After I graduated college, I went to West Berlin to play guitar and hang out with my brother. In one of the folk music cabarets, after my set, I went out into the audience, who sat in long rows of benches. I had met a girl from Münster/Westfalen the night before. Sort on the overly chatty side, but pleasant enough. This night, July 25th, 1974, she told me she was leaving for China the next day, but I should meet her girlfriend from "up north." I said sure, where is she? She said, "right here." She leaned back, and I saw a tall, beautiful vision with long blonde hair (I preferred brunettes) that took my breath away. I had no idea what kind of a pickup line would work on a woman like that, so I just stuck my hand out and said, "hi." My conditioning in high school and college in the USA had taught me that a nerd like me NEVER gets a woman like that. But she didn't know that, and it dawned on me just in time that if I kept up with that attitude, I never would end up with a woman like that.
She found me somewhat interesting (not many Americans spoke good German), but considered America to be the far side of the moon, a place she would never see. She was from the rural farm country of northwestern Germany, near the Dutch border. Twenty-one years later, I was introducing her to POTUS in Washington.
We will have been together for 50 years this July.
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