Dad, Is it True?

Dad married Mom on the first day of Spring in 1965. Mom had no idea she was getting married. There was no engagement party, let alone ring. There was just a business trip to Miami where she tagged along with Dad and his partner, Hugh Auchincloss. There was however, a quick stop over in Sanibel Island to go sea shelling at dawn before meetings in Miami later on that day. It was in Sanibel at dawn that a minister came bounding out onto the beach and performed the ceremony, and Dad married Mom.

Mom and Dad Wedding Day, March 21st, 1966

Before the surprise nuptuals at dawn in Sanibel, Dad had courted Mom in NYC and escorted her to many a party...but ONLY during the week. Though he was quite taken with her, he was pretty convinced that his weekend escape routine was something that would make her run.

One day Mom asked where he went on the weekends. So she got the invite and a packing list. (blue jeans, sneakers, etc..)Dad would have bet she didn't own blue jeans, and the only sneakers she had were for tennis, but wanted to warn her is wasn't going to be a trip to Southampton or Litchfield.

So he picked her up on a Friday afternoon in his Mark VII Jag
(I have such an affection for cars...and thought a visual here was crucial considering what is to come)
And to his surprise, she was dressed perfectly for the weekend ahead...

Dad had decided to put this fancy girl to the test. They drove 2 hours out of NYC to what is now Minneswaska State Park, but was then a cabin on remote Awosting Lake, that was Dad's weekend retreat. They parked the Jag, loaded up groceries into woven basket packs and hiked for 45 minutes before arriving at Lake Awosting. THEN, they loaded up the canoe, and paddled across the lake to Dad's cabin (still actually there, but in severe disrepair). All in all, an hour and a half trek from car to cabin. (Dad didn't let on that you could actually drive the whole way to the cabin, because that would ruin the test)

And then, he made her sleep in a tent.

The next morning, Dad awoke to the view of mom casting her fly rod into Awosting Lake. He chuckled, as the lake was a 'dead' lake, meaning no fish could survive in it due to excessive minerals. But no need to stop her artful routine. After all, it's not often a guy is pleasantly surprised that his seemingly citified love interest is talented in the ways of the fly rod...


A bit later he smells something cooking on the open fire.

After getting no bites in Awosting Lake, Mom took to the stream nearby and guddled for trout. She'd learned this technique with her father in Canada on fishing trips as a girl...and, well, imagine knowing trout so well that you find their hiding spot in a stream and they LET you pick them UP!

Yes, mom caught a trout with her bare hands. I'm surprised Dad didn't propose right then and there.

But, soon after, the once social couple in NYC...

got married at dawn on the first day of Spring, and the rest is history.

Dad in lederhosen (don't ask) and the boys a decade or so before I came a knockin' at the same cabin on the same lake where Mom won over Dad after guddling a trout.

-Dad, I know It's True, Bradley.