With a Little Help

By Carol Gee

All the women’s magazines I read back when my husband Ronnie and I were first dating claimed that the way to a man’s heart was not through his stomach, as those old wives’ tales suggested, but by showing an interest in what he liked.

We met forty-five years ago, when we both were stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base. I was one of twenty-two women on a base that, at the time, housed two hundred men. On our sixth date, Ronnie invited me to go fishing. I should have seen it coming when he advised me to wear my combat boots.