Judy and I met in a college youth group, Gamma Delta, in early 1967 at Immanuel Lutheran Church, in DeKalb IL. One time there was a party for visiting Gamma Deltans from other campuses. I was asked to ask Judy to be a date for another man, and while doing that thought, "What a fool. You should be asking her for yourself." Later we dated for the rest of the year 1967. Several visits to her parents' home in Wheeling IL during the summer, and parties on weekends there with friends from college during summer and school. 

In September 1967 I proposed to her while we were hiding in the loft of her uncle Lyle's barn near Dubuque IA on a weekend trip with her parents. She accepted. Her father required that I ask for her hand, and when I did, he asked me what I would give him. I think I said a camel and two goats. He gave me a beer. To be accepted into the larger family, I had to be able to make good lasagna, according to her uncles and aunts. That task was accomplished on their "national day," January 26, 1968, a date of many birthdays and other happenings including Chicago's worst snow storm up until then in 1967.

We were married at St. John's Lutheran Church in Northbrook IL July 20, 1968, with a traditional Chicago-land reception and dinner following with tons of great food provided by her mom and the catering company for which her mom worked at times.

Our first home was in the country 7 miles south of DeKalb IL near the little town of Elva on a dirt road. It was an old farm house, of which the original portion was a cabin built in the 1840s according to a historian living nearby. It had been expanded a few times, and was two stories with three bedrooms and one bath. The house had no insulation or storm windows. The first winter, we went to bed one night and awoke in the morning to water frozen in glasses in the living room. We asked the landlords, and they insulated the walls and added storm windows, but the house was still rather cold in winter. They also bought us paint to repaint the interior. There were many weekends with friends at that house. With two extra bedrooms, we could also have friends stay overnight.

Judy started her job at Malta High School during the summer of 1968. She was a Home Ec teacher and also responsible to visit members of the Future Homemakers of America during the summer (and paid extra to do that). On her first day of visits she came home with a trunkload of sweet corn, which we had to prepare and feeze immeditely. We already had a garden, and the sweet corn started us on freezing and canning vegetables for winter. We had to buy a freezer before we could afford to buy a clothes dryer to go with our washer. Her parents had bought us the washer, and surprised us with a delivery of a dryer from Polk Brothers, which at the time was a large applicance dealer in the Chicago area.

The house sat far back from the road in the midst of many maple trees. It was like living in an open forest, but there was a LOT of grass to cut. In winter we had to "bang" snowdrifts as we drove out of the driveway and on the roads to work or school. The rent was $115/month with water from a deep well included. We had to get a water softener because the well water stained our white clothes orange. The house was heated with propane gas, and sitting exposed in the winter to Illinois winds, it required a lot of propane to heat it even after it was insulated. We had a very large kitchen which allowed having a large gas stove and a kitchen table for friends. There was also a large dining room and living room. Two of the bedrooms were on the first floor, one having been the original cabin. Our bedroom was on the second floor and had a small area outside the room at the top of the stairs which Judy used as her office and for her large hair dryer on a stand. There was an attic over part of the first floor, in which we caught 72 mice in a few days when the first cold days of fall came. Following that adventure, we sealed every opening around the house that we could find.