ENGAGED AT GETTING ENGAGED

It was a Thursday night in 1971, January 14^th to be exact, and the weather was a little dreary. Except for the fact that we TLW (The Little Woman) and I would meet after work to pick up her engagement ring in the diamond center in New York City, then a dinner afterwards: everything seemed the same.

TLW wanted a pear-shaped white gold band diamond and two gold wedding bands for the big day that would come in about six months. Having first met her in July on the train into the city, we started dating and by November, the day after Thanksgiving, I asked her to marry me. Catching her off guard she said ‘Yes’ and the rest is history.

It was so uneventful the evening we went to pick up the ring that I remember just about every moment, from when I met her at her office to the jeweler and his second story shop over a diamond store, to the stroll down to 34^th Street and Penn Station where we stopped at the Riverboat for a dinner of ribs.

Going to the jeweler is an interesting experience. Seeing something for the first time that you rely on someone else to make for you is filled with anticipation. The jeweler poured out the ring onto the desk and reading from the receipt, all was in order. TLW picked up the ring and slipped it on her finger, and it fit! Almost as an afterthought, we both tried on our wedding bands and they too fit.

We had agreed to getting engaged on St. Valentine’s Day a month later, that I would hold the ring until then. As we left the jeweler we headed downtown towards Penn Station, and there on a corner stood the Riverboat, a large noisy place with gigantic platters of ribs, so big they took your breath away when the waiter brought them out!

We took the train home to East Islip and I dropped off TLW and drove home, thinking I now had a responsibility of this expensive ring I paid for, and God forbid I lose it between that day and St. Valentine’s Day, I would be an unhappy man.

Arriving at home, I got an idea, that would change everything.