First Date Story for Mom's Birthday: Scooping Ice Cream and a Flippin' Coins

Sometime ago, Mom told me about her first date with Dad. She started by reminding me that by the time they were teenagers, they already knew each other from school and church, and that as a result, it was not unusual for them to each be present, though not with each other, at various social events. Dad confirms, and while I imagine he was more than a little bit shy, he admits that he had his eye on Mom for more than a little while before he made a move in her direction.

Anyway, his first overt move involved some ice cream and a coin flip.

Specifically, their First Baptist youth group routinely met at the Seale Lilly's Ice Cream Parlor in Jackson after Sunday night church services. It was the kind of relaxed setting where everyone just showed up and sat around for the entire evening at tables pushed together in the back (remember when we did that at Jim's).

One Sunday night, Dad and another boy invited Mom to ride with them to the get-together (Dad's friend had a car), and she did.

They had ice cream, engaged in the frenetic banter that makes up teen-style socializing, and just generally whiled away the evening laughing and talking.

As the Big Daddy imposed curfew approached, Dad and the other boy flipped a coin to see who would escort Mom home.

Dad won.

Of course, as he explains today, he was interested in just about anything that would prolong his time with Mom that night, and was especially interested in having her to himself for the trip to her house. In his eagerness to win that one-on-one time, he forgot his scruples against gambling and forgot the fact that he had no car. But, no worries, he had a Jackson Transit Authority schedule and plenty of dimes, so they took the bus and begain a multi-decades-long ride together.

When they arrived at Mom's home that night, they sat on the front porch until Big Daddy threw the shoe (his way of saying, "time to go"), and then, Dad walked home three feet off the ground, head in the clouds repeating his well-rehearsed mantra as the excuse for their tardiness that only a bus rider could use: "we just barely missed the 9 pm bus."

And that's the way it [was.] Walter Cronkite.

Or, the way it was, the way it is, the way it shall be. Roosevelt Washington (Good Mornin' Vietnam).