{"id":71520,"date":"2016-07-30T15:01:30","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T19:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=71520"},"modified":"2016-07-29T20:11:28","modified_gmt":"2016-07-30T00:11:28","slug":"column-a-simple-country-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=71520","title":{"rendered":"COLUMN: A Simple Country Man"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hobie<\/a>
Hobie Morris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It looks easy until you try it; 50 years and counting<\/h2>\n

by Hobie Morris<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n

– Helen\u00a0Rowland<\/p>\n

Fifty years!!! I\u2019ll be lucky to make 50 days!<\/em><\/p>\n

A newlywed at a convenience store check-out counter, on\u00a0hearing about our wedding celebration<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Brookfield) In early July, my beautiful and vivacious wife and I happily celebrated our 50th wedding\u00a0anniversary. Commenting on his 43rd anniversary in 1959, then-President Dwight Eisenhower\u00a0said, \u201c\u2026a successful marriage I think gets happier as the years go by.\u201d Anna Chennault\u00a0expressed similar sentiments in describing her romance and marriage to General Claire\u00a0Chennault. \u201c\u2026my love for him was unchanging love, high and deep, free and faithful, strong as\u00a0death. Each year I learned to love him more and more.\u201dLois and I are still in our honeymoon<\/p>\n

Lois and I are still in our honeymoon\u00a0bliss.<\/p>\n

Successfully melding two often dissimilar people and personalities into one is an amazing\u00a0triumph, especially in our present age. It has been graphically written that \u201cmarriage is work,\u00a0sometimes gritty, sweaty, uncomfortable work. In fact the degree of difficulty successfully\u00a0combining two lives ranks somewhere like rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in\u00a0downtown Manhattan.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always found it fascinating how people find their true loves. With a world population of\u00a0approximately 6.7 billion people, how do you find your special one in this mass? Consider the\u00a0potential number of pairs of two in 6.7 billion. To find that perfect match you would have to examine each and every possible match. And this is where the story gets humongous. There\u00a0are 28 million times more romantic possibilities than there are stars in the Milky Way. If God\u00a0spent one minute evaluating each mate before assigning people their spouses, the procedure would take 21.3 trillion years to complete.<\/p>\n

May I suggest two nuggets of advice for marital happiness and longevity. The French writer\u00a0Andre Maurois advises \u201ca successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.\u201d In\u00a0his book MY LITTLE CHURCH AROUND THE CORNER Randolph Ray has written, \u201cI would like\u00a0to have engraved inside every wedding band: \u2018Be kind to one another\u2019\u2014this is the golden rule of\u00a0marriage and the secret of making love lasts through the years.\u201d<\/p>\n

My musically gifted wife Lois has been the church organist at the historic, pre-Civil War Baptist\u00a0Church here in Brookfield. She has beautifully played the 65-year- old Conn organ for many\u00a0weddings over the last 23 years. One year she played two weddings in one day. In total Lois\u00a0probably played over 100 songs that day, including prelude, postlude and ceremony requests.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine these beautiful weddings without music? Especially music from the \u201cKing of\u00a0Instruments.\u201d This simple country man had the best seat in the house. Since I turn Lois\u2019 music\u00a0as well as watch for the different participants to begin the trip down the aisle.<\/p>\n

With the service over I quietly slip into the vestibule and begin pulling the thick rope attached to\u00a0the huge cast iron bell high in the church steeple. A perfect capstone celebrating the union of\u00a0two young lives, a country tradition that has taken place many hundreds of times since before\u00a0the Civil War. I\u2019m extremely proud of Lois and the joy and beauty she has brought to young\u00a0starry-eyed couple beginning their journey of life together. We pray that they too one day will\u00a0celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

As we quietly leave by the back door, a now empty and silent church, I look lovingly at Lois\u00a0reminding this simple country man of what Winston Churchill wrote of his Winnie \u201cmy most\u00a0brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMine too, Winston.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: Hobie Morris is a longtime Brookfield resident and simple country man. He can be reached at madnews@m3pmedia.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It looks easy until you try it; 50 years and counting by Hobie Morris Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings or eating with chopsticks\u2026 – Helen\u00a0Rowland Fifty years!!! I\u2019ll be lucky to make 50 days! A newlywed at a convenience store check-out counter, on\u00a0hearing about our wedding celebration   (Brookfield) In early July, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23677,23808,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-iBy","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Morris-head-new.jpg?fit=226%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}