Today is the 42nd anniversary of our first date.
We were working at the old Bayshore Independent newspaper. Patty was the bookkeeper, I was managing editor. We went to dinner at The Islanders in Matawan, a super-nice Chinese restaurant; and they treated us like royalty, the proprietor being very happy with the restaurant review I wrote a few weeks before (thank you, Steve Wong, wherever you are). No, we didn’t have a spread quite like in the photo: there were only two of us. But we had the best.
Then we went to a movie, The Voyage of the Damned, and afterward to my softball team’s hangout, Sam’s Bar & Grill. Somewhere along the way, Patty mentioned the ancient Medes’ capital city, Ecbatana. That’s when I knew I was in love. You can’t easily find a woman who knows about Ecbatana.
All of these places that I’ve mentioned are now one with Ecbatana, but we’re still together. And tonight we hope to take a leisurely spin around town to admire everybody’s Christmas lights.