Forty years ago today, the earth shook, history changed. Two people noticed. I was one of them. [View all]

[DFW]

Forty years ago today, in a dark, smoky cabaret in what was then West Berlin, a woman from Münster in Westfalen told me she was leaving for China the next day, but that I should meet her girlfriend from up north. I said, sure, where is she? She leaned back, and said, "right here."

The beautiful vision I saw nearly took my breath away, And, nerd that I was, I figured I would never have a chance with a woman like that. But then I thought, if I took that attitude my whole life, I indeed never WOULD have a chance with a woman like that. So I started talking to her, and lo and behold, she liked talking to me, too. She had never met an American before (at least not one that spoke her language). And that, as the saying goes, was that.

We've gone through some hoops to get here (cancer, heart issues, bureaucratic BS, etc.), but we've had some good times, too. Attractive, intelligent children, great parents, and some wild luck in making some friendships that may seem a little out of the ordinary.

Totally in the dark about what the future would bring in 1974, now forty years later, we figure we'll milk our time left for what we can, be it forty more years or forty more minutes. One thing is for sure: if you had told us that night in Berlin what the future held in store for the two of us, we would have both told you that whatever it is you were smoking, you were smoking too much of it.

In the beginning, there was an unsuspecting teenager in the flat farmland of northwestern Germany, never imagining that I was soon to disrupt her life a few years later:
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

Then, it was the two of us.....

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

A double wedding with my brother....
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

A couple of daughters along the way......
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

....who came to hang with interesting people.....
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

...but are interesting in their own right......
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

Some happy times.....
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

And some friends to remind us that things can change in a single instant....
[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

But at the end of the day, you play the hand that fate deals you. We've been more fortunate than many. It's been a nice ride, and we still have each other after ALL that crazy stuff that never would have occurred if we both hadn't been in that smoky joint in Germany forty years ago. If it all ends tomorrow, no one can take that away from us.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

What a long, strange trip it's been..........