The Best Years Of My Life Have Been Spent With This Lady, My Wife! Happy Birthday Regina! And Many More!

1989---I got the Pvt RN a 1960 VW Westfalia camper bus for her birthday present. Safari windows, wooden interior, drawers and cabinets and a screened in porch. Another one of those why did we ever sell this car car. Jim and Sara were embarassed to be seen in this car. They would hide when we would come up to a stop light.
The Pvt RN becoming an RN
Out to lunch with Sharon, the neighbor lady! 1964 M151A1---another birthday present. Kelly Knauer and I drove over to Summersville, MO to pick this jeep up. The seller told us he had good news and bad news. The bad news was he was keeping the batteries (it took two): the good news was the jeep would be getting new batteries.
"Lucy, I'm home!"
A serious day at the zoo.
Before we were married.
Hanging around on the river--this was one tree the Pvt RN jumped out of without getting snarled up in a rope.
Down in Arkansas, on the Buffalo River. We had a VW Thing and a trailer that we put all our camping gear in. We used to go camping a lot when the kids were younger. I bought the "Thing" at a flea market in Rockaway Beach, MO for $1500.00.
Making faces with circle pretzels. The kids are all grown now. This was taken somewhere in Iowa in 1982-1983 in our 40' Kountry-Aire 5th wheel travel trailer. That is my sister Mary in the picture also. She came up to visit us on the Greyhound. She brought a vacuum cleaner on the bus with her. She was afraid to check in the luggage under the bus for fear it might get broken so she made the bus trip with the vacuum cleaner on her lap. Our tow vehicle was a 1982 black four door Chevrolet Dually pickup with a 6.2 liter diesel engine. The first and last diesel pickup I ever bought.
The Pvt RN gets a car seat at her first baby shower, 1976.
The Pvt RN and another birthday present: a 1972 Porsche 911. This was taken at Tyler Bend, Arkansas on the Buffalo River. We were on a road trip and had a wonderful time. This was a fast car that cornered like it was on railroad tracks. It was fun to drive once you got it started....it had 6 carburetors and took a can of starting fluid to start it when it was the least bit damp out. Once, I got it up to 140 mph in a controlled environment. That was plenty fast. This was a car that you parked in two spaces way down at the end of the lot to avoid door dings. The paint looked 2 feet deep, that shiny guards red.

It took me awhile, but I learned that the Pvt RN's idea of a wonderful birthday present is not another car,or a pickup or a set of mag wheels, no matter how good of deal I thought I made. Rather it is the joy that comes from family, like having our son and his wife and family living next door, and seeing our grandchildren everyday. It is the joy of watching our daughter and her husband live their dream of raising horses. Here's wishing you the best and many more to come because of all the things that ever happened in my life, you're the best. Happy Birthday.