The Rock Wall

Have you noticed that when successful, beautiful single young single women reach a certain age they seem to suddenly realize that their biological clock is ticking and almost before you know it they are married and have a baby? I’ve seen it happen several times in El Dorado Springs. I don’t have a name yet for the phenomenon but I think maybe we are seeing it on the national stage. It happens to guys, too.

I think Travis Kelce, star wide end for the football Kansas City Chiefs may have made a billion dollar phone call when he invited Taylor Swift, famous single singing and dancing star and reputed billionaire, to attend a Chiefs game to watch him play. She accepted and sat with his mother in the glassed in booth.

Then he took her to dinner and leased every booth in the restaurant so they could have complete privacy. A Kansas City friend tells me Travis just bought a $6 million house. Tell me he didn’t have her help picking it out.

Taylor is 34. I hear. Travis is younger, I figure.

I’d give them a year before they tie the knot.

Good for them. I’m pulling for them.

I was almost 29 in Shreveport and dating every beautiful single girl I met and giving no thought to marriage. My boss sent me to the Bossier Press to chew out the editor for an ill informed article his reporter wrote about telephone construction.

Kimball worked there and was in charge of the office that day. We chatted while I waited or her boss to get free. I told her about catching my first alligator on rod and reel.

I handled PR for the phone company for Northwest Louisiana. A few days later, Emily Pierce, a reporter for TV 6, told me she wanted to set me up with a friend of hers, Kimball Snider. I said, “I’ve got a date with her Thursday night.”

One night in a grocery store on North Market, Kimball asked me if anybody had ever asked me to marry them in a grocery store. I was speechless and finally choked out a weak, “No.”

The next day, in my bass boat, we were in Brewster’s Pocket on Cross Lake in the exact spot where I had caught my first alligator. I ran the boat up on solid ground and told Kimball, “I’ve got something to ask you.”

She squinched her eyes and said, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.”

I asked, “Why not?”

She replied, “Because if you do, I‘ll say ‘Yes.’”

So I asked her if she would marry me. She said. “Yes.”

She set the date for Halloween so I wouldn’t forget.

That will be 48 years ago.

                KL