I met Earl Duane Seeger shortly after my birthday in October of 1960. My brother Jake introduced us in a bar up the street from the house. I think it was the Crow Bar. They used to have a thriving business and I remember once they had a Calypso band and I fell madly in lust with the little guy who played the Bongo drum. Sadly, I could not hold my liquor very well and a bad case of "Four Roses Flu" hit me suddenly and I retreated up the street to the safety of the of my home where I worshipped at the feet of the porcelain throne.
Oh, but the night I met his friend, I managed to sip demurely on a coke laced with absolutely nothing but a couple ice cubes. That man was drop dead gorgeous with a full head of blonde hair and the most beautiful blue eyes I had ever had the pleasure to gaze into. And gaze I did! He was freshly home from the Army and I was freshly out of high school. His name was Earl Duane Seeger.
(Short note here: I was out of high school because I dropped out the beginning of my Senior year to devote more time to drinking and partying. That was one endeavor in my life that I succeeded very well at.) The match made in heaven ended in marriage 3 weeks later and we set up housekeeping in a one bedroom 3rd floor walkup.
Needless to say, my party days were over. Earl ,who I called Duane because that was his middle name worked as a tree trimmer for a guy whose last name was Bean. He had 2 brothers who also worked for Mr. Bean. ( They called him "Navy Bean" but I am pretty sure that was not his name.) They would go to his house every morning, go do their job for the day, and then come home. Life was good.
The only thing that would have made it better was if I could have had a baby. (Eventually that happened 5 times.) Duane and his brothers left Mr. Bean and branched out on their own. Life went on and 10 years later I returned to Hutchinson with my babies in tow. Duane ended up buying land in Lakin, Kansas and making that his "base of operations." We shared custody of the kids without benefit of lawyers and such, but it worked for us.
At one point he had a cafe in Deerfield where he lived upstairs and I had taken the kids to see him. We had a relationship that while not cordial worked for us. I remarried a couple times and he had girlfriends. It was during his Deerfield days that I found that plaque above and thought how appropriate that was for him. He hung it where he spent time in the kitchen of his cafe. It was not a working cafe, but it had lots of rooms upstairs for the kids and the stove and grill worked down stairs. It worked for him.
After Deerfield he bought land in Lakin and moved onto it. He moved a trailer house in for him, and then his mother who was a widow by that time. A couple of the kids also moved trailers in and life went on. It worked for him and that was the important part. When he passed in 1994 at the tender age of 53 we were all devastated. The kids brought this to me explaining that "Daddy read this every day and always kept it in the kitchen where he set."
Now it sets behind the faucet on the kitchen sink. It has been in my kitchen since his death. The kids gave it to me and explained that "Daddy never stopped loving you." I see it every day. Earl Duane Seeger was my first real love. He was the father of my children. We could not live with each other, but we could also not live without each other.
Funny how that works.
