A Rose by any other Name

I have never been able to get in to Shakespeare.  I do recall one little line.  “Does not a rose by any other name smell as sweet.”  I have spent a little time noticing that for all intents and purposes my name, Stanley, has pretty much been retired.  For some reason for the past 30-40 years when any TV show writer wanted to depict a character that was not all that smart or just a little strange they would name that guy Stanley.  Even when I lived in the Netherlands the teachers changed my name to Serge.  So they must have suspected something about the name as well.

Even with all of this, I kind of like my name.  There was a baseball player years ago by the name of Stan Musial and he was known as Stan the Man.  For some reason some of my friends started calling me Stan the Man Unusual. Never really figured this out but maybe it applies. You be the judge.  The trucking community calls a name a “handle.”  I do know a few people who have had to wear a handle that might have had even more burden.  We had one of the nicer girls in my High School with the name of Sharon Titsworth.   It was always an interesting moment when the role was called in the morning.   I can recall some of the boys always making a big deal of this.  Fortunately she was quite a confident person and I might add wore the name quite well.

Speaking of interesting names, some of the Vietnamese families we assisted in the resettlement days had some names that were worthy of some note.  Mu, Man, Phang, Nam and Phouc were the first names of the men of the families.  A man by the name of Jim VanderGalien and I, somehow were involved in helping find employment for these guys.  Knowing how people in factories could sometimes react to things I became concerned.  (Factories were the chosen course of potential employment due to the language barriers.)  I was worried that there would be some teasing and jokes about these names and I was particularly concerned about the name Phouc. (pronounced Fook but with a noticeable leaning to more of a U sound in their dialect.)

So I suggested to him that perhaps it might be better to take on an American name for a work name and then retain his name for use with the others of his culture who already resided here.  (Deb had warned me to not get involved in this.) What ensued is one of the more convoluted conversations I have ever been engaged in.  With the language issues that existed I was just not able to get my point across.  After several attempts he asked me to draw a picture of what I was talking about.  At that point I decided to just give up and let things stand as they were.  In a few years he adopted the name of Mike and today resides in California with his family.

When Phouc got his first job I received a call from the owner of that plant asking if I knew any more like him. He was an amazing man and over the years has owned businesses, owns his own home, has educated his whole family and runs one of the neatest homes I have ever seen.  One of his two children, a 1^st grader by the name of Vin broke her arm the first day she was in school.  Deb felt so sorry for her.  She was climbing on one of the pieces of outside gym stuff and slipped.  It was lucky to have Deb around as she knew exactly what to do as she did on many more occasions with these families. I have one more amazing story about their family. Let me tell it.

When he got off of the airplane he only had 2 of his 5 children with him.  Due to immigration issues 3 children and his wife were detained in Vietnam.  For 8 years he carefully did the work, made the money, and filled out the paperwork needed to bring the remainder of his family to this country.  He and all the others we helped had a deep love for family.  I will never forget Deb and I and others standing in the GR airport at the end of the airplane shoot (pre 9-11) and seeing this family being reunited after 8 years.

We have enjoyed many meals with him, attended his children’s weddings, and received a couple of platters of egg rolls from him every Thanksgiving.  You can call a rose anything you want but you will not be able to remove the beauty.  One more story the next time on our work in this era.  Am I allowed to say, is a good one!.

Stan the Man

Start with a Toothbrush

I want to take some liberty to fast forward a little bit.  I will come back to the “proposal” but I want now to tell you about one of the more interesting parts of our lives.   Before we had children Deb and I took on the responsibility of being in charge of the resettlement of some Vietnamese families.  The sponsoring was done by River Terrace Church in Lansing, Michigan.   Our job was to furnish an apartment and help introduce these families to our culture.  Of all of the challenges we had faced before, we found ourselves busy with this and we recall helping organize this and getting things set for them to come to the USA.

Deb spent countless hours preparing an apartment and then more hours arranging medical appointments,  English classes,  and filling out the needed paper work for them  to get started here.  Different people in the church would donate furniture, food and needed things to get things set up.  When you start from scratch a project of this nature can be a real adventure.  The family of 5 arrived at the Lansing airport and each of them carried off of the plane a small sack. It looked to me that the contents of the sack were nothing more than a toothbrush, toothpaste and just a very few other items.  There was no luggage.

