A Love Letter To Susan

To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we asked Patch readers to write a love letter to that special someone and let us deliver it. This is Clint Confehr’s love story about his wife, Susan:

“Susan and I met at an association dinner. I sat next to her. She moved to another chair. A few weeks later, our first date was at Polly Crockett’s grave near Belvedere, Tennessee. Polly was Davy Crockett’s first wife.

Susan hardly spoke that afternoon in spring 1981. I drove us from Winchester and searched Franklin County’s back roads to find the wooded cemetery that borders a cattle pasture. There was no picnic table there then. The floor mat from my car’s trunk was our picnic blanket. I built a camp fire and cooked my bachelor chicken in an iron skillet. You partly fry the chicken in butter and finish it in boiling orange juice with catsup squeezed on top; turned often to make a brown sauce. It sounds horrible, but it tastes good. We used paper plates, paper towels and plastic cups.

We talked about ourselves. Born in Tennessee, Susan lived in several towns as her father coached high school and college football and basketball about the time schools were being desegregated. I’m from the Washington, D.C. area and was interested in the other big topic of small town talk, local politics. I moved to Tennessee for my job and stayed for Susan, who called me her 'Yankee Turkey.'

We married Oct. 8, 1982, at Winchester Springs. My boss thought our marriage would fail. Thirty-five years later, Susan drove me in a hard-top convertible car we got when trading a ragtop. Good thing. It was pouring down rain on Oct. 8, 2017 because of Hurricane Nate. We kissed under an umbrella at Polly’s headstone that’s taller than us and ran back to the car for a glass of wine, a loaf of bread, each other, more kisses and some chocolate, fruit, cheese and crackers.”

--CBC, 2018

See all Patch love letters here.

For next month's Love In A Small Town feature, we want to know: What place in town will always be a reminder of love for you? Whether it's the park where you had your first kiss or the restaurant where he proposed, email your story to locallove@patch.com for the chance to be featured. Get more details here.