College Days!!

OH wow, I am away from home and own my own!!!
No MOM to tell me what to do!!!   I felt alive and free for the very first time!!

I moved into a house with several girls, made new friends....learned I could do what I wanted now!    This old 2 story house was the spill over for the dormitorys and we were lucky!   We had to go to the dorms dining room to eat meals however, and sometimes in the winter that was no fun so we learned to eat whatever we could.     I had an electric popcorn cooker and often we would heat soup in it as well as make popcorn.

I smoked, drank, cussed and just lived a wild life I thought!!   I really didn't know too much about the Wild side of life, but I did date and mostly we ran around in groups for the first year.

I was enrolled in the RN program at SEMO State University, where I learned a lot more about life!   Classes were so difficult I had to spend many late hours studying during the week.   We were required to make at least a C in every class, including history, english, national and state government..oh YUK!!  

Nursing classes were hard but there was plenty of instruction.     I learned to read a lot of material and try to remmeber it .....in other words, I learned how to study for the first time.    Anatomy and physiology was a very hard subject but I managed to pass.  Whew

While still in college, before graduation, I met a man I had known most of my life.    I was attending the annual West Pleasant Valley church event and picnic and on that day 2 guys asked me for a date.    I turned them both down.    However, one insisted that we go out another time so I said ok.     He had been married, and I thought was divorced, but actually was only separated legally.
My Mom had such a fit but really couldn't say too much since I was 20.   We dated and had good times driving around and around the different drive-in food places known as "The Pig" and "Studs".      He would come to the house where I lived in Cape all dressed up in a suit and was so handsome!   We would go to the "Purple Crackle", eat, talk, dance and smooch afterward.     OH MY!     When I was home on weekends he would take me to the drive in theater in Dexter and he was the only man I ever knew who actually wanted to watch
the movie!!!    After I graduated in 1965, I got married.

I graduated from Nursing School with an Associate of Arts degree in nursing and then took State Boards.  When my scores finally arrived in the mail I was thrilled!    My best score was in Medical Surgical field.... that was my favorite and I was elated.

My first job was at Doctors Hospital in Poplar Bluff, MO, working in the Emergency Room,  the drs would yell, bring me this and that and I had no idea where things were and I was scared!!   After a few months they promoted me to the Med/Surg floor and I was the only RN for 60 patients!     Wow what a difference, and I felt that I had found my niche.  

 After about 9 months I was asked to come home to Bloomfield to be the Nurse at the Bloomfield School and be paid through a grant      I accepted the position, and by Dec of 1966 I found out that I was pregnant with my first child.

My child was due in August of 1967.     So I quit work and never went back until later in life.   Because 4 years later his brother was born and we were moving in to the farm house that Grants dad had owned.
Also in the summers, Craig, my stepson, would come to visit and stay,     More about them later on.