The father of the family was a gentleman by the name of Mu Ho.  To this day he is the only person I have known that could spell his entire name with 4 letters.  His children were quite young.  They had been flying and traveling for several days and before that had resided in a refugee camp.  I think the way that this worked was that as the Vietnam War was concluding these people, and many like them, found themselves on the wrong side of the fence.  They had been detained in one of these camps for quite some time.  Needless to say they were very tired.   The car was soon filled with excited talk in a language that seemed to me to be the fastest I had ever heard. On the way to a new life……..

Deb had taken great care to arrange the bedrooms. When she does something, she does it right.  I remember her sewing some curtains for them and the place looked pretty nice when she had it done.  We dropped off the family and they spent their first night in their new home. We came back in the morning and to our surprise they had all slept in the same room and it appeared that they had slept on the floor on some of the bed linens that had previously been on the beds. We had the place stocked pretty well with food.  Mu, in very broken English asked me if I could do one thing.  We went to the store and I just could not figure out what might be needed. Apparently, the human body just cannot take a huge and immediate change in diet.  He walked out of that store with a 25 lbs bag on his shoulder.  I explained that the American word for what he had on his shoulder was “rice.”  He did not know much English.  I do remember him saying to me  “dank u, rice is nice.”

Today, Mu and his wife live in a house they own in Grand Rapids.  They have nice cars and their family has thrived.  Shows what you can do even if all you start with is a toothbrush.  We have maintained loose contact with them over the years and with several other families that we assisted with resettlement.  Allow me to tell a few of these stories the next time.  They might bring a smile or as they say, a way for me to let you know that there is always a little Humor in the Storm.

Stan the Man

Luggage problems

About 10 years ago Deb's Mom and Dad decided to take the whole family down to Riviera Mia in Mexico for a vacation.  We went around Christmas time. I have never been much of a beach guy but for some reason I decided on the first morning to locate a beach chair close to the ocean and as I was watching the waves roll in, I could not help but notice a problem that was taking place at the resort right next door to ours.  The patrons of this resort were noticeably of French or foreign decent.   It seemed that when they had packed their luggage that most of the women had packed the lower half of their bikinis in one suitcase and the upper half in the other and it was apparent that half of the luggage either got lost or had not shown up.  After about one hour of this observation Deb came down to the beach area and was quite amazed that I had been there for so long.  As she observed the surroundings she suggested that it was time for breakfast.  I said to her that we could order something special, breakfast on the beach, but soon thereafter I was holding her hand walking back to the resort and ordering scrambled eggs like any other married guy should do.

But even with all of this it was hard to forget an element of our dating life that has had a huge impact on our family. Deb does not talk about this all that much but she has been gifted by God with a musical talent that only the people closest to her know the full extent thereof.  When we were first married both of our sets of parents gave us the gift of a nice Baldwin piano that still sits in our living room today.  For countless hours Deb has fingered the keys of this instrument and she plays with a touch and a passion that will be remembered for an eternity.  I think she only had lessons till the sixth grade.  Whoever that teacher was should know, and I have always believed, that if Deb would have so chosen, she could have been successful in a  career of music.

For now I can recall being invited to Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. I arrived expecting to to see a high school group performing a piece named 'Carmina Burana."  What I discovered when I arrived is that the person I now loved was doing her best to implant a grand piano in the stage of this place.  I am still not sure our living room floor is not down a couple of inches from all the piano playing that has taken place over these years.

In whatever happens in the the next months and years I will hear the ring of music in our home. The Piano, the trumpet, Mieke's voice and for sure the Piano played so well by the person that escorted me off of the beach occupied by a bunch of French women that had a luggage problem. I will say now that the music is better and for a guy like me and that says a lot.

I want next time to fast forward to my proposal.  It could not be messed up worse but it did work.  I will tell you about that.....In a couple of days. 


Stan the Man

Hamsters and Pajamas.

Well the time for Deb to meet my family had come. For some reason I did not go down to Grosse Point to pick her up. For some reason we had decided for her to take the bus. I regret this to this day. Why did I not just go down and get her?  I mean I enjoyed riding with her in the car.  Anyway, as I watched the people unloading at the Greyhound terminal I anxiously awaited the appearance of someone with teeth.  Sure enough there appeared on the tarmac a person wearing a nice sweater, had a nice smile, a small suitcase and a look that indicated that she might never go on a bus again.

