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Our

Story

by

Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News

To begin with, no matter what I say here, Culley Jane will have a different view of events.

We first met during the fall of 2019, shortly after I retired as an over-the-road trucker and shortly before Covid hit the streets.

We met on a dating site.

Other than the fact that we both lived in the same Denver suburb and were the same age, we didn’t appear to have much in common. In her profile picture, she looked kind of skinny and was hiking in the mountains. After twenty years living in a truck and eating truck stop food, I was kind of fat.

I read her profile: She was a retired PhD. university professor. I was intimidated by professors and quit college in my senior year to take off.

 

While I was starting out as a newspaper reporter at small town dailies writing local  news stories in the style of the New York Times Stylebook, she was writing her Ph.D. dissertation about a scandalous 20^th century French writer.

She lived in her own house. I was staying in my youngest daughter’s finished basement until I’d decided on my next move. I thought about doing a “walkabout” like they do in Australia to clear their minds. I thought about buying my own house in Nebraska, where we lived when the kids were little and I ran the local newspaper.

She mentioned that she was fluent in European languages, especially French. I only know the  dialect of English spoken in ‘da UP, eh!

She read 19^th century French literature for fun. Her favorite author was Jane Austin. I didn’t read anything for fun, but for information.

But then I got to the point in the profile where you’re asked to describe yourself. The first thing she said about herself was that she was a writer.

Two days later we were taking a hike together in Cherry Creek State Park. I had to keep sitting down on logs and benches to catch my breath. She was patient.

She chose a Japanese place to have our first dinner together. I’d of preferred the chicken fried steak and hashbrowns soaked in gravy like at Jimbo’s truck stop café in Selma, Alabama. But it was ok because we were soon lost in rapid back and forth about what we were “working on.”

Knowing what we so far knew about one another, we were both surprised to learn what the other was “working on.”

I told her I was writing a book about economics that had to be a novel, a love story with international intrigue because nobody reads books about economics unless they’re paid to do so and already have their minds made up.

After she told me what she was working on and later gave me some early drafts to look at, I told her: “This is fucking great!”

During Covid, it became “Sunny’s Story.”