I was 14 years old. We had been dating for about one year. It was a fall evening and it was football season. I was gonna go to the football game with John. He drove me home from school so I could change into my cheerleading uniform. Mom and dad were not home, so we told my older sister ( that was 3 years older than me and babysitting all the younger children) we would be back after the game. She said my dad had gone to get a job somewhere in Redding she thought…(it was actually Riddle which was 15 miles away instead of 200 miles away) that seemed a long ways away to me….. I couldn’t believe it…..They were really gonna move me away??? John pulled me aside and said would you  marry me if I told you I had $300.00 in the bank? (oh boy it’s true what they say……. love is blind) I said yes…..So John told me to go upstairs and get some clothes and throw them out the window…..He would keep my sister occupied……Sure enough I ran upstairs, but to my knowledge we didn’t own a suitcase, with a family of 7 children. So I did the next best thing….. I  grabbed all of  my clothes out of the closet and drawers, tied them in a blanket and threw them out the upstairs window……It made a big thump when it hit the ground and my sister said what was that? John just kept her occupied then we said we were off to the game (or so we said.) We were off to John’s house to get his belongings. I was supposed to keep his father occupied while John gathered his clothes. John’s dad had suffered a brain hemorrhage and lost his ability to speak.(More about this later)  I didn’t know his dad really well and was trying to guess what all his grunts and gestures meant..We finally headed out for our run away marriage to Reno. We planned to hire an old man on the street to say he was my dad.

The weather didn’t really cooperate with us…. We were gonna head over the mountain to keep from going through a check station, thinking that our parents would realize we were gone by then. Well that plan didn’t work since the snow got deeper and deeper till the snow plow went as far as it could go and stopped in the middle of the road surrounded by snow. We had to turn around and head back for the main highway. Shortly before we got to the agricultural  check station going into California in the middle of the night, John had me lay down in the floorboard of his 1966 Ford Ranchero (more about this car later.) and covered me with clothes…..John thought they would be looking for a guy and a girl, so he thought if it was just a guy they wouldn’t recognize us so quickly. Well as I said it was a cold night and when we got to the check station, the officer at the station stayed in his nice warm building and motioned us to go on through……..(to be continued)