I had the day before had my wisdom teeth extracted.   Today they do this with with a pretty nice procedure that involves drugs, but then they kind of did this with jackhammers and pry bars and when I picked up Deb I looked like a chipmunk in heat.  I do remember Deb's first comment.  "When did you get the mumps.?"  Anyway it was one of the more vulnerable moments in our dating life.  The endurance thereof somehow gave me the feeling that in addition to my new friend being good looking and smart,  I had here a person who was willing to forgo the short term and think more of the long term.   

I must mention at this point that this has lasted to this day.  Today I feel so sorry for her as she recovers.  The incision from the surgery and the related pain she has now make a wisdom tooth event from yesteryear look like a fly in the ointment.  We have endured  life's events all these years and this morning we decided that we would endure some more till what ever comes of this brings us to future. I asked the doctor yesterday "In all the years you have served families, how do wise families respond to similar medical events?' I thought his answer was interesting.  He said that families who stand solidly behind a decision regarding treatment, made by the patient, seem to do the best.  And that is exactly what we will do.

Anyway, Deb was now in Lansing. Our home was located about a mile away from three large drop forge plants. In the night you could hear the non stop concussion of these plants. It resembled the noise of a distant thunderstorm.  Those of us that were used to this had learned to sleep without noticing it. I did warn Deb that the first time she stayed over this might be an issue as it related to sleep.

Lansing has always kind of bugged me.  It is flat, it is boring, it is the State Capitol.  After living there for a while I thought that the biggest thing that ever happened was that once in while some guy would decide to have three beers after work rather than the two he was used to.  It also seemed to me that whoever was in office did the same things.  During this era George Romney was the governor. He seemed like a good guy but no matter what he did he still had to work in Lansing.  I am glad now that we moved.  Maybe they will move the capitol to Borculo. We will do better than if it still would be in Lansing.

One of the big events of Debs visit was a late night trip she made to my bedroom.  Now anyone of my young age  might get excited about this but I must report that the reason was not as exhilarating as you might expect. Turns out that two big problems surfaced from this..  My sister, Miriam, had given up her bedroom for our guest and next to her bed she kept a glass cage.  I did not know what she might have in that cage, I did not go in there all that much.  But Deb reported that a large mouse was running around at night in this wheel in that cage.  She had had a lifelong dislike for rodents of any kind and for her, this was a close encounter of the third kind.

I think I might have been able to solve this quickly except for one thing.  I did not know that men of any worth had ever worn pajamas.  They were just not part of my literature.  I did however jump out of bed and remove from her presence all rodents.  With all of the commotion my mom got up to see what was going on and all she saw was a son in his underwear exiting a bedroom that housed his girlfriend.  I tried to explain in the morning that carrying a glass cage with a hamster was a logical explanation. I am not sure she has bought this to this day.  As God is my witness it is the truth. 

The rest of the time seemed to go pretty good. I took Deb  back to the bus later on Sunday afternoon.  How stupid.  Do any of you ever want do overs?  I would use one up for this and to this day wish I would have just given her a ride home.  I guess when you are 21 years old you are not all that smart.  To this day when Christmas comes she has always given me a couple packs of underwear (and more) that are more interesting than the ones I wore to get that hamster out of her room.

I have a good story for the next time.   It involves music and bikinis.   Stay tuned.................................

Stay tuned.

Noah's Last Name and More of the Same

I was not given permission to post the next one. But I was asked to at least tell you it was not about sex. We had been seeing each other now for a couple of months and now had to face a period of what might be called the dating doldrums.  Anybody else know what I mean by this?  I mean it is when you get to know each other well enough to come to the realization that neither of you are perfect and a flaw or two start to show up.  At least now her parents were getting to know me good enough that when I drove all the way down they would let me stay overnight.  So I did just that I stayed at their home for the first time and attended church with them the following Sunday morning.  I found myself climbing the steps of an older Christian Reformed Church and soon was sitting with her in a bench right in front of the guy who had taken her to the prom a couple of months ago.
Christian Reformed Churches are interesting places.  And this one was no exception.  For many years the CRC had mostly people of Dutch descent.  So most of the people who went to them had a name with Dutch roots.  Van something or Ver something for the last name and Jan or Hans for the first.  In the Dutch language the R is always rolled out a little.  I knew this well as I had the experience as a young boy of spending several years in the Netherlands and attending the first and second grade there in a Dutch school.  The CRC was just coming out of a tradition which had some rather strict rules on what you could and could not do on Sunday.

