Gramps! Are you going to tell me Granmaw cheated on you?
“Hey, get the coffee, and listen carefully.”
With Brian’s rapt attention I started my story.
“It’s no news that I was a fighter pilot in Korea, but you may not know that when I came home in 1953 I met your grandmother and after a very short courtship we were married. Your father came along in our third year and your aunt Sharon two years later. Your grandmother was so very beautiful. I know your memories of Granmaw is of a little chubby grey headed old woman but when she was 29, in our ninth year of marriage she was a gorgeous, desirable woman. I can tell you I got in more than one fight over some drunk who got too familiar with Gail. She never encouraged men or even flirted, but she couldn’t help how she looked.”
“Life was good for nine years until it blew up in my face. Gail had a very close friend named Tamara Stone. The two had known each other even before I had met Gail. Tammi was not a bad person; she just wasn’t cut out to be a faithful wife. She was divorced twice before our tenth anniversary. I tried to get Gail to find another BFF, but she would just tell me that it wasn’t Tammi’s fault that she wasn’t married to someone so awesome as me, and if she ever found a Jack Shields clone, she would stay happily married. Well, I couldn’t argue with that logic so I just shut up.
“I can remember like yesterday when I came home a little early on a Friday. Gail exploded into my arms. She said ‘Darling, I have the most wonderful news. Tammi has an extra tickets to the Frank Sinatra show at the Sands in Las Vegas. I told her we couldn’t such an expensive trip and ‘guess what baby?’ She said it was an all-expense paid deal. Even the airline tickets – first class – were included.”
What could I say, but “Great! I guess you are going?
She got that ‘little girl’ look and said “I hope you will let me go, but if you don’t want me to. I won’t.” The funny part is that if I said I didn’t want her to go, she wouldn’t.
However, I knew that since high school Gail, like half the female population in 1962 had a crush on ‘Old Blue Eyes”, so I said “When do you leave and do you want me to drive you to the airport?”
She jumped up and down and screamed. “I’ve got the best husband in all the world! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I found out the two would leave in one week and stay for four days in the Sands hotel. I did drive them to the airport. As I hugged her goodbye, I slipped her an envelope with five hundred dollar bills. I said “if you win you can split it with me.”
I got an excited phone call when they checked into the Sands to tell me how lavish their room was. The second call came on the evening of the second day. She and Tammi were having a great time playing the nickel slot machines. Funny though, I didn’t get any more phone calls until the fourth day, just before they boarded the flight home. The last call was very subdued, with nothing about the Frank Sinatra show. Not at all what I expected if they had an enjoyable experience.