I'm happy that she chose me

There is no photographic record of our wedding. I had a state-of-the-art Cannon F1 camera that I paid off on the installment plan, but I was always behind the lens and rarely in front. 

We had driven to Brewton, Alabama to the home of a friend who had for years been the preacher where Jilda's family attended church at the time.

Standing on the front porch of a double-wide trailer, the preacher tied the knot. I'd given the preacher's wife a crash course in wedding photography, but perhaps she would have understood better had I been speaking Mandarin Chinese, because the negatives were so blurry you couldn't make out an image on any of them.

After the wedding, we headed farther south to Panama City Beach, Florida for our honeymoon. We stayed at the Quinn Cottages. They were small cottages built on slabs with concrete blocks. There was no AC in the cottage, so we slept on the screened porch and listened to the sound of the surf.

There were no condos then, only mom and pop stores, restaurants, and sea shell shops.

A handicapper would have given odds that our marriage wouldn't last. There were times when the stars lined up against us, and it might have been easier to walk away.....but we didn't. And sitting here on Cinco de Mayo 2014, our 40th anniversary, I'm happy that we found each other, and found a way to stay together.