The summer of 1968 was highlighted in July by a wedding _ mine.

My job was going smoothly and I was learning new things about the newspaper business almost every day. But, even as I worked diligently in Rockford, my mind was often about 60 miles away in Madison, where my fiance', Judy Rosée, was finishing her degree in education.

We had been engaged for more than two years. The joke was that we waited because her father told me that if we got married before she graduated from the UW, I'd have to pay her out-of-state tuition. The truth was that we wanted to wait until I was able to make a living for us and until she could join me in Rockford.

Finally, the big day came and we said our vows in a temple near her parents' home in Skokie, IL on July 3, 1968. Judy was beautiful as she walked  down the aisle and I was apparently looking too serious.

She said it looked like I had changed my mind. Now I wish I had smiled more to show her how happy I really was at that moment to finally become her husband.

The next day we took off on a two-week road trip for our honeymoon. I still don't know what possessed me to decide to drive all the way to New Orleans or why I even decided to take us to Louisiana in July. But there we were in the car, heading out on our new life together.

It was very quiet for a while and, at one point, Judy looked over at me as I glanced toward her and we both said, ``Forever?'' There was a long pause and then we both started laughing. This was going to be fun.

One reason for the driving trip was that I got the bright idea to make that year's baseball all-star game in Houston, at the then-new Astrodome, part of our trip. I got Rick Talley to credential me and get a ticket for Judy and I mapped out the logistics of the trip to make it happen.

Once we got on the road, though, working a baseball game - even an all-star game - didn't seem like a very good idea. I called Rick and told him that I was going to pass up the game. I have to say he wasn't very surprised, and he wound up writing a column headlined "Young Love Gave Tipoff On Dull Game."

We had booked a room at the Royal Orleans, then the grand dame of New Orleans hotels and within easy walking distance of the French Quarter and most of the great NOLA restaurants.

What we didn't know was that my dad had called the hotel and upgraded us to a honeymoon suite, complete with wine and a fruit basket. Unfortunately, we arrived a day late for our original reservation.

Even though I called from the road to change our arrival date, they had changed our reservation to an ordinary room. It was huge and very nicely decorated with floor to ceiling curtains covering one entire wall.

Excitedly, we went to open the curtains to see the view. Behind the curtains was nothing but a wall - not even a window.

And no wine or fruit, either.

When I called home, dad was really upset that we hadn't gotten what he had asked for. But I assured him that Judy and I were just happy to be there.

That night, we went to Antoine's, one of the finest restaurants in New Orleans. The waiter was an older man and very stiff and correct in his manner. But Judy, as she usually does, chatted him up and began to cut through his cool exterior.

She had never been a drinker, but I ordered her a fancy drink. She sipped at it and proceeded to get a bit giddy. When the waiter brought our dessert, Judy stood up, gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. He turned beet red, got a huge smile on his face and offered us a personal tour of the restaurant's famed wine attic.

That was just a sign of what was to happen so often in our more than 50 years of marriage - Judy opening doors, reaching people and taking us on wonderful, unexpected adventures.

I decided that we would head over to Texas to visit an army buddy who was stationed at Fort Hood, about 60 miles from Austin. We wound up getting kicked out of a motel for the one and only time in our lives.

My friend, Michael Bunnell, who was my bunk mate in basic training, had hurt his back and neck in a fall. Judy offered to give him a massage. With the window and door wide open and me sitting in a chair next to the bed, Michael, with his shirt off, laid on his chest on the bed and Judy, fully dressed, sat on his butt and began massaging his back and shoulders.

We were having a nice conversation when the phone rang. "Mr. Harris, please come to the office  at once,"

When I got there, the lady behind the desk sternly told me, "We don't do things like that in Texas," and told me we had to leave.

We moved to another motel down the road and spent a good deal of the evening with Michael talking about our "debauched lifestyle" and laughing.

When we got back to Rockford, we had to figure out how to live like married people. We had found a one-bedroom apartment, half of a neat little fourplex _ two apartments downstairs and two upstairs _ not far from my office. We had little furniture, and what we did have, most of it we had gotten from my parents.

That included two twin beds. We pushed them together, but they kept sliding apart. So we wound up with both of us sleeping in one twin until we could finally afford a full-size bed about three months into our marriage. Being newlyweds, we never considered that a problem.

What was a problem: Judy had never cooked and we couldn't afford to simply eat out all the time.

Rick had me working days for the first week I was back and Judy asked me what I wanted for dinner that first night. Trying to make it easy on her, I said, "How about meatloaf? That's easy."

Judy dropped me off at work and went on to the grocery store, where she looked in vain for meatloaf in the meat department. Finally, she asked the butcher and he said, "Honey, you have to make meatloaf using ground beef."

She then bought a package of ground beef - frozen. But she had no idea how to thaw it.

The back door was open and our upstairs neighbor, a nice young lady, came past and saw Judy in our kitchen pounding with a hammer on the frozen package. She asked what Judy was doing and was told that she remembered her mother pounding on meat.

The woman explained that her mother was probably tenderizing meat that wasn't frozen. She helped her defrost the ground beef under cold water and also helped her cook it. Unfortunately, she also messed up while trying to put a small amount of oregano into the mix and spilled the bottle into it.

When we ate dinner that night, I was startled by the taste that put me off oregano for years. But, as a dutiful new husband, I ate that meatloaf with a smile on my face.

Fortunately, Judy was determined to learn how to cook, and she did.

Growing up, her family always ate at 6:30 after her father got home from work. Once, I started working nights again, she felt she still had to feed me at 6:30.

The first few workdays, she showed up at the office with a pot or pan of hot food, dishes and silverware and fed me on the big table in the conference room. My workmates gave me quite the roasting over that - I'm sure they were jealous. But I finally told Judy it was okay to just send me with a sack lunch of some kind.

Judy decided it was time to use her degree and began to teach home-bound students and I got back into the rhythm of the job. We had no money, but it was a wonderful time in our lives, learning how to live as a couple.