In November of 1996, I was channel surfing, and came across a show on PBS called Austin City Limits (or Live From Austin City Limits). Playing was a blues guitarist I’d never heard of, never seen or heard: Stevie Ray Vaughn (SRV)! I spent the rest of the hour with my jaw on the floor and my eyes wide! When the show ended, I turned (where else?) to the web. (My usual usage per month was about 10 hours… my usage that month jumped to 54 hours!!)
After ordering the videotape from PBS, and visiting the first 1,000 (really!) of the 4,562 SRV “hits” that HotBot (or was it Google?) offered, I joined the Texas Flood mailing list. Although it may sound like it, I’m NOT the “crush on a star” type. To my great surprise, I found that I was crying myself to sleep because Stevie was dead (he died in a helicopter crash, back in 1990). The CDs I’d gotten my hands on were all I was playing (in fact, I taped the soundtrack off the videos, and that’s all I listened to in the car. As soon as I turned the car off, I’d snap on my little carry-along tape player, so I was never without Stevie!).
My friends all thought I was nuts (and I was pretty sure they were right)! I wrote to the Texas Flood (mailing list), expressing astonished delight and joy at discovering Stevie, and my great grief and pain at losing him. Could anyone on the Flood tell me what was going on with me?! (Most of them had lost him back in 1990 – *I* had found and lost him at the same time!) This fellow wrote to me, and said that he, too, had had the same reactions – only a few years sooner than I had.
We got emailing back and forth, discussing father’s sons and mama’s boys (Stevie was a mama’s boy, we decided, and his older brother Jimmie was his father’s son.) We went further, discussing Michael as a father’s son (he described himself, I remember, as a “father’s son with a vengeance,” and his bafflement at how so many men are raised mama’s boys. We got to discussing fathers and I went on at great length (as I can do <G>) about the effects my dad had on me and my life and my reactions to and interactions with men.
We finally spoke on the phone at the very end of December, and began spending hours (and hours and hours) on the phone. Literally! Our longest single phone call was FIVE HOURS!! And the longest time on the phone in one day was NINE HOURS! (We’re talking a couple of thousand-dollar phone bills!) After a while, Michael began dropping hints, and I began to see what he was seeing.
In early January, Michael wrote and suggested that he fly me to GA to meet him, and see if we really had what we thought we had. After about a day or two of wringing my hands and listening to friends warning me I’d end up dismemembered in a landfill in GA – to which I’d answer: “If he wanted to dismember a woman, he could find one already IN Atlanta and save an expensive air fare!” – I agreed.
I flew in, spent almost a week, and we both knew – this was IT! So, I flew home, put the house on the market, (it finally sold a month after I’d moved to Atlanta), and prepared to move. The movers came the second week in March and Michael came to get me right after. I met him at the SeaTac airport in Seattle, and we stayed with my mom (in Gig Harbor) for two days, then the three of us drove across the mountains (with a FIVE HOUR “rest,” in the car, up in Snoqualmie Pass because of an avalanche) to eastern Washington, where I’d arranged a big party for my friends to meet Michael. They liked him, he liked them, we drove back to my mom’s and flew out to Atlanta.
The party after the wedding
The day before the wedding
Nephew Alex’s report on the trip
This is the how Michael Ray and Elenor met page.
See our honeymoon cruise and our other cruises
Write to us at snowtao2005 (at) snowtao.com
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