Too wet to ponder on the porch plus cannot miss watching the Sugar Bowl. Love me some Alabama football. Gonna watch the Georgia game if I can stay awake. Woke up every hour on the hour last night. I can’t do without sleep. Don’t feel well, hope I’m just tired.

I was thinking about the first time I went to church with Chief. We were just back from our honeymoon. Chief was such a gentleman, he was introducing me as his wife for the first time and that thrilled me. We get out to the parking lot and Mrs. Edith Russell was talking to two of her friends. Chief walks up to Mrs. Edith and says, “This is my wife, Jane.” He was that nervous! Mrs. Russell said, “I thought her name was Lane.” We laughed about this for years.

In the 43 years I knew Chief, he never called me Lane and I never called him Tom. Maybe he forgot my name was Lane. He called me Susie. I know it’s corny but he said my dark eyes made him think of the black eyed Susan flower. After all these years, I never thought about that being romantic. It was just a fact. When our children were born, he started calling me mama. Years ago vet brother was walking around the Christmas tree here and saw a present for me. Pardon his English, but he said, “Who in the hell is Susie?” Too long to explain so I told him it was a leftover present from the Russell Record that I brought home.

I called him Chief because he was editor in chief of the publications and I could not call my boss by his given name, that would be disrespectful. He hated to be called Mr. Saunders.

Technology scared him. When the Russell Record changed to digital paste up he was a nervous wreck. We had two weeks of training before we had to put together a 60 page publication. I brought all the software home and cried for a week till I taught myself how it worked. Chief never touched a keyboard or sent an email. Said his fingers were too big for the keyboard. Somehow we worked things out.

I’d never touched a keyboard either, even in college! I loved doing the publications on the computer. The computer page set up was so easy and the artistic freedom thrilled me. I loved designing our magazine pages and corrections were a breeze. No more trips to the Print Shop for a correction line to wax and roll down.

Chief always took pride in the publications never having misspelled words or goofy pictures. I’d zip up pants in Photoshop, paint blouses a little higher (so their bosoms weren’t hanging out), paint over words on T-shirts. Once we had a plant manager standing in front of a billboard and he had a hot dog protruding from his ears. This was tedious back then and you had to manipulate the photo to make it look original. He would proofread everything a thousand times till Boss Lady and I took the pages away.

Once The Print Shop called me to come and check on something. “Don’t tell Chief. I think it’ll be easier with you,” he said. Well, that got me curious. Got to the Print Shop and on the front page it said, “Third shit!,” instead of third shift! Thousands had been printed! I just put on my big girl panties and told them it would have to be corrected and reprinted! “But the expense,” they said. “Don’t care what it cost…we’re not going to embarrass that employee.” Didn’t tell Chief till we went to pick up the papers.

From that day on I always did a word search to be sure shift and truck were spelled correctly. Can’t be too sure!

He was always asking us to get him an encyclopedia to answer a question and we’d tell him we could find the answer on our phone faster than walking to the bookshelf. Nope, wanted a encyclopedia in his hand so he could look it up.

Guess the funniest example of him being behind the times was when we drove our son’s truck home from Hilton Head to Augusta. I always drove and Chief always navigated. Thomas fixed the GPS to avoid interstates and away we went. Chief didn’t have a map because we had ridden over with Thomas and Ashley. He just couldn’t function without a map. We stopped at a filing station. He bought a map and quizzed the store clerk to see if we were headed in the right direction.

Got back in the car and at the first red light a feminine voice says turn right at the next traffic light. Chief looks serious and says, “I can’t find that street on the map. And who is that lady talking to us. Where is she?”

I said relax and enjoy the trip. I put the petal to the medal in that big old truck and the lady had us home in record time.