Whizzing Through America: Living Memories Tour, Petzinger Rd.-Columbus

I lived here not quite a full year after the dissolution of my first marriage. This place has some significance primarily because I lived here when I met Marilyn. Over the summer, my middle sister came to Columbus for a summer job between college years and I remember commiserating with her that I didn't know how to meet anyone, let alone someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Later that year it happened. In fact, all of the following occurred while I, then we, for two weeks, lived at 1961 Guildhall Dr. off of Petzinger Rd.

I meet Marilyn

Our first date

A formal affair

Pre-wedding honeymoon: Adventures

Pre-wedding honeymoon: when I asked her to marry me

Our first Christmas: when she accepts

The ceremony was the only thing that happened as scheduled

My other memories of this place pale in comparison to the above and as the above, aren't really of this place. I did enjoy an introductory membership at a rather large local tennis club off of Refugee Road. For $80, I got to play tennis as often as I wanted. They had a surprisingly large number of courts indoors and one clay court outdoors that was worth the heat to play on. Besides there were never any scheduling issues for it. All I had to do was find a partner. Several people were willing to play indoors but only one person was willing to regularly play outdoors with me.

One time after some truly marathon tennis days, I got so sore that I literally had to lift my legs into and out of my car with my hands. What's worse, I drove a stick shift.

While I lived here I was the closest Systems Programmer to the place I worked and while I rarely had to go in, I would frequently be called around 3:00 to 4:00 AM. The problems always seemed to happen when they tried to shut down and bring up CICS. Even if I could remember my instructions to get by the problem given over the phone, I wouldn't be able to because I believe I was usually and technically still asleep. The phone though was a wall mounted phone in the kitchen and while it was only a two-bedroom apartment, I could get to the phone before the second ring. I did it a lot while I was there.

Then there was the time that I was coming back from a work bowling league that I got my 280-Z up to 110 before I chickened out. Not from the speed but because I didn't want to press my luck at getting caught. Columbus is still a speed trap with many roads with limits that are sooo slow.

The second floor on the right. I don't ever remember using the balcony. The summer was too hot and humid and the winter actually had icecycles forming on the inside of the single pane windows.

One last Marilyn memory: I made my pizza for Marilyn exactly once, while I lived here. It had three meats: pepperoni, italian sausage, and capicola ham. It had three cheeses: provolone, aged parmesan, and mozzarella. It had four veggies: ripe olives, and sauteed mushrooms, green peppers and onions. Even the sauce was specially spiced and simmered. All the ingredients had to be purchased at a real Italian Grocery Store on the other side, north, of Columbus. She claimed to love it but also claimed it was too much. Even I could only eat one piece at a sitting but I liked cold pizza the next day, and the next, and the next. She, as I discovered, didn't really like to eat the same thing over and over again. But pizza is different! Surely?