Travel Back In Time With Me

When I started this blog I wasn't sure what I would put on it. I found things to post based on holidays and personal events. I am sort of at a stand still as to what to post next, so I started thinking. Now this could be dangerous for everyone.

I have started a huge project--I am scanning all my pictures to put on disc so I won't lose them. As I scanned the first two albums I realized I had actually seen some interesting things. My husband, Michael, retired from the United States Navy after thirty years of service, so the first albums I have scanned are from the beginning of our marriage 35 years ago.

I met Mike before he joined the Navy when we both worked at a restaurant in Glen Burnie, Maryland by the name of The White Coffee Pot. This was a chain of restuarants in Maryland. He was a bus boy and I was a waitress making a whopping fifty cents and hour plus tips. The bus boys made a lot more--maybe $1.75, and they got no tips. This was in my senior year of high school--1967-1968.

In November 1967 Mike left for Great Lakes for boot camp. We wrote to each other, and he came home on leave at the end of boot camp. When his leave was over he had orders to Iceland. Again, we wrote for a while, but as young people have a way of doing, our letters became farther apart, and eventually stopped. I lost track of Mike and didn't hear from him for about five years.

One night I got a call from someone asking me to guess who it was. I had been told by a mutual friend Mike had been asking about me, so I knew who it was. By this time he was stationed at the Naval Academy. I was working for the Maryland State Comptroller's Office in Annapolis, and Mike asked me out to lunch. I accepted, but warned him he had better show up. This was in November 1971. In May 1972 Mike and I were married.

When we married Mike had orders to Portsmouth, Virginia to attend Medical Services Technician School. We were married on a Sunday and had to report to Portsmouth on the following Friday. We'd gone to Portsmouth a couple months before we were married and found an apartment, and we just left all of our wedding gifts packed and had the Navy ship them to our apartment. This was the beginning of our lives together. I have decided to chronicle the years here periodically. Please be aware I was and am a horrible photographer, but Mike was and is much better. The terrible pictures I took, and the good ones Mike took. So, stay tuned, and travel back with me to the beginning of our marriage. This is the first installment.


This first picture obviously I took. This is Mike walking off the stage after graduating from MST school. He had received orders to what was then Naval Air Facility Sigonella, Sicily. We were both very excited.

Before going to Sicily we went home to Maryland to visit family. The picture above is my grandmother, Clara Marie Wimpling (my mother's mother) and my nephew, Jeremy Daniel Small. Jeremy s the son of my oldest brother, Bob Small.

Mike and his family were very active members of the BPOE Elks Lodge 2266 in Glen Burnie, Maryland. On the night before we left for Sigonella there was a Lodge event and Mike's mother asked us to go. Above is a picture of Mike, me, his mother, Phyllis Noel, and his step-father, Sam Noel.
Phyllis had a cake made for Mike and me and presented it to us during the party. My, God, were we ever really that young? I was 22 and Mike was 24 in this picture.
This is a picture of my sister-in-law, Gay, and my neice Anna Small. This was taken in my mother's kitchen.
This is my mother, Bernadine Small. She is doing one of her favorite pastimes, crocheting. My mother was happy for Mike and me, but also upset that we were leaving. We were leaving for New York on a Sunday, and she did not want to be there. She and my Dad went away for the weekend. I was fine until the time came to leave, then I wanted to not go. My grandmother was the only one home and she just didn't know what to do. When we got on the plane at Friendship Airport in Baltimore Mike made me go on first so if I chickened out he could push me on the plane. :)
This is my dad, Francis Small. He's doing one of his favorite things too--reading the newspaper. He acted like he was fine with us leaving, but later I found out he was upset too that we were going so far away.

I don't think any of us realized until it was time to go that this was not just going to be a trip around the corner. We were going half way around the world. I had never been away from home, other than to visit New York and Miami. I had no idea what I was going to see in Sicily. I was absolutely scared to death. I knew in the three years we were to be in Sicily there would be a lot of changes at home. But I did get on the plane. Once we got to New York I was OK. I was amazed at the hotel--I don't even remember now which one we stayed at, but it was near JFK, which we flew out of. What a culture shock when we arrived in Sicily. The airport building was a quonset hut, and there were goats, chickens, sheep and other animals roaming free. When I got off the plane in Sicily my first thought was, "Oh, my God! What WERE you thinking???"

So this is the first installment of my "travelogue". In future posts I will tell of the beautiful countryside and the many weekend trips we went on with other members of the Branch Dispensary in Sigonella. I hope you will find something of interest in what I post.