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painted orange and fitted with stereo equipment. On his floor there was a huge, white upholstered, fiberglass %u201cchair%u201d in the shape of a bowl. This had been his Master%u2019s project and it was designed to be hung from the ceiling with ropes or chains. He also had a hand-me-down dresser in his bedroom, and a double-size waterbed.On the backside of John%u2019s bedroom door was a black-and-white, poster-size portrait of a goofy-looking Indiana U.S. Senator%u2014Vance something. He also had a six-foot-tall sculpture he%u2019d created%u2014a white giantess constructed out of scores of cut, bent, and welded-together coat hangers%u2014and a life-like, brown, molded papier-m%u00e2ch%u00e9 horned owl. There was also a fertility god he called Earl, hand-carved from a palm-tree trunk. As a teenager, he told me he had built his own mini-bike, motorcycle, and hot rod.tailoring a sports jacket for John. However, we knew, for certain, we didn%u2019t want to teach anymore, so we gave notices, which were effective at the end of the second semester. Our principal told me I had a gift for teaching, and should continue in the future, which was very kind. But, we decided to head off for adventures unknown in North Carolina. Why? Because we were young, and it seemed like a good place to go.We first moved to Greensboro, then to Shelby, where we both found jobs. John became a designer/draftsman for a display company, and I managed a small downtown shoe store which catered to adults%u2014mostly women. I not only sold shoes and purses, but I created the window displays for that store and another inside a nearby shopping mall. Together, John and I also did some commercial art work on the side.Unfortunately, we found that the South didn%u2019t appeal to us very much. This was an era when racial integration was in its infancy and, uncomfortably, many department stores still had 2 sets of restrooms, with gold or silver doorknobs. Shelby also had both a white park and a black park. Where you went still mattered. And we didn%u2019t care for the food. Grits, hushpuppies, okra, and other local fare didn%u2019t agree with our digestive tracts. Although I did grow to like jelly-andbacon sandwiches, and we both enjoyed occasional barbecued pork sandwiches topped with coleslaw. We met very nice people at work and explored nearby Charlotte, and the Blue Ridge Mountains but, in less than a year, we were back up in Ft. Wayne. I found John to be kind, extremely intelligent, fun, and very creative, and we became inseparable. After teaching all day together, we spent hours in his red MG convertible driving through the countryside, exploring and enjoying each other%u2019s company. On the day after Thanksgiving, we were married, and by the end of our first semester in Kendallville, we knew we%u2019d had enough of teaching. While the town, school, most of the kids, the principal, and the other teachers were wonderful, the nature of our jobs got to us. With some groups of students changing every six weeks, the repetition was more than we could bear. We both loved learning. In fact, we needed it as much as air and water. But, in our jobs, we just weren%u2019t learning anymore. Instead, we were repeating the same lesson plans over and over again to new groups of kids.At home in our apartment, I did enjoy teaching myself to cook and bake from scratch, and how to sew%u2014making much of my teaching wardrobe, and even Wedding photo. 1972Peripatos (WMU Poetry Magazine). January 1972