A few funny things were starting to happen in the CRC .  You could not watch TV on Sunday until after the evening service.   At that time you could watch Bonanza and Lassie. For some members bike riding  was also out.  Movies where just getting off of the list and travel for recreational purposes was not looked on all that well.  Card playing was kind of out but someone had figured out that a card game by the name of Rook was OK because it just had numbers on the cards rather than pictures on some of the cards.  I think when you look at any denomination you could perhaps think of a few strange things that they did.  I never understood who was starting to change the rules.  At first I thought it might be God but then later I figured they were being changed by either a pastor, elder or deacon who felt like doing something on Sunday.  When the others all saw this they thought they could do it too and soon it was all forgotten about.

At the Vermeulen home meals were opened with prayer, the Bible was read after and then another prayer.  Over the years mashed potatoes were always on the menu as they were on this first Sunday of my presence.
It was kind of a formal setting and a nice table and it always looked kind of nice.  Deb's dad was a good prayer and we would open every prayer like this "Dear Lord, we have gathered before you in the afternoon hour of this day" and then he would carefully pray about the concerns of that the day and end with the reasons we had to be thankful.   In my home we had always had a little more rambunctious approach to meals.  So when Deb's mom went in to the kitchen and expressed some concern that the plate of spaghetti noodles were fully cooked I suggested that there was only one way to tell.  When you throw a piece at the wall and if it sticks it is done.  That two second flight of a piece of spaghetti over to the wall in that formal dining room almost cost me a life long relationship.   My to be bride was not pleased and it did not seem as though the rest of the family was all that impressed either.  Their youngest, Ken, did have a smile and he broke the ice.  He said "you know I have wondered all my life why all those guys in the Bible do not have last names.   Oh I said but they do. Just ask me. OK he said how about Noah.  I suggested his last name had to be VanderArk.  We had some fun that day giving some last names to a few other characters in the Bible.

I kind of received my first good chewing out that day. In the many meals that have been shared together over all of these years we have all learned to have a great time together. I pray now that many more can be shared and I promise Sylvia I will never throw food at the wall again.  Send me a note if you would like to know the last names of some of the other famous Bible guys.  Never have figured it all out but  they are all Dutch names.

It was time now for Deb to come and meet my family.  Tell you about that next time........it was interesting!!!!!

Stan the Man

Miniskirts and Comfort Stations

For a young guy, I had a reasonably nice job in Lansing.  But the boss of that company could be a little demanding and the job did not leave a lot of time for young people to do the things that most young people do. So somewhere along the line I had missed the idea of miniskirts, but I had heard of them, and on my drive down to Grosse Point for the second date I was wondering if the idea of miniskirts had hit that area yet.  I am not sure why I was thinking about this but I just was. That is the last I will say about that except for the fact that I do not think the mom of the house, Sylvia, liked miniskirts all that much.  She bought most of the clothes in that home so I have never yet gone on a date with a person in a miniskirt, but it was worth thinking about.

For some reason around Brighton, I started thinking about Richard Nixon. He was the president and I wondered a little about this. If he were the president, with all those fine chef's in the white house, why did he always looked  kind of constipated.  I kind of thought we were maybe better off with him because the VP, Spiro Agnew looked as though he had a dual case of indigestion and constipation.  You know, I have never been able to get some of those thoughts out of mind. Even though I have voted for a few more republicans lately I have thought to this day they have a slightly constipated (at least the politicians do) look on their face. Maybe not Ronald Reagan but as far as I am concerned the rest of them do. 

