Fifty-Five Anniversaries

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Fifty-Five Anniversaries
Frank and Eleanor Pfeifer · married June 13, 1942

My grandson Antoine tells me people put all sorts of things on the computer now, so I may as well put this.

Frank Pfeifer and I were married on Saturday, June 13, 1942, at our Lutheran church here in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I was twenty-one and he was twenty-two, a mechanic at a garage on the next street over from my father's. Two weeks later he left for the Army Air Forces, and he spent most of the war at a big air depot in England, overhauling engines. He came home in October of 1945. After that he fixed cars in this town for thirty-seven years, nearly thirty of them in his own garage.

Frank died in January of 1998, at seventy-eight, five months short of our fifty-sixth. We had fifty-five anniversaries. Antoine asked me what we did on every one of them, and I found that I could tell him, with the help of Frank's letters for the war years and the kitchen calendars I've kept in the bottom drawer since 1946. Here they are.

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No.	Year	What we did
1st	1943	Frank was in England. His letter came in July, three weeks late, on V-mail, so small I read it with Mother's magnifying glass. He said the English beer was warm and he missed my pie more than the beer.
2nd	1944	One week after D-Day. His letter said only that they were very busy and he could not say more. I knew why. I wore my wedding dress around the house for an hour and felt foolish and didn't care.
3rd	1945	The war in Europe was over. He wrote that they were packing up and he hoped to be home by fall. His mother baked a cake anyway and we ate it at her kitchen table, the two of us.
4th	1946	Our first one together, four years late. Dinner downtown and then Gilda at the picture show. Frank said Rita Hayworth was all right. I said I'd take that as a compliment.
5th	1947	Dennis was ten weeks old. Mother brought a cake over and held the baby so we could eat it with both hands.
6th	1948	Frank bought his first car, a 1937 Chevrolet, for $350, and took me for a drive out past the farms to celebrate. It boiled over twice.
7th	1949	We took Dennis to Dorney Park and rode the merry-go-round three times. Frank bought me a paper rose from a man with a cart.
8th	1950	Maxine was four months old and nobody was sleeping. Frank brought home real roses from the market. We were in bed by eight.
9th	1951	Frank fixed a neighbor's Packard in trade for a night out: dinner and dancing at a hotel ballroom. Frank could not dance and did anyway.
10th	1952	A seventeen-inch television, $199 on time. We sat up and watched whatever was on until the station signed off.
11th	1953	Dianne was born in March, and that spring Frank opened his own garage with a loan from his uncle. Sandwiches in the garage office. He had grease on his collar and I didn't mind.
12th	1954	Our first anniversary in our own house, a brick twin, $9,500. We ate on the front steps because the dining room still had no table.
13th	1955	The year of the new Plymouth, two-tone green and white, the first new car either of us ever owned. $2,140. Frank washed it twice that day.
14th	1956	Drove the Plymouth to Atlantic City. Walked the Boardwalk, ate saltwater taffy, and Frank got sunburned on the top of his head.
15th	1957	Maxine had the chicken pox and Dianne caught it the day after. Anniversary dinner was crackers and ginger ale on the edge of a bed.
16th	1958	Business was slow that year. Pot roast at home and a bottle of wine Frank paid a dollar and a half for. It tasted like more.
17th	1959	Frank built me a rose bed along the back fence, twelve bushes. Six of them are still there.
18th	1960	The drive-in, all three children in pajamas in the back seat, asleep before the second picture.
19th	1961	Frank's mother died in April. We stayed home and sat on the porch, and he talked about her for a long time.
20th	1962	Our twentieth. A cabin in the Poconos for two nights, no children, the first time alone since 1946. It rained both days. We didn't mind at all.
21st	1963	Eight weeks of dance lessons at the church hall, a present to me. Frank learned the fox trot. Mostly.
22nd	1964	Frank wanted a color television and I wanted a new davenport. We got the davenport.
23rd	1965	Dennis graduated from high school the week before, so we had one party for both. Frank cried at the graduation and blamed the pollen.
24th	1966	Dennis had gone into the Navy in May. The house was very quiet. Frank and I took a walk after supper, which we kept doing for thirty years.
25th	1967	Our twenty-fifth, at the church hall the Saturday after. Ham dinner, a hundred and twenty people, a three-piece band. Martha Mumford, my maid of honor, and Richard Toth, Frank's best man, both came and both gave toasts. A silver bowl from the children.
26th	1968	Robert Kennedy had been shot the week before, and it was a sad spring. We didn't go out. Frank held my hand in front of the news.
27th	1969	Maxine was married on the seventh of June, so we were too tired to do anything on the thirteenth but sleep in. We did.
