farmdoc's blog post number 243

The happiest day I’ll have in my entire life was 41 years ago today. For on Tuesday 19 December 1967, Sweetheart Vivienne and I were married. She was 19-years-old and I was 20. We’d known each other for six years. For me, if it wasn’t love at first sight then it was at second. One of my ‘lunchtime legend’ sayings is that when you find a good woman you must grab her with both hands and never let go. We became engaged in March 1967. Her father was watching ‘Bonanza’ on TV and, heart pounding, I nervously waited until a commercial break before asking for his daughter’s hand. To my relief he instantly assented. Rabbi Chaim Gutnick married us in the garden of Stanmark in East St Kilda. The reception was indoors there. The first formality was two minutes silence for Prime Minister Harold Holt who’d disappeared two days prior. Our wedding waltz music was ‘Sunrise Sunset’. I remember nothing of the speeches. The reception flashed by. Then a taxi whisked us away to the John Batman Motel in Queens Road. We spent the next night at Sydney’s Wentworth Hotel. Then it was on to a Hayman Island honeymoon. Forty one years later, I’m still grabbing her with both hands. And I’m not letting go. Because she’s a good woman. The best. And I’m the luckiest man.