Thirty Years Together

A Case of "Opposites Attract"

January 1, 1995, Pigeon’s Forge, Tennessee

I met my husband, Jon, thirty-one years ago on a blind date. We immediately liked each other despite many obvious differences. It was a case of opposites attracting. The potential was there for either a tragic or joyous ending.

I was an elementary school teacher working with struggling students from kindergarten to fifth grade and a single mom with a teenaged son, struggling to make ends meet on a budget.

Jon was a locksmith by trade, now working a corporate job with a company that eventually reached Fortune 500 status. He hired, trained, and fired employees, developed and helped patent new projects, and, at times, was rewarded with shares of stock in the company. His two children lived with their mother in Maryland.

Our initial rendevous was on a Friday night—October 15, 1993. We met at a mall where I could safely exit if necessary. On the phone, we explained how we’d dress and where we’d meet. After locating each other, we had a snack at the food court. Jon’s beeper went off about fifteen minutes in. He glanced down, said it wasn’t important and regaled me with his history—born in England, immigrated to Canada, immigrated to Colorado, then moved to Maryland. He had been naturalized a few years earlier. Sometime later, Jon confessed that he had preset the beeper to go off after fifteen minutes in case the date was a disaster. Thank goodness for first impressions!

As the evening progressed, I trusted him to drive me around. We went to a bar for beer and dancing and ended the evening having cherry pie and coffee at a Waffle House. I told him about my Granny’s flaky pie crusts and cherry pie made from cherries picked from her orchard. Nothing could top that.

It may have been on that first date that I nicknamed Jon “Mr. Gadget.” I’d never known anyone as geeky as him or someone so enmeshed with devices. He drove a red Ford Thunderbird outfitted with a Motorola brick cellphone. It weighed about ten pounds and had a black antenna almost as long as the phone.

When we first got into the car and started driving, Jon reached out, touched my hand, and stroked it gently. Chills ran down my spine. I was a goner. We’ve been together ever since. Fourteen months after that first date, Jon and I eloped (that’s another story) and wed in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Jon is guarded and suspicious by nature, while I am gregarious, friendly, and engage with strangers. He looked around him and had situational awareness that often escaped me. As a Maryland locksmith and a board member of the national locksmith organization, he trained police officers to work with Neighborhood Watch groups. He also trained government entities with names often represented by three letters to do things general citizens are not allowed to do. He might grab my elbow in cities and quickly escort me across the street. He made me feel safe and protected.

Some things never change. He converted our current house into “Smart Home” status, populated by the Internet of Things, abbreviated IOT. In the seven years we’ve owned our current home, I’ve never needed a key to open an outside door. Instead, we use a four-digit code. People with access are allotted a different code, and Jon gets an email when it’s used. We have devices that tell our thermostat to turn on, start the fire in our fireplace, and more. I honestly can’t keep up with most of them.

Jon likes to read to escape, but it is always on an electrical device. I prefer to read a paper book, preferably with a yellow highlighter or sticky pads handy to find the important parts later. I taught elementary school for thirty-five years and enjoy helping children grow and develop. Jon has difficulty relating to children before they are at least age eighteen. I adore history, historical novels, and non-fiction books about places, people, plants, and animals. Jon enjoys James Bond movies and James Patterson novels. Choosing a VHS at Blockbuster was always painfully tricky. One of us was bound to be tuned out. It’s easier today with more extensive selections we can stream, trailers to preview, and recommendations in our feed.

Over the years, we’ve seen sickness, recovered from surgeries, had COVID-19 twice each, had influenza multiple times, recovered from a broken foot, lost parents, lost other family members, and more. We’ve purchased four homes—each one required that Jon create or upgrade a workshop. Each was populated with at least one dog until our farm collie died in 2023. We’re putting pets behind us now.

In our sixth decade, we retired, left the metro Atlanta area, purchased land in northeast Georgia, and started farming. In a short while, Jon opened a locksmith shop that served seven rural counties. He remained chief carpenter on the farm while I worked with interns and tended up to one hundred or more heritage livestock.

We’re now on the trek to eighty years. Jon is on a fervent mission to pass on his vast knowledge through online classes, regional classes, and more. He does a lot of consulting work. I started writing in 2018 and completed one book. I consulted with The Livestock Conservancy for three years, published several articles in multiple magazines and newsletters, and started this Substack blog to pass my knowledge forward.

Maybe we’re not so different after all.

1995 to 2025