MARRIED... and facing the real world (Part47c)

The following Saturday Elle had to spend doing pledge duty with the new pledges for the sorority. I had intended to spend the day scoring Dr F’s IQ exams but when I went to his office it was locked. After wasting an hour waiting for him I gave up and decided to go visit with Clyde and Harry. When I arrived they were in the process of “breaking” yearlings. (A few words of explanation... Birthdays for all horses are January 1st no matter what actual day they are born. The first year of life has no “name” but in their second year they are called “yearlings”. Up until the Fall of their “yearling” year they are allowed to run free out in pasture land. Then they are exposed to all the material things that they will need to become racehorses and their exposure to those things is called “breaking” them, as in breaking them in to getting used to the bridle and bit, harness, various types of boots to protect their legs and knees etc.)

All of my experience was with horses that had already been “broken” and were race ready. I found myself really interested in what they were doing and almost immediately Clyde had turned his “yearling” over to me and was walking beside me telling me what to do. The next thing I knew Harry’s wife was calling to all of us that lunch was ready. About three hours had passed like the blink of an eye. Vi, Harry’s wife was quite an interesting woman. Supposedly, she was the bookkeeper for all of Harry’s businesses but it was easy to see that she was far more involved. She wanted to know all about me and it seemed like Clyde had more to say than I did. As soon as he mentioned that I’d just gotten married she asked where we were living. When I said we were looking into it she immediately said we should be living in a Mobile Home and, without missing a beat, told Harry to take me outside to look at some of the ones they had for sale. She was more of a salesman than Harry!

Harry showed me about a half dozen of them but never told me a price. I was amazed at just how well space was utilized and was duly impressed with most of them. I’d only been inside Clyde’s and I’d liked it. Other than not knowing the cost, I was “sold” but I wasn’t really sure how Elle would feel about living in a “trailer”. I left there with a promise to Harry (and Vi) that I’d bring Elle back but I wasn’t sure it would be the next day.

As it turned out it wasn’t until the following week that we made it back. I had to do a real “selling” job on Elle to even get her to go and take a look. Knowing her as well as I did I could see that she, like me, was impressed with the fact that they came fully furnished and all you had to do to move in was bring clothes, sheets, blankets and towels. Vi was smart enough to let us do our looking by ourselves. She knew that we'd sell ourselves. Within an hour we’d picked out the one we liked. Elle went into the office to visit with Vi and I went looking for Harry. He was out in the barn area with Clyde and when he saw me he knew.

I’ve always been very careful with and about money. Before I’d verbally commit to buying one I had to figure out how I was going to pay for it. I told Harry that we would have $1000 in a couple of weeks and that was it. I asked him if there was any way we could work out a deal. He looked over at Clyde and asked him something like “Should I trust this guy?” and Clyde just laughed. Then we went over to the office and had Vi draw up the papers.

But as careful about money as I claimed I was I still didn’t know the price. I still can’t believe that I’d let it get that far without knowing. But, one of the big surprises of my life came when they (Harry and Vi) pulled out their invoice from the factory and only added $100 to it. The total cost for a 41 foot, 10 foot wide mobile home was $4,100. I wanted to ask why they were being so nice to us but I didn’t dare. I do know I was shaking when I signed my name on the paper though. They agreed to let us have the trailer for $1,000 down and then to have a chattel mortgage on it for a year with no payments. I’m still shaking my head in amazement.

I don’t know if it was the knowledge that we’d soon have our own place that made our lovemaking in the front seat of my car somewhat unsatisfying or not later that evening. Maybe it was that our minds were on that and not on sexual things but it really wasn’t very good for either of us. On Sunday we didn’t even try. Our thoughts we now focused on what it was going to be like when we went home and told our parents.

To be continued...