The pursuit began.  He had made up his mind.  I, on the other hand, had not.  I already had a room at OSU reserved.  A corner room--and you know how hard those are to come by.  I had applied early.  I had a plan.  But he had thought the entire thing out.  In his mind it was a done deal.  I guess he thought I was going to jump at the opportunity to date an officer.  He certainly had no shortage of women who would.  (Pensacola.  An Officer and a Gentleman.)

So the next week after the letter he wrote me, a bottle of Chanel #5 came in the mail.  (A teenager--expensive perfume?  What was he thinking.)  Followed by a well worn copy of Cyrano de Bergerac:  And then a copy of Elizabeth Browning's poems.  The gifts kept coming, and by the time I graduated from high school, I didn't know what to think about him.  This was a whole new experience for me.

And then, in May, he took leave and came back to Pryor.  He had bought a new car.  A baby blue Jag XK convertible.  Cool.  We went to dinner, and on the way home from Tulsa, I fell asleep.  He stopped in Claremore at the train station, woke me up, and said, "I want you to marry me.  My mom and dad (Baptist preacher) are here from Oregon and he can perform the ceremony.  If you don't marry me this week, I will have to fly them back when you do."  I was completely dumbfounded.

Ken's dad had baptized me.  I knew them very well.  I didn't know Ken at all.  I thought he was nuts.  "I'm not getting married.  To you or anyone else.  No."  That seemed easy enough for him to understand.  He replied, "You won't be able to resist me for the summer.  I want to marry you."  Cocky.  But he was sincere.  He had thought about it for 8 months.  I, on the other hand, hadn't.

He left a week later, and every weekend after that, he would get in whatever military plane was available in Pensacola, and fly to Pryor, buzzing the town at low altitude.  He would land in Tulsa and rent a car or have someone pick him up and spend the weekend trying to convince me to marry him.  People were stopping me downtown, (Pryor is a little town) and telling me to marry him so the town could have some peace. Once, he buzzed my house at 50 feet, but didn't know about the new water tower behind us--he grew up in Pryor--and missed it by rotating at the last second.  This was getting serious.  Everyone knew it was him, but getting the number on the plane was impossible.  Illegal.  But he was determined.  I was confused.