I am also not sure why this is coming up right now expect to tell you that on our second date we did have kind of interesting "get to know you better event."  I picked up Deb and this time took her to place on the river by the name of Sinbad's.  We did not look in to each others eyes all that much nor did we have any milkshakes but we did have a nice conversation and meal after which she mentioned that her dad was working downtown in one of the apartment buildings he owned. One one of the units needed a new fridge.   Those of you that know her dad know that he is one of the harder workers. He was not sure we were coming and he had proceeded to strap the refrigerator with straps to his back and he was leaning forward and made it up three flights of stairs. He could not quite manage the 4th. When he saw us arrive he asked if we could help him on the last flight.  Somehow the staircase narrowed and the pullers and the pusher got the thing stuck.  At one point I had to pick Deb up and lift her up a step.   The combination of the exertion, the dinner and everything else caused what I think might have been an air pocket in her abdominal area to escape in a way that in my previous life I was only aware that men could accomplish.

Deb's father is such a proper man. I have about a dozen names for bathrooms. He to this day calls them comfort stations.  He suggested that Deb might be more comfortable if we could find a comfort station for her soon.  I think events like this happen at some point in most successful relationships and for some reason I was glad to have this one out of the way early.

I drove her to her home around midnight because it took a while to get that fridge in.  I held her, this time with my arms around her from the front, and  kissed her.  I said "see you in a couple of weeks" and she said I could come back tomorrow if I wished.   That was not possible this time but I will say that the drive home to Lansing was the first time I have known what falling in love feels like. 

I did not get Deb's permission for this one but I will need it for the next.  Stay tuned..........................


Stan the Man

Doubletakes and Milkshakes

When you live out state from Detroit it is possible to be left with the impression that it is one really rough place.  In the era of my first date with Deb it was really rough because Detroit had gone through some rough times. Recent race riots, title of murder capital of the world and some pretty strange politicians would leave a young person like myself to think a little about all of that as I drove to meet what would be my bride. As far as I knew I thought of her as living in Detroit but I noticed on the directions I had to go through Detroit and end up in a place called Grosse Point Park.  I remember as I was driving on US10 (the ditches) I might just open the window and see if by chance I could hear some gunshots.  A testimony to a naive young man.  I thought better of opening a window because a stray bullet could get me and I was kind of looking forward to this date with this Tiger fan I was looking forward to meeting again now for the last three weeks.

The directions said to turn off of I-94 on to Chalmers, Go right to Jefferson, then left to Bedford.  Chalmers was one of the sadder streets in Detroit. Every other house with the windows out. Some burnouts and some other reasons for me to have my eyes wide open as I drove the 2 miles on Chalmers.  I started to just hope that this girl I was driving to meet had one of the houses with windows. A striking thing after I turned on to Jefferson was that in a moment things changed and in front of me were rows and rows of some of the coolest houses,  older designs, leaded glass windows, curved sidewalks and stately brick homes I had ever seen. I turned on to Bedford found the address, nervously parked my car in the drive and pushed my finger on a bell that chimed in a way that I had only seen on Leave it to Beaver.  The door was answered by a nice looking teenager who asked me to come in.  I said "hi Deb", you ready to go to the game.  She said she would but her name was not Deb it was Kris.  Deb was sitting next to her father in living room so I could go ahead and come in and meet the family.  Oh that is just great news I thought.  My heart by this time was going at a high rate.  I am not going to tell about her Dad now. That will come later.  I am going to tell you about a the third man on the couch.  His name was Frank and the Vermeulen family had worked together to help restore him from a troubled life laden with about every problem you could have.  To this day I think this is one of the reasons that people love my wife. She has extended her hand to anyone and everyone who has a need. And I still rememeber this Frank sitting on the couch.  I think we learn most things from our families and Frank still sticks in my mind as  a symbol of the foundation of this spirit that resides in my wife.

So by now my afternoon was filled with doubletakes.  I had not been shot, her house had windows, her family seemed caring and by now I had noticed that in the past few years things had improved as they say in the" looks" department.  In a short time we were in the car and headed to the Tiger game.

I could pretty much tell by ride to the end of her street that things had a nice chance.  It seemed that this girl had the confidence and wit to stay up with about any situation with which she may be confronted.  She told me to park my new car in front of an old apartment building near Tiger Stadium.  A little kid offered to watch the car for a "dolla". Deb advised me that if we did not want to take the bus home to give the kid his money and when we got out of the game he and the car were still there. I could not beleive it. 

