A Match Made in Angel's Camp via Heaven
Preparing for this blog entry, I thought I would do something different than what I usually do; recount my memories of them. So I went back to the blog Mom was writing for a few years while in her late eighties to early nineties and found her account of the courtship and marriage. I found it quaint, heart-warming and funny. I hope you do, too.
I must confess I did quite a bit of editing for grammar and punctuation, as the story was told over several entries in her blog, so I cut and pasted all of the posts and put them together—and, she LOVED to use run-on sentences, Capitalize non-proper nouns, and put in numerous exclamation points!!!!! (See what I did there?) I think you will still feel as though it’s Mom telling the story (I hope!).
“The summer when I was 22 years old, I went up to Wawawai, Washington to work for my Aunt Gladys. She had written that she needed someone to help her in the kitchen to cook for the peach picking crew. My job consisted of getting the vegetables ready for cooking, setting the tables, and of course doing the dishes, because my aunt was packing peaches as well as cooking the noon and evening meal. I got paid for the job and I really had a good time, too. When summer was over, she and my Uncle Lance drove me home to White Pines, California so they too could have time off with my Mother and Father. Since I had left a boyfriend to go up there and another up there to come home again, I wasn't really looking for anyone but, well, you never know!
I got a job at the Arnold Inn waiting on tables and we had a cook who was drunk half the time and the owner of the place would come in and ask me to help her cook in the kitchen. We had no dishwasher except me and on one particular night a friend of mine, Johnny (he was married during the summer to my best girlfriend), came in to eat and brought a guy with him. Business was slow that time of the evening; we were about ready to close, as a matter of fact. So Faye, my boss, asked me to take over for her. Johnny introduced me to this guy but told me, "He doesn't speak any English, but I'll order for him to you." With that I would ask Johnny to ask him if he wanted this or that pertaining to the order. And Johnny, obliging as he was, would garble off something and the guy would smile at me, as though he didn’t understand a thing we were saying. I cooked and served both of them dinner and then started to do the dishes. Finally I went back into the dining room and asked Johnny to ask his friend if he wanted dessert. The guy answered in perfect English, "No, thank you!" Needless to say, I wanted to kill them both on the spot!! They had made up this stupid thing! I was so embarrassed! Then he told me he was Cappy Farnsworth and was working at a small lumber mill near the restaurant! And then asked if I would go out on a date with him. I told him my folks were coming after me soon so he asked me if I would like to go to a show the next night after work! I told him sure and that was that.
The next night, I waited and waited, and no Cappy. I had told my folks not to pick me up and so there I was. My boss told me she would drive me home. The next day Cappy came in, and since he did have a valid excuse, I said I would go to the show with him the next night. Again, I was stood up! So the following night I told my parents, "No matter what he says, I'm not going to go out with him!" So my folks got there early and sat in the bar in the back, to wait for me. I was cleaning up the kitchen and in came Mr. Farnsworth! I told him I was not going anyplace with him so he might just as well go home! He went into the bar and when I got off work, there he was sitting with my folks and they were having a good old time! I said to Mother, "Okay, I'm through, let’s go!" She asked me to go to the ladies’ room with her and when we got in there she said, “Don't be too harsh on this guy, he's pretty nice!” I said, "Oh, yeah!", the usual comeback to parents when you thought they didn't know what they were talking about. When Mother and I got back in the bar, Cappy said, "Won't you change your mind? Tomorrow is your day off and we will have time to make the second show." So, I gave in and we went to Stockton to a show. That wasn't the last of it.
He made a date with me for Sunday evening and stood me up again!!! I must have been pretty stupid, but the next day he came in and told me that he had been stood up with someone who had taken him to Sacramento; one of his brothers, no less! And he had with him a letter from his Mother telling me all about him, that he had two children, a boy of twelve and a girl of seven. His wife had died in childbirth of the little girl and she and Cappy's father had taken them into their home since Cappy was working all over, trying to get over the loss of his wife. She went on to tell me that she thought Cappy had fallen in love with me, and that she hoped it was so because he was so kind and gentle and had a lot of love to give (all of which proved to be true). The next six weeks were a whirlwind!
Not too long after I went out with Cappy, I was offered a job by Bob Hathaway, who had a service station/mini mart on the main highway going to the Big Trees State Park. He had plenty of business, but his wife became bedridden and he had two kids that had to be taken care of. The wages were better than what I was making at the restaurant, so I went there to work. He and his wife had a house off the highway about a block and a half. My job was to stay there at the house. I had my own room and became sort of a "nanny" to the kids who were (I think) 9 and 6! I would get up in the morning and Bob was already at work and so I would get the kids up, feed them and get them ready for school. Then the rest of the day I cleaned up the dishes, made the beds, and did whatever was to be done. Bob usually came in at noon or thereabouts and fixed lunch for the three of us (his wife, himself and me), and then it was back to work for him. If I didn't visit with his wife in the afternoon (if she wanted to nap, for instance), I read or listened to the radio. Then when the kids got home from school, I saw to it that they changed their clothes and did their homework, and then we would take a walk out in the woods behind their house or play a few games in the backyard or some other activity. I got dinner, and Bob would come in and eat, then back to the store until about 8:00 or 9:00. I would have the dishes done and the kids would take their baths, brush their teeth and so on, and go to bed.
