
She who could run the world. She,
a talented college graduate who stayed home to raise four children, who loves
babies, old people, and life. She whose
children have risen up and called her bless’ed.
For 50 years the greatest joy of my
life has been watching as others also get to meet and know this girl in the
door, watching as she has brightened the path of all who meet her.
I knew I would meet her some day,
knew I would wait as long as it took.
Not once during or since that Wisconsin summer has waitin’ on a woman
bothered me. Rather, it has reminded me
that good things still come to those who wait.
Roger
Hines
8/2/17
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