I was just sure that my brother David could tend to the kids until mom and dad got home, and John said his mom had packed some things for me….and even if the neighbor girl had it all figured out that it was John, we would be able to head out to get married before anyone would know for a while. So off we went.

John told me later he had gotten a taxi and drove past the house, then got a hotel that night and shaved off his beard. He doesn’t smoke, but he bought some cigarettes and had one hanging out of his mouth to make sure no one would recognize him.  Then he drove around Memphis and figured out the best way to get out of town. He also noticed that a train went across the tracks between our house and the store shortly after 5pm.

Mean while I am told that my brother David got really upset when I didn’t come home. He was calling around to every laundry mat he could find. David was thinking I might have been kidnapped, but as soon as mother got home from the laundry mat she said, “It’s that John Shepherd!” I guess all goodness broke loose. Mom called the police, the FBI and anyone she could think of…she was so upset. My dad later told me that she even thought she was having a heart attack and called the ambulance. It’s crazy when you are 15 years old, you don’t really think about the hurtful affects you can have on someone when you are just “so in love” and wanting to get married.

Well John had decided we should drive back to his granny’s house in Gurdon, Arkansas to see if we could borrow her car a little longer. We headed that way and John stopped at a rest area to take the black x’s off of the hub caps.

John kept telling me how friendly everyone was around where his granny lived. They all knew his granny’s car and all the neighbors up the long country roads waved at us…..we waved really big back to them. Well mostly I waved really big back to them. When we got to his granny’s house, she was standing out in the yard. She had been crying. When we got out of the car, she said, “Johnny….the police they done been here. They said you stole that little girl….. you gotta go on down there and turn yourselves in.” John said, “granny I’m not gonna turn myself in…. I need to borrow your car.” His granny told us she couldn’t loan us her car, cause the police done told her she would get in trouble for helping us…. So John told her, “Granny, we have to steal your car!”  So we jumped in the car and took off. Now…….. we had waved to all the neighbors and now we don’t know if the police had been going to the neighbors asking any questions or not. So John decided we better find another way out of there. He took an old logging road so we wouldn’t have to go back past the neighbors…..It was pretty muddy on this old logging road. It was March and it had been raining. We got a good ways up the road and a big truck or some large piece of equipment was stopped right in the middle of the road. I guess they had gone home for the day…so John backed up and got a run at it. He was gonna pass the truck, and there was a pretty good sized ditch that was quite muddy….I held my breath…we spun and slid around and slowly we got around the truck.

As soon as we got back to a main highway, a police officer waved at us as he passed. John said, uh oh….cops don’t wave at people…. I think he knows who we are. (to be continued)