Ora Carpenter Omerza history, 7th installment

A few weeks after I was introduced to him he called me on a Sunday afternoon and wanted me to go for a ride with him. I told him “no” at first but he kept talking so finally I told him I would go if Norine and her boy friend who was at our apartment could go along. He agreed so we went for a ride. He just treated me great. He was kind and considerate and a gentleman all the way. Still his language was something I couldn’t quite take. I’d come home with all those swear words ringing in my ears. That just wasn’t for me. But there was always this, “This is the man you are to marry.” Soon after we met he decided to go back to Chicago. That was fine with me. I was seeing him too often and liking him too much. We wrote a few times but he was no letter writer so finally our correspondence came to an end.

Soon after my aunt and uncle returned to Thatcher my aunt wrote that she was to have a baby. After eleven years of marriage she was finally to have her wish fulfilled. But it wasn’t to be. She died in child birth 7 April 1937. The baby also died. This was a great shock to me. I went home to Thatcher and thought I would stay but after a while and without work I decided to return to California. My old boss wanted me back so I went back to work at the same place. One day at work I answered the phone and who should it be but Emerick. I hadn’t heard from him for some time. He wanted to see me that evening. I had other plans but I did see him the following evening. It wasn’t really a good evening. Instead of enjoying the good in him, it seemed all I could see was the bad. All I wanted to do was run. It was a very hard time in my life. The thought still persisted “This is the man you are to marry.” I was so unhappy. Our backgrounds were so different. We didn’t seem to want the same things out of life. He wasn’t even a little interested in the church. What to do. One night he came and brought me a beautiful ring and ask me to marry him. We had talked of marriage before and I knew I would accept. He had admitted many times he didn’t want to be tied down to marriage but there he was asking me to marry him. I accepted and the whole world came down on our heads. My family and all my friends were very unhappy with me. I think I broke my Mother’s heart in a thousand pieces. That was so hard for me. I loved her so much. His friends were against him marrying me as much as mine were against me marrying him.

I very foolishly reasoned if he was the one I was going to marry that every thing would work out great after we were married. We were married in Santa Ana, Orange County, California 3 December 1938. We were married on a Saturday and when he went to work Monday (no money for a honeymoon) his boss told him there was no work. He was doing painting. Work wasn’t too plentiful and he couldn’t get a job for awhile. I was still working so we had a lace to live and enough to eat but he began feeling like a kept man. After Christmas and New Years and he still didn’t have anything steady. He had had a few days work. He wanted to go to Oregon and get work on the Shaster Dam they were building at that time. It seemed foolish to me and I tried to talk him out of it. I had a feeling that already the pressure of marriage was getting to his free soul. He finally decided to leave saying he would send for me as soon as he got work. I remember the morning he left. As he kissed me goodbye I knew that he thought he wasn’t coming back. That this was it but I also knew he would be back. About two weeks later he was back. Said he needed me, went out and got a job and was never without work again.