So I end with milkshakes.  After puchasing tickets from a guy on the street we settled in to some seats in the left field upper deck.  I thought there might be some nice conversation but instead there seemed to be more attention being paid to the game.  I rememeber her saying at one point it would be a good time for a squeeze play and sure enough Ralph  Houk, the Detroit manager called that play.  In about the third inning I asked if there was anything she would like from the concession stand and she said she would like a milkshake.  I came back to the seat  a moment later and told her they did not have milkshakes.  She said then to get the only thing they had that looked like a milkshake. I went back up and as far as I could tell the only thing that even resembled a milkshake was this stuff they were pouring and when they were done it had a milky looking foam on the top.  I asked the guy for two milkshakes. He poured a 16 and a 32 ounce.  I brought those full glasses down to the seats and to my great surprise she grabbed the 32 ounce size.  It was at first a surprise to me that he would poor them in a cup that had Stroh's on the side.  But as I sat there in the warm  night and after we were about half way done with those milkshakes the sense that this realtionship was going someplace I think came over us both.  She leaned over in the 7th and wispered in my ear "I like a guy who knows how to order a good milkshake".  To this day she has never told me if those beers were what she really wanted.  At least that way I would have to take credit for the sin.  I think Stroh's has gone out of business but we are still in business some 39 years after this first date.

We had such a good time that night we decided to go out again.  I said " how about tomorrow night?' but she said she would not be available for another couple of weeks. Smart girls always work this way. As interesting as our first date was the second one could be recorded in history and the strangest date of all time.  Tell you about that next time.   

Stan the Man

The Prom

So I had the person on the phone now that I was quite certain did not chew gum, looked good in jeans, bowled well with some help from the scorekeeper and had a nice smile. It was time to proceed.  Back in that day there was a slight amount of nerves involved in asking a person out.  I think kids today are more free with this and they have things checked out pretty good on face book and all the other modern tools.  In other words they have a pretty good idea what is going to happen before  any questions are asked.  I asked if she did remember me from a couple of years ago.  The optimistic part of me hoped that the answer would be that she had been sitting by the phone waiting for this call, but that is not what I got.  I did however get sort of a laugh and I could detect a level of warmness and surprise.  So I asked her if she would be interested in me driving down to Detroit and taking her out.  She said she might consider the idea.  I suggested that the coming Friday might be a good time.  She said she had to go to her prom that night.  I had never been to a prom before (I do not think my school had them) so I said I would do that with her but needed to know what I should wear.  At that point the phone went silent for more than just a moment.  I soon found out that these prom arrangements had been made long before and another young man would be her escort that night. She was also booked the following weekend.  But if I wished to drive down  the weekend after that it might work.

Now I want to give a little word to all of you who are mothers of daughters who are dating age that the art of playing a little hard to get does work.   I am not sure if this was taking place here as I think the delay had legitimate reason but nevertheless when a young man hangs the phone up from a conversation like this it leaves the impression and gives him time to think that perhaps he is asking for something of great value.

I asked her what she wanted to do in a few weeks.  Perhaps some dinner and a movie.  No she said, I do not date boring men. I like Tiger baseball, they are in town that week and we are going to the game.  The way this was stated gave me some idea of who might wear the pants in this potential relationship but in this case it was OK with me because I liked baseball.  In about 3 weeks would come one of the best first dates in the history of planet earth.  Al Kaline would play right, Mickey Lolitch would pitch and we would be sitting in the left field seats.  I am going to tell you about that next time.   For now, just in case you are wondering or if you go to a Tiger game, they do not sell milkshakes at these games................ but I did solve that problem.

Stan the Man

Gum and Dumb

Meeting a girl when she is in the 9th grade is a problem. Especially when you are 19 years old.  Probably not anymore, but then they had a saying "you could go to jail for that".  So I decided to try my luck in the big market. One of the things that has always bugged me is women who chew gum. Somehow after several tries and several of these set up deals from friends I seemed to have succeeded in finding every gum smacking floozy that lived in our city.  One in particular, (I do not remember the name) had this way of chewing in a way that resulted in an audible pop every 20 seconds or so even though it was not bubble gum.  Brains also seemed to be part of the issue. I do remember the deepest discussion I ever had with all the members of the gum smacking club was about how I liked the way the drummer in a group named Chicago played the drums. (I was not sure I had an opinion on this)

Another thing of  that day was that Hippies were getting to be a growing problem.  For any young person who might read this and not know what Hippies are, here it is. They were people with long hair, goofy glasses, dirty feet and glazed over eyes.  They also would go to places and listen to music sitting in the mud.  So as I thought about it I did not like gum smackers, I did not like Hippies, but I did remember someone kind of interesting from a few years ago and perhaps I might call her.

One little bit of advice to younger readers. When you meet someone you like it is a good idea to get the name and number.  All I could remember is that her last name started with Ver and I remember is that her dad was in the funeral business and she went to a church in Detroit.  So I got a copy of the Detroit Yellow pages and found a funeral home.  It had a nice picture in the add of a building and the name was VerHeyden Funeral Home. I dialed the phone and I asked to speak to Mister VerHeyden.  I asked him if by chance he had two daughters that were reasonably attractive.  (I remember that Deb had a sister that did not look bad either.)

VerHeyden told me that he did not, but that he knew what I might be looking for. He said that Jim Vermeulen had two very nice looking and classy daughters.  But the name of his funeral home was Perry's and it was in downtown Detroit.  I was smart enough even at that time to not call her father for a date with his daughter. Instead I looked up the Vermeulen name in the book and called it and the next thing I knew I had the person who I  had met two years ago on the phone line. What ensued is one of the most interesting conversations I had ever had.  I will tell a little more about that but for now I will let this post stand. 

Stan the Man

First Meeting

Most people that Deb and I know are aware of the recent news of her cancer. People have been following her updates on her blog.  I must tell you that up until a couple of weeks ago I am not sure I knew very much about blogs. But now I am finding a blog to be kind of a nice thing and people have been following her progress and have been responding. It has been one of her favorite things to read the comments and she has been overwhelmed with the care on concern people have shown.  One thing that people might not know is that along with Deb's many attributes comes one of the finest sense of humor you might find. Her laugh is easy and even now she finds herself in moments where the need to laugh reaches a point of hurting her incision. She will often say to us now "do not make me laugh" and then moments later she will have something that strikes her and she just cannot help having that part of her personality come out.

I have to do something now.  A few people know that I like to write. I am so sad about this entire chapter in our lives and I need for therapeutic reasons to record some things. Even if nobody ever reads this I am doing this because I have to. If somebody does read it please know that all the expressions are done out of love.  Deb has always said "Stan, yours eyes see things and your ears hear things that are not normal but they are funny".  So permit me now to relay a few of those thing.  You might find some laughter and if that be the case let it somehow part the clouds that seem to be with us now.

Most of us who are married can recall the first time we met what was to be our new spouse.  For us that meeting came at a bowling ally.  Somehow kids from our denomination of churches would gather a few times each year.  The denomination was Christian Reformed.  It seemed important to the parents that attended Christian Reformed Churches to organize activities where young people could gather and get to know each other.  Of all places this meeting was to take place, it was in Cleveland.  I was 19 years old and my assignment was to drive to Cleveland and take some of the kids from our youth group to this meeting.  I can remember the kids wanted to listen to radio all the way and I remember somehow that they must have played this one song about 40 times on the trip.  To this day the song has made no sense to me. It was "Jeremiah is a Bullfrog".   I never found out how that song might make some sense, but at the same time I can still remember that stupid song.  Another thing has not made all that much sense to me: while it was true that 19 year boys have some predisposition to occasionally glance at members of the opposite sex, it was also true that I have not been all that attracted to the part of the body known as the rear end.  Always been a little bit of a mystery to me as my eyes have always wandered to other spots.  I was however assigned to bowl on a lane and one of the fellow bowlers was a girl who would on that day start to redefine life for me.  I am embarrased to say this but  most of bowling involves looking at the hind ends of people.  As that went on that day and I can remember thinking that this person gave some new definition to how nice a pair of jeans could look on a person.  It was a done deal when she turned around and I saw the smile and as she walked back to the  score table told me to record a strike.  My first words to her were, "Well I would like to do that but you only got nine pins".  She told me to put down a strike anyway because the ball had hit right where she was aiming.  I put down the strike and the rest, as they say, is history.   There was, however, one really big problem.  She was in the ninth grade.  It would be two years before I ever talked with her again and that in itself is a story.  I will tell you about that in a day or so.

Stan the Man