I got the Mustang back several months before that August interview. It went well, and I was offered a job before I left that night. I would be teaching six sections of seventh grade English, or two sections of geography and four sections of English. Mr. Hindbaugh asked if I had a preference. “Yes, I’d prefer the geography and English assignment.”
He told me that he had another teacher coming in later that evening, and “If she’s certified for geography, I’d like you to take the English assignment. We don’t have any male English teachers.”
She wasn’t, so I got the split assignment.
I taught eight great years in Plainwell. I made a lot of new friends, a million memories, and met my wife.
I also met a man, R. Lou VanBruggen, who I found to be the most intimidating man I’ve ever met. He owned his own construction company, served on the local school board, was a church deacon, a good golfer, and took a no non-sense approach to life. He and his wife, Kate, owned property in the area. Lou developed some of it and held some as investments.
One of the parcels had a total of forty acres adjacent to US 131. When the State decided to expand that stretch of road, he sold them part of the land. When the utility company decided to extend the power lines along the highway, he sold them a right of way. Lou couldn’t foresee those opportunities, but they came his way anyway.
A farmhouse that stood on the northeast corner of the acreage was the focal point of the property. Lou, Kate, and their three daughters moved into the house in 1955. There was a single bedroom downstairs and the three girls shared three bedrooms with a single heat source on the second level. The lone bathroom was on the first floor so the girls thought long and hard before making a dash downstairs on cold winter nights.
In the early 60s Lou sold the bulk of the property so that a new community hospital could be built. The site included a couple of doctors offices and eventually housed a dentist office too. The new Pipp Hospital has served Plainwell and the surrounding area since then.
In 1964 Lou moved the farmhouse three hundred and sixty yards south across a field, through the developing hospital site, to a street that he had laid out called Benhoy. Once the house was moved he added a family room and a garage. He didn’t bother to add another heat run to the second story. By now his oldest daughter, Shirley, had married and the two youngest, Ruth and Kathy, were in high school. I expect that he figured that since the girls had survived the circumstances as long as they had, a couple of more years wouldn’t hurt them.
He sold the plot of land where the farmhouse stood to a company out of Muskegon, Michigan. The company built a Wesco Gas Station on the site. About four years later my girlfriend and I found ourselves at that station after my dad’s 1963 Ford Galaxie 500 broke its rear axle. At some point in the past fifty plus years, Wesco moved one block east, and an Admiral Gas Station now occupies the site.
Life is full of unexpected twists and turns. I was engaged twice in my life. My first lasted several months and the second several hours. My first fiancé and I landed at the Wesco Gas Station where the home of my second fiancé once stood. If the man who picked us up after the car broke down would have turned right at the exit to head west towards Otsego instead of left towards Plainwell, my life may have turned out much differently.
I met Lou and Kate’s second daughter, Ruth, at the Plainwell Junior High. The hometown girl was hired the same summer as me. We eloped in the fall of 1971 and were pronounced “man and wife” twenty-two hours after I asked her to marry me. I spent a lot of time in the farmhouse that was moved from the site that became the home of Plainwell’s Wesco Gas Station.
The unplanned nature of our wedding required us to move a couple of times during the first few months of being together. We lived for three weeks during our first winter with Lou and Kate while we remodeled the lower flat of a house that I owned. The upstairs bedrooms still had a single heat run, so I thought long and hard before venturing down to use the single bathroom at night.
Living together provided me the opportunity to learn more about Lou. He loved his family above all else and wanted to ensure that anyone who ended up with one of his daughters was worthy of her. I passed the test.
Looking back, the odds of me stopping at a gas station with one fiancé and marrying a second from the exact same plot of land have to be astronomical, perhaps a gazillion to one. But then again – it’s a small world.
Loved this blog and the situation it produced. I believe our lives are decided from the beginning. You and Ruth are perfect for each other.