Pearl Harbor had been attacked and here we (the country) were in the middle of a war! The government set up "watching posts" all over to make sure no unwanted airplanes would come into the U.S.A. mainland. My mother took her turn once or twice a week. Bob asked me one evening if I would like to sit at the store and watch for airplanes with some others. He would take me up there and he was sure someone would bring me home after my 2 or 3 hour "watch". I agreed, but asked, "Who will be watching with me?" He told me he didn't know the names, but they had said they were friends of mine. When I got to the store, there sat Cappy and a friend of his (Jessie) who was staying (boarding) at his mother's house. Bob had in this store a nice couch, a couple of comfy chairs, and a fireplace with lots of wood and he told us that if we wanted anything to eat or drink to go ahead. That meant we could drink all the Cokes we wanted and eat all the cookies, or cupcakes, we could handle! What a setup! Jessie had a girlfriend in Oroville, a town up by Sacramento, and so he would call her, and visit on the phone, and if there was a plane going over, we would not have heard it because we danced to the radio, sang to the music, and anything else except listen for planes! Bob would probably have fired all of us, if he knew! We finally tired out and Cappy was sitting on the couch and I laid down with my head in his lap, and Jessie was sitting in one of the chairs, and all of us were about half-asleep—or so I thought! Cappy then told me that his birthday was about ten days away and would I like to marry him on his birthday! I sat straight up and said, "What??!" Jessie calmly said from his chair, "He wants to know if you'll marry him on his birthday!" And of course that started another round of conversation about how I had to talk to the priest and if Mother and Dad would say it was O.K. Cappy told me that he wanted to come over as soon as he could and ask my father for "my hand". Then he and Jessie took me to Bob's and then went home!
Believe me, Mother wasn't too happy about the time we had to prepare, but it all worked out that we were married a week after Cappy proposed; and yes, he did take the time to ask Dad for my hand. Dad's reply was, "Yes, you can marry her. There isn't any way that I could stop her if that's what she wants!"
So the fun began! We had to see a priest in Angels Camp and that turned out O.K. Father said that it didn't give him much time to get a dispensation from Sacramento (Cappy wasn't a Catholic and so the Church had to give me a dispensation to get married). However he told us to go ahead with our plans, that he was sure it would be worked out! I sat there that evening watching Cappy turn on his charm! I thought Father would never get through asking him questions about his life in Mexico! On Tuesday morning we went to the Calaveras County Courthouse and applied for our license! Then we went to a doctor's office to get our blood tests, then to Valley Springs, where Cappy's folks lived, and told them. They were delighted! I had to borrow a dress from my sister Genevieve, as I didn't have money enough to buy one that soon! We talked Cappy's brother, Lafay (Alonzo Lafayette—don’t ask me where the Farnsworth family came up with their names!), who agreed to be the best man, and my sister Genevieve was the Maid of Honor. Remember, this was the week before Christmas, and so Father McGuire told us that we would have to be married in the rectory, because all the Christmas Confessions were taking place that night in the Church.
The afternoon of the wedding, Cappy's Mother called and asked if he could go down to pick up his brother Bert. Bert was a somewhat undesirable fellow as I was to find out through the years (He was an alcoholic). Don't ask me why I didn't stay home but Cappy wanted me to go with him to pick up Bert. So time was "a wastin’"; we couldn't find him after chasing around for what seemed like an hour. He was supposed to be in one place and when we got there, people told us he had gone to another place, and so it went, on and on! We never did find him, and we had to get back, pick up Cappy's folks and his two children. Then he rushed me home and I got ready, and we all went from White Pines back down to Angels Camp where the Church was. Now it had started to snow and was miserable, to say the least, on the highway, but we made it; so in a very simple ceremony, I became Mrs. Afton Farnsworth. We had to go back to White Pines where Mother and Mom Farnsworth had, during the week, planned a small buffet supper. Mother had made a cake, and all was pretty nice. Or so I thought!
We (Cappy and I) had, at the first of the week, rented a small cabin across from where he met me at the Arnold Inn. He and his brother looked out the door of the folk’s house and the snow was really piling up! So the Farnsworth clan left, but we could, in no way, by the time we got ready to go to our "honeymoon cottage”, get out of White Pines to go the mile up to our place! Besides, there was no heat there, and the lights had gone out in Arnold because the snow had piled up so fast on the wires. So a lot of quick changes were made; mainly, getting Genevieve a place to sleep, and we spent the night at Mom and Dad's!!! Oh Joy!!!”
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