After tangling with the potato piler, MK was given another chance at farming. Mostly she drove the tractor and pulled trailers around the farm. She was very good at being careful, but still found her share of trouble. One afternoon on a narrow bridge next to the farm, she slowed down to check on the hay baler she was pulling. As she turned her head, she also turned the steering wheel slightly and dropped the right front tire on the 8N Ford tractor over the edge of the bridge. With that, her parents decided that it would be better for everyone if she polished her domestic skills during spud harvest. Her father suggested that she’d probably live longer if she paid attention to what was ahead of her rather than what was behind. I learned about this much later, during the first year of our marriage, and by then I just figured that I really hadn’t married an Idaho farm girl after all.
As it turns out, what she learned on the farm helped in many ways, but it was her business education degree at BYU that put her on the front lines of the Watergate scandal litigation and paid for much of my medical education. There was nothing that compared to her experience with an afternoon soap opera. Before we were married, MK and her mother watched General Hospital while working on their domestic skills. After we married and I dragged her off to the east coast, this carried on via long distance. MK was working and, in order to keep up, called home regularly to catch up. After all, it was watching General Hospital, that gave MK a keen intuition for dealing with the creepy old men who came along before we were married, while I was a missionary in Toronto and she was on a BYU semester abroad in Europe in 1968.
One evening in Monaco, she found herself at The Casino de Monte-Carlo and was invited to a ritzy party on a big yacht. She did not instinctively feel threatened when some enthusiastic, nice-looking, young crewmen rounded her up with a bunch of college girls and whisked them onto a huge yacht moored right in front of the casino.
The BYU girls soon found themselves on a floating palace, the epitome of wealth and opulence. They politely declined the boozy drinks but did enjoy the music and hors d'oeuvres, along with some brief, casual dancing without a partner. The owner of the yacht saw MK and must have liked her dancing. He soon became cozy and offered to show her around. Before she knew it, there she was standing in his stateroom, face-to-face and all alone with an overly-tanned older Greek man who spoke perfect English. She was not impressed with his powerful cologne, his slicked-back silvery-white hair, or his very expensive silver sharkskin suit. He did not hesitate to propose marriage and sailing off with her for a life of romance and luxury. MK had seen this before. She recognized that despite his lavish trappings, this man had much more money than brains or integrity. She recognized his behavior as being just like the creepy old men she had seen on General Hospital. She must have been talking fast when she explained that she had a missionary in Toronto and couldn’t possibly accept his proposal. She said this several times in different ways, talking faster and faster with each recitation. When he couldn’t keep up, his eyes widened and he realized that he had a tiger by the tail — a sober tiger who definitely was not interested in romance. MK excused herself just long enough to make a few fast moves that she had learned while escaping from that creaky, old potato piler back in Idaho and quickly slipped off the boat -- shaken but not stirred — her dignity and clothing still very much intact. Dodging that bullet in Monaco may explain why she did not tolerate much goofing off while we were dating. As I think about it, I am most fortunate — maybe I really did marry an Idaho farm girl after all.
Ever vigilant,
RT
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