August 26, 2024 - Our daughter, Kay, married in 1979 while in college at Liberty, Missouri. Her new husband, Marti, was also a college student. Being “in-laws” was a new role for my wife and me, and we wanted to get off to a good start to impress our new son-in-law. After the wedding the bride and groom left for their honeymoon. We were left with the task of transporting all the wedding gifts from the church to their new apartment approximately twenty-five miles away. This necessitated our renting a U-Haul trailer to accomplish this task.
The following September our son, Doug, received a football scholarship to the same college in Missouri. The three of us drove back up to the college to assist with the college entrance for Doug. We decided to spend the night with our daughter and son-in-law who had now rented a mobile home near the campus.
On the morning of registration, Kay and Marti had already gone. Then my wife decided to iron a shirt for Doug to wear, but could not find an ironing board. So, she placed the shirt on the new sofa and used it to press the shirt.
Suddenly the fabric on the new sofa melted in a perfect shape of the iron, damaging two cushions. So, on our first visit as in-laws, we had ruined their new sofa. Not a good start.
A visit to Montgomery Ward that afternoon resulted in our locating an identical sofa, however, the salesman would not sell us two of the cushions. The best we could do was order two new ones, to arrive within a week. This meant that we would have to confess our transgression to our daughter. I don’t think that they held this little accident against us very long.
By the time of our next visit to the happy couple, they had moved into a house in St. Joseph, Mo. He was now the youth director at a large church.
The four of us were playing dominoes in the living room that fall afternoon when, suddenly Marti jumped up saying “I just saw a squirrel run up the tree in my yard. I’m going to get him.” He retrieved a small rifle from his closet, went outside and fired off a couple of rounds. “Well, I got him,” he replied as he put the rifle back in the closet.
Our domino game was interrupted a few minutes later by a knocking at the front door. Marti was greeted by two police officers when he opened the door. “Sir, did you shoot a squirrel a short time ago?” asked the older of the two officers. Marti seemed at a loss for words, but stammered, “Yes, sir. I did shoot a squirrel that was in my yard.” Perhaps shooting small game was illegal in Missouri and we were unaware. The officer stated, “Well, sir, your neighbors are quite upset that you killed one of their pet squirrels. Not only that, but it is against city ordinance to shoot a gun inside the city limits.”
Wow, it was appearing suddenly that our new son-in-law was going to be arrested and have a criminal record. The cushion incident paled in comparison to this. The two officers confiscated his rifle and wrote him a citation to appear in court to answer the charges. Then they left, our son-in-law looking like a whipped puppy.
“How will I ever live this down? I am the Youth Director at church,” he pondered. We assured him that the Holy Scriptures state “It came to pass,” and this, too, would pass. He paid a small fine and got his rifle back - end of story.
So now we were even in the attempt to impress each other… newly weds - 1, and in-laws - 1. I think it was about this time that we all quit keeping count.
