Chapter 11

Paul and Ellen had flown to O’Hare where they had to change planes for the eight-hour flight to London. If you were going to be on this long of a flight, the comfortable way to fly was to do it in business class. This trip was to celebrate a wedding anniversary and they were going there to see the country and the historic sites which are often shown on television.

This vacation to London was what Ellen wanted to do and she also wanted to do some electric bike touring of the countryside. Paul was not enthused to be doing the biking and after some negotiation convinced her they could see more of the countryside if they did this touring in a rented automobile.

Ellen who was next to him had no problem in sleeping during this nighttime flight. Paul was a nervous flyer and would try and fall asleep, but that would be later, if at all. Right now he was finishing up his column for next Sunday’s newspaper edition. He was revising a column he had written some twenty-plus years ago about what you should be looking for in the way of a lifelong companion but he had never submitted it for publication. He chuckled to himself thinking that after his years of marriage he was now qualified to give his opinion.

While he was revising the column he would periodically think about things that happened during the years of his marriage. He knew that without a doubt he was one lucky man to have married Ellen.

Their wedding for which Ellen did all the planning was not overly large. The reception consisting of relatives, friends, and business associates totaled fewer than one hundred guests. The honeymoon was a ten-day cruise to Alaska which included a land tour of Denali National Park. Paul was told that seeing the Denali Mountain