October 27, 1999

DOWN HOME:
Booth marks the spot where family formed
___One person's romantic memory is another's comedy. Don't believe me? Ask my kids.
___We all traveled to Abilene a couple of weeks ago for Hardin-Simmons University's homecoming. HSU is one of Texas Baptists' true treasures.
___Around our house, of course, it's known also as the place where Mama and Daddy met, fell in love and courted. If it weren't for Hardin-Simmons, Lindsay and Molly

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wouldn't be here.
___So, I don't think they minded tooooo much that we dragged them back for our 20th anniversary homecoming. They only had to meet 40 or 50 folks who told them they knew their mom and dad "back when."
___Saturday night, Joanna wanted to go out with some of her old friends (which, I should say, in this case means friends of long standing, not friends with wrinkles and gray hair).
___So, I volunteered to take Lindsay and Molly to get a snack and back to the motel.
___Lindsay remembered Abilene is the home of the shrine of family folklore, the Taco Bueno fast-food restaurant where I proposed to her mother.
___"We could go to the Taco Bueno where you and Mama got engaged," she volunteered. "We could tell the people who work there that it's where you proposed. Of course, they'd think you're some kind of cheap, pathetic hick."
___Cheap, pathetic hick, huh? In my defense, I planned to propose to Jo at the West Texas Fair, on the very same Ferris wheel we rode on our first date. But she had me figured out (I should've known that wouldn't be the last time), and I wanted to surprise her. So, out of the blue, I asked her to take a study break, bought her a burrito and there, in the next-to-last booth, by the window, gave her a ring and with it my heart.
___My timing worked. Jo sure was surprised. She expected to get a ring five nights later, on the Ferris wheel at the fair, just as I had fantasized all summer long. But at least she was surprised, and at least she said yes.
___Now, however, I may go down in family history as the one who could be interpreted as the "cheap, pathetic hick." Lindsay, of course, vehemently disavowed that interpretation as her own. "But the people at Taco Bueno might think you're a cheap, pathetic hick," she disclaimed.
___Maybe she's right, at least partly. I've always envied clever romantics who figured out fantastic ways to propose. But we're just as married as they are. And although I may be cheap and a hick, I'm not pathetic.
___I went off to HSU to get an education, and I received a wonderful one at that. But even better, God gave me the light of my life for a bride and, later, two daughters who love their mother and me, no matter what people at Taco Bueno think.
__

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