28th	1970	Our first grandchild, Monica, born to Dennis and his wife in March. We drove to see her and called it our anniversary trip.
29th	1971	Frank added a second bay to the garage. Dinner at the diner, and he drew the plans for me on a napkin.
30th	1972	Maxine's Christine was born in May. A week after our anniversary the flood from Hurricane Agnes came up the rivers, and Frank went north with the church men to help people shovel out their houses.
31st	1973	Dennis took us out to dinner, the first time one of the children ever paid. Frank tried to leave the tip and Dennis wouldn't let him.
32nd	1974	The gas lines were over at last, after a hard winter at Frank's pumps. We drove to the shore just because we could.
33rd	1975	Frank fixed the porch swing. We sat in it until the mosquitoes came.
34th	1976	The Bicentennial was everywhere. The neighbor boys painted the fire hydrant like a soldier, and Frank gave them a quarter each.
35th	1977	Dianne married in April. Frank said he had walked his last daughter down the aisle and his knees were glad of it.
36th	1978	Dianne's boy Antoine was born in February. He is the one typing this. Hello, Antoine.
37th	1979	Gas lines again. Frank was at the garage until nine and came home with a single rose from the florist next door, who'd stayed late for him.
38th	1980	We bought a microwave oven. Frank never trusted it. He made our anniversary coffee on the stove, as always.
39th	1981	Supper at the new Chinese restaurant downtown. Frank tried chopsticks for the first time and asked for a fork after the egg roll.
40th	1982	Our fortieth, the ruby. Frank had sold the garage and retired in March. He gave me a ruby ring he'd been paying on at the jeweler's for a year.
41st	1983	Drove to Florida in the Buick to see Frank's cousins. Too hot. Frank said so every day.
42nd	1984	Frank fixed every lawn mower on our street that spring for nothing. The neighbors chipped in for a cake with a lawn mower on it.
43rd	1985	Frank had his gallbladder out in May. Our anniversary dinner was Jell-O, at home, in our good dishes.
44th	1986	The church bus trip to Lancaster County. Shoofly pie, a buggy ride, and Frank asleep on the bus home with his head on my shoulder.
45th	1987	Our forty-fifth. Frank built a new arbor for the roses. It is still standing, better than either of us.
46th	1988	We flew to Ohio to see Dennis, my first time in an airplane. Frank, who had kept engines running all through the war, listened to them the whole way there and said they would do.
47th	1989	A cookout at Maxine's. Frank fell asleep in a lawn chair at eight o'clock and woke up to fireflies.
48th	1990	Our first great-grandchild, Monica's Brandi, was born that spring. Frank learned to work the VCR so he could watch the tape of her christening, mostly.
49th	1991	Frank's cataract operation in May. He said I looked better than ever, and then he said he could see clearly now, so he knew.
50th	1992	Our fiftieth, at the church hall again, on the day itself, a Saturday. The grandchildren made a sign. The band played "Moonlight Cocktail," our wedding song, and Frank and I danced it, and then everyone did. Martha came. Richard had passed in 1990.
51st	1993	Frank's first year with a cane. He hung it on the porch rail and danced me around the kitchen anyway.
52nd	1994	Christine was married in May. A busy month, and we were glad to sit on the porch swing on the thirteenth and do nothing.
53rd	1995	One more trip to the Poconos. The cabins were gone, so a motel. It rained. We didn't mind at all, again.
54th	1996	Frank had a pacemaker put in, in March. By June he was back in the rose bed, against orders.
55th	1997	Our fifty-fifth, and the last. Antoine drove us to the diner. Frank had the hot turkey sandwich, like always. At home we put on the record of "Moonlight Cocktail" and danced in the kitchen, slowly. He said, "Fifty-five, Ellie." I said, "Go for sixty."

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1998. Our fifty-sixth fell on a Saturday. Frank had been gone five months. The girls would not leave me alone all day. Dianne took me to the cemetery in the morning, Maxine took me to lunch, and Dennis drove in from Ohio for supper. I was grateful, and I was very tired by night.

1999. This year the thirteenth was a Sunday, and I asked them, kindly, to let me have it to myself, and they did. So this was the first one truly alone. I went to church. I wore the ruby ring. I drove to the cemetery and put six roses from Frank's bushes on the stone and told him that Antoine had gone and bought a Plymouth, which is true, and which he would have found very funny. I came home and made coffee on the stove and sat on the porch swing. In the evening I put on "Moonlight Cocktail" and listened to the whole thing standing up in the kitchen. Then Antoine came by with his computer things, and we started this page.

Fifty-five is a good number. I am not complaining. I would have taken sixty.

Eleanor Pfeifer
Allentown, Pennsylvania

friends have visited since June 1999

Antoine reads the mail to me, and I answer every letter:
[email protected]

Last updated August 15, 1999