Alton & His Bride

Quote from “Truth Is Stranger Than Publicity”

Chapter 5 (next to last paragraph)

“While Rabon and I were playing around the country, I got acquainted with a girl named Thelma Neely and I liked her a whole lot the first time I saw her. We began to slip around and go together because her parents wouldn’t let her have dates. We would meet at church and sometimes I would walk her home if her mother was not at church. I never will forget those nights when the moon was shining brightly and we could walk in the beautiful silence of the countryside. She lived about 2 miles from the church and it was a big thrill to get to be with her and walk down the dirt road with all the night sounds, the whippoorwill singing, the katydids chirping and the frogs making their usual contribution to modify the night. Also the sweet smell of the wild flowers in the soft night breezes, especially the honeysuckles. To me, then, it was nothing much special, but as I look back on those days now it seems exotic as anything I have ever experienced in my whole life!”