How I Met Linda

Linda and me, May 1978. Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Linda, May 1978. Smokies.

Sorry about the font size below--I'm having a strange technical problem]

How I Met Linda Sanders

In the fall of 1976, when I was 28 years old, I was living in a $40/month apartment on Hollister
Street near the University of Cincinnati. I had been able to get a Teaching Assistantship
in the College of Education. I would teach two sections of “Reading and Study Skills” and
would tutor students in English classes. For this work, I would get my tuition paid for graduate
courses in Reading Education--and I would get a enough income to pay for my apartment.
It was slim pickings, but I had learned to live on very little money. I had one other gig--working
about 10 hours a week in the University of Cincinnati library.

That fall I took 4-5 courses, including a great course, “Psychology of Reading,” taught by
Linda Amspaugh. That class consisted of about 20 girls and two guys--me and Bob Moore.
During the semester we often met in small groups in class and had lots of opportunities to
speak in class and to listen to our classmates. I liked the idea of being in a class with so many
women. I had attended a high school with 2000 boys and no girls (St. Joseph High School),
and a college with 7000 guys and no girls (the University of Notre Dame). These experiences
left me a little stunted in knowing how to talk to girls--to say the least!

As the semester went on, I began to notice a girl in the class, Linda Sanders (didn’t learn
her name right away). She was very pretty and somewhat shy. Sometimes she’d come to
class late from her job as secretary in the Health and Physical Education Department. When
she was late, her cheeks would turn a bright crimson. At the end of the semester I began to sit
near her and talk to her a bit both inside class and after class. But I still knew very little about
her, and when the semester ended I thought maybe I wouldn’t see her again. Except--at the
end of the semester, many students in the class asked Linda Amspaugh to teach another class
and keep the group together. Most people promised to enroll in “Sociology of Reading” for the
winter/spring semester.

Christmas Break and January were incredibly cold--the coldest weather in Cincinnati history.
One day we even hit a record of -24 degrees Fahrenheit. My apartment was so cold that I could
not keep warm unless I got into my sleeping bag. That winter was memorable for a couple
reasons . . .

I did enroll in Sociology of Reading, and luckily Linda Sanders also enrolled. Again, Bob Moore
and I were the only guys, ha ha (and by the way, for a while Linda thought my last name was
“Moore”). As the semester progressed, I unconsciously found myself sitting next to Linda most
of the time and talking to her often after class. We even began running into each other in odd
places--like in the stacks of the UC library--a real bizarre coincidence considering the location
of stacks, deep in the bowels of the library.

As the semester went along, Linda would often offer me a piece of hard candy as we left class
or took our mid-class break. One day she didn’t mention any candy, and I jokingly asked her,
“Where’s my candy?” Then, in a move totally uncharacteristic of me, I thrust my hand into the
front pocket of her khakis and grabbed a piece of candy. Neither of us could believe I did that,
but we both laughed at that spontaneous move.

On day in early March, Linda asked me if I’d like to come over to her house for a soup-bean
and corn bread supper. I enthusiastically said yes. When she told me the day (a weekday night,
maybe a Thursday), I told her, “Oh no, I have something going on that night.” What was going on
was that I had a date with another girl to go to Hap’s Irish Pub to hear Malcolm Dalglish and
Grey Larsen play music. I had very few dates in those days, and to think this is when Linda
asked me to come over. Finally I told her, “I can come over but I’d have to leave by 7:30. Would
that work?” She said it would.

So I went to supper at her house. I can’t remember who else was there. Maybe her roommate
Mary Ann Hageman. Or her brother Steve. It was a nice time and a nice modest supper. At 7:30
I said goodbye and left to go to Hap’s Pub with another girl.

Another time during the month of March 1977, we heard that Malcolm Dalglish and Grey Larsen
were going to play music at Jim Tarbell’s bar, “Arnolds,” on 8th Street near Downtown Cincinnati.
Linda and Mary Ann Hageman were going to go there, and I said that I could meet them there
after I got off work at the University of Cincinnati library. So I worked until 7 or 8 o’clock, and then
ran down Vine Street hill, about two and a half miles, all the way to Arnolds’ Bar and Grill, where
I found Linda and Mary Ann. Luckily they gave me a ride home in Linda’s VW bug later that
evening.

I had supper again with Linda later that month at her apartment on Clemmer Street. This time her
Mom and Dad were there. I got along great with her Mom and Dad, and at some point Linda’s
Dad said to me,” We’re going to Mammoth Cave over the Easter weekend. Want to come with
us?” Linda and her Mother were gob-smacked when Art Sanders asked this. He hadn’t
consulted with them at all! Anyway, I immediately said, “Yea, I’d love to come with you.”

Around the middle of March, during a warm spell after the bitter-cold winter, Linda and I ran into
each other again in the library. Then we went outside and sat on the hill in front of McMicken
Hall where I had seen a circle of crocus in bloom. There, we sat in the middle of this circle, and
kissed each other for the first time. [January 2019]

[to be continued]