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Thursday, April 21, 2011

What Do You Say?

I can be such a girl when it comes to romance. 

A sappy love story melts my heart quicker than Jeff Flake without a shirt on.

I also love to know people. It sounds strange, but I do tend to ask a lot of questions in an effort to get to know the people that I meet.

Those two things combined typically lead to me finding out where people met their significant other and how they were proposed to (if applicable).

While we were in DC we visited the daughter of one of Granny B's friends. I asked her how she met her husband and she went on and on telling us the story.

Then she asked Granny B how she met Popie - a story I'd heard before:

Way back in the day, Granny B's brother was a professional boxer. They grew up in upstate New York, but he had been asked to ref a fight in Tucson, AZ. When he got to Arizona, he called his wife back home and said, "Pack our things and sell the house, we're moving to Arizona."

When they moved, Granny B's sister, who had sinus issues (I think that is right), went with them to see if the dry Arizona air would help. When she didn't return home, Granny B's mom thought that maybe she was afraid to travel alone and sent Granny B to get her.

A couple of nights before they were set to leave, their neighbors decided to take them to the Adams Hotel, where the cowboys hung out. They didn't think it was right to let them leave Arizona without a true cowboy experience.

While out at the bar, a gentleman asked Granny B's sister to dance. They danced a few times that night and then he asked if he could take her on a date the next day. Long story short, Granny B's sister ended up marrying that cowboy and moving to his family's farm in the west part of Phoenix.

Granny B stayed in Arizona to help plan the wedding and once it passed, she didn't have enough money to travel home, so she got a job and stayed in town until she could earn what she needed to go home.

Living out on the farm proved lonely for her sister, so on the weekends she would ask Granny B to come out to stay with her. Though she didn't want to, Granny B did it.

Without a car she relied on her sister's brother-in-law and father-in-law to bring her out to the farm and to take her home again. That brother-in-law happened to be Popie.

I am unclear as to how long this all went on, but according to Granny B it was sometime in the Fall when they stopped at a bar on the way back to her house and had a few drinks. When they got to her house, before she got out of the truck Popie said to her, "Come the end of October we'll be done picking cotton. What do you say you marry me after that?"

She obviously accepted that cowboy proposal and they were married almost 50 years before he passed away.

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