Toward the end of 1978, I was an aimless twenty-one-year-old living with my parents in the small town of Chebanse, Illinois. I had just moved back home at their request as we had recently buried my sister, and understandably, they weren’t coping well. To escape the memories that clung to town like a haze, they traveled frequently.

Dad asked me to move back in, rent-free, just to have someone around the house. I’d only been living six blocks away in a small apartment, but he said my presence gave him some peace of mind. Truth be told, I was probably home just as little as they were—but if it helped, I was up for it. Now would be a good time to repeat the key phrase here: rent-free.

I was working long hours in the family transportation business, especially with my parents often out of town. That winter, most of my free time was spent at a local bar I’ll call Skinny’s, getting loaded, then stumbling home to crash before doing it all over again the next day. That was life in a small town in the ’70s.

One Friday in February 1979, I met up with a friend at his apartment—let’s call him JD—to get ready for the weekend. We were bored, half-listening to Running on Empty by Jackson Browne, which seemed an apt soundtrack for where we were in life. (Funny how I can still remember that detail 46 years later.) Restless, we decided to head up to Skinny’s to properly kick off the night.

Back then, my weekends were mostly a blur of booze and weed. In hindsight, some of that haze was probably grief I didn’t know how to process. Grief counselors weren’t exactly a thing in towns like ours in the late ’70s.

Skinny’s had become a haven for misfits from four or five nearby towns—drunks, stoners, and bikers. I checked all three boxes, so I was more than qualified for entrance. It was the perfect spot to drink cheap beer, blast rock on the jukebox (three songs for a quarter), shoot pool, or kill time on the pinball machine. Quarters lined the edges of both tables – placeholders for the next challenger. The place stayed open later than the other two bars in town, unlawfully, of course, which made it even more appealing to our motley crew.

Plenty of stories could be told about that place, some of which may now fall outside the statute of limitations, but for the sake of whatever good name I have left, those tales will remain sealed within the sticky, beer-soaked walls of “Smitty’s.”

But that particular Friday night, something was different.

As we walked in, the smoke hit us like a curtain, thick with cigarettes, cigars, and pot. And then, through the haze, an apparition appeared. She drifted through the room like a figure hopping from one cloud to the next before vanishing back into the mist. She moved like an angel with a mission.

She, we would later learn, was the new bus girl. Skinny’s had never had one before or since. The place was famous for sticky floors and the lingering smell of spilled beer, and no one had ever cared. Yet there she was, gliding through the crowd, clearing ashtrays and bottles, wiping tables and doing her best to avoid people like me.

But this was no ordinary bus girl. Let’s call her Cleopatra. Okay, too dramatic – let’s shorten it to Dawn.

Dawn was a knockout. The kind of girl you’d never expect to see working in a dive like Skinny’s. Honestly, sometimes I didn’t know what I was doing there myself, me being a truck driver and all.

She had deep brown eyes, long black hair, and a darker complexion than any of us sun-starved bar rats. We came in two shades: pasty white or sunburn red. Dawn also had dimples that could stop a room cold. I swear, she could’ve been Miss Illinois, although that whole age thing might’ve interfered.

JD and I both had our eyes on her. Hard not to. So did Larry and Scott, posted up on the other side of the bar. Which meant we had to act fast.

We pushed through the smoke, clawed past the crowd, and claimed our usual stools at the bar. We ordered beers from Linda, the bartender, and while she fetched them, we tried to sneak glances at Dawn like we weren’t being obvious idiots.

When Linda returned, she caught us both craning our necks. She rolled her eyes and informed us that Dawn was her cousin, in town for the summer to help with babysitting and to make a little extra money bussing tables.

For a few minutes, JD and I sat at the bar like teenagers, arguing over who was going to ask her out. Finally, one of us, neither of us can remember who suggested a coin toss to see who would hit on her. (And yes, back then we still used the phrase “hit on her.” Cringe-worthy now, but that was the parlance of the time.)

We called Linda over to officiate the toss. Looking back, I doubt she was thrilled about her two drunk regulars ogling her younger cousin. But the coin went up anyway.

And I won. I asked her out and she said “yes.” A year later, I asked her to marry me, and guess what, she said “yes” again. Was I a lucky guy or what?

That all happened 46 years ago, and she hasn’t left me yet.

This June 21st, we’ll celebrate our 45th anniversary.