Holding On by Doug Fenske

Author:Doug Fenske
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publish on Demand Global LLC

Schulz/Fenske families with Dave Welsh.

Doug (left) on Bigboy, and Dave Welsh (right) on Bronk.

Somehow I knew better. I did want eventually to be married and raise a family, and I had searched for years to find a compatible mate, with no success. Throughout my twenties (incessantly), I experienced a strong feeling, a “voice-thought” inside my head, which said, “You’ve already met whom you’re supposed to be with!” The “voicethought” didn’t make sense though, because for a very long time I had harbored dreams (and visions), of meeting a blond woman, who was beautiful, and who lived on a beach in California, and I had only visited California once, as a very young boy. The “voice-thought,” “feeling,” was so strong however, that I looked up a number of girls whom I had dated in high school, and in college. I traveled to several places in Michigan, and to South Bend, Indiana, Champagne, Illinois, and Toledo, Ohio. I located some of the girls I had dated, and several were still single, and interested, but it’s easy to romanticize a relationship, once you’re no longer in it. Each time I would reacquaint myself with an old girlfriend, memories would return of what wasn’t right, and why the relationship had failed.

Finally, reluctantly, I ignored the “voice-thought, feeling,” wrote it off as just a dream, and asked the girl I was dating, named Ruth Ann, to marry me. I had been dating her for several years, although turbulently (we argued, and broke up frequently). Mostly, I felt a sense of responsibility. I didn’t want to let my mother down, and also, Ruth Ann’s older brother Dick (whom I held in high regard), and whom on various occasions had bluntly pressured me to marry his sister, had recently been diagnosed with terminal leukemia, and I wanted him to know before he died, that we were going to be married. Unfortunately, on the weekend I proposed, Dick slipped into a coma. He never knew of our upcoming wedding, and he died within a few months. Dick was forty-two years old.

We were married in the spring of 1977, for a rocky ten years. My good friend Dan Tanner was my “best man,” and several other neighborhood friends stood up for me. My company sponsored a men’s “DFCC” softball team, golf team, and a men and women’s bowling team (on which we both participated). We were friends with the members of the teams, which were comprised mostly of guys I grew up with, and their girlfriends and wives.

They were good athletes, as well as good friends. They included guys like ballplayers/bowlers/golfers, Doug Ridder, Dirk Drevis, Jim and Chet Casper, Doug Fenske Cattle Company, and Fenske Enterprises Maintenance Manager Bob Mench, our excellent infielders, first baseman Huey Meinmen, second basemen Jerry Degard, and our top pitcher/first-baseman, Ed Hasbreck, and of course Dan Tanner, who played catcher, and outfield (as well as golfed and bowled), and who’s powerful long arms allowed him to throw to home plate (sometimes over the backstop) from the farthest corners of the field.

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