Daytripping Spring 2023

Most of the articles you’ll read in these pages have been written by readers like you.
The Night They Were Wed
By Vicki Hornick, Tilbury
Before meeting, marrying and raising
children Mom and Dad were typical
teenagers in the late forties. They hung
out with friends after school, listened to
music their parents didn’t like and got
summer jobs. It was at one of
those summer jobs the two
met.
These days tomatoes are
sprayed to ripen them and
harvested by machine needing
only a few sorters. Back then
they had to be hand picked,
loaded in baskets onto wagons
and driven by tractor to the
processing plant, or by truck
to the local store.
One year my future parents both
acquired jobs as tomato harvesters on
the same crew. Many years later, on
the occasion of their 40th anniversary,
Dad quipped, “I picked a lemon in the
tomato patch.”
Their first date was when Dad offered
to drive Mom home instead of her
walking back to town. Mom insisted
on learning how to drive and gave Dad
the fright and thrill of a lifetime. After
driving like a maniac (and she never got
any better) Mom gave Dad a thank-you
kiss and their future was fixed.
Like so many teenagers having
fallen in love at first sight, there was
no keeping the two of them apart.
When Mom’s parents gave all the usual
objections, “She’s too young, they’re
moving too fast, he’s not good enough
for our daughter,” they snuck off to
meet in secret. Like so many others
before them, friends helped alibi them,
just as they were being alibied. Even
when Dad went off to work in London
for a while after finishing school he still
saw Mom on weekends.
The elopement really shouldn’t have
come as a surprise. Dad had saved
his money and put a down
payment on the farm where
they would eventually
spend 66 years and raise
ten children together.
They snuck off one day
to a second hand store
and had their choices
for very basic furniture
and appliances delivered to the
house. On the day chosen for the
elopement they went, license in
hand, to a small chapel in Windsor near
city hall.
Excited to begin their new life
together they drove to the farm where
Dad carried Mom over the threshold of
the century-old house.
It was only after they got inside for
their wedding night that they realized
something important; the one piece of
furniture they had forgotten to get was
a bed.
As a footnote: they made it back
to the furniture store before closing,
explained their dilemma and the fact
they had only ten dollars left between
them. The kindly owner found them an
old brass bed and used mattress and
had them delivered that evening.
Many pieces of furniture and
appliances came and went in the house
though the years but that ten-dollar bed
stayed as long as Mom and Dad did.
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30 Talbot Street, ST. THOMAS • 519-633-7641
• Canadian Military History with an Elgin County focus
• Archive & Reference Library
See website for current hours & museum updates:
www.TheElginMilitaryMuseum.ca
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Spring 2023 Chuck Norris can empty a swimming pool with a fork while it’s raining
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