Wild Card/Monday — 7.31.17

On this day in 1944, my parents married in Reno, Nev. Both were second generation children of Portuguese immigrants that migrated from the Azores Islands in the middle of the Atlantic. (In fact, all four of my grandparents came from the Azores.) My father provided for us by running his own dairy and later managing my uncle’s dairy. He told me often that he was able to take care of his family by using his muscles. But that I would have to use my brains to make it in the emerging. My parents were married 32 years when my father was killed in a traffic accident in October 1976. Mom was 51 at the time. She’s now 92 and living in a Coeur d’Alene assisted living facility. She never remarried in the 41 years since my father’s death. If you ask her now, she’ll say, “I had the best. Why should I remarry?” That’s love, my friends. Here’s your Wild Card to start the week …