Another B&A Story

Since I told one Bear and Anny story, I thought I would share another. This one took place in Lubbock when Toby and I first got married. We were going to school at Texas Tech. Toby worked construction and I worked at Nelson’s Cleaners. Bear and Anny lived and worked in Lubbock at that time too. None of us had money. We were all scraping by, but having the time of our lives.

Nelson’s Cleaners had a policy that if you found something valuable in a customer’s pocket, you had to return it. If you found money, it was yours to keep. Whenever I would find money, say ten or twenty dollars, I would call Toby and he would call Bear and Anny. We would celebrate by eating out. Santa Fe Station, a Mexican food place, had the best deal for the money – since we did not have much between the four of us. We would order a side plate of beans and cheese (for about $1.75) and an order of tortillas (about 75 cents). We would then roll our own burritos. Since the meal came with all of the chips and salsa you could eat, we ate pretty well. Sometimes we would all have a beer, or if I had found enough money, we would have margaritas. I can’t express what a treat this was.

Years later, when we all lived in NM, we decided to go play tennis early one mourning. The tennis game was okay, but we were all hungry since we had not had breakfast. After tennis, we stopped at a local café to eat. Once we were seated and looking at the menu, it became apparent that none of us had brought money. We all started digging in our pockets and bringing out whatever change we had. We pooled all the money together (like the old days) to see what we had and how much food we could order. We ended up each getting a cup of coffee and then getting one sweet-roll for all of us to share. Here we were married with kids, and we still had to scrape up money and share our food. It was a wonderful mourning that I will never forget. We shared a lot of things with Bear and Anny. Most of it was just fun and laughter.