The Love Story Behind One Woman’s Failed Road Trip

For this month's Love In A Small Town feature, we asked Patch readers to tell us the story behind their romantic chance encounters. This is Lil Doody's story:

“Getting lost on a spontaneous camping trip to southeast Wisconsin turned into a chance encounter with my soulmate. It was July of 1970, and I was an adventurous 19-year-old secretary who had recently moved to Chicago. I got off work on Friday and decided to take a solo road trip to camp out with my cat.

Having little sense of direction, a one-and-a-half hour drive to Burlington, Wisconsin, took four hours, and I arrived in the early morning hours to find no campsites in the area. A local police officer advised me to park at a local wayside just outside of town for the night and said they would periodically check on me. I spent the night sleeping in my car.

When morning came, another car was parked in front of mine. A young man got out and was putting a sleeping bag in the trunk. We made eye contact.

He approached and said, ‘Hi!’ and then asked where I was from. When I replied, ‘Chicago’ he thought I was lying because I didn’t have a city sticker on my ‘62 Catalina convertible. I told him I couldn’t afford it as I had just moved to the city, and we continued our conversation. I later learned that he also lived in Chicago, on the Southside in Beverly.

I was eating breakfast: a bologna sandwich and beer, which I offered to share with my new acquaintance. He accepted and as he was not a fan of either sandwiches or beer, he soon invited me to breakfast. I accepted, as a good breakfast was definitely a better offer.

During breakfast (he paid), he asked if I would spend the day with him as he had several friends on Browns Lake and we could spend the day at the beach and boating. Having nowhere to go, I took him up on it.

He introduced me to friends of his, who we still see often and with whom we’ve celebrated weddings, our children’s births and now our grandchildren.

Ed and I were engaged a year after this chance meeting and were married in May of 1972. Four children and two grandchildren later, we are now both retired and still tell our story of how we met on the Burlington wayside.”

—Lil Doody

See all Patch "chance encounters" here.

For next month's Love In A Small Town feature, we want to help you give Mom the best Mother's Day gift ever. Write her a heartfelt letter to tell her how much she means to you, email it to locallove@patch.com and we'll feature it in your town's newsfeed on Mother's Day. Get more details here.

Photo Credit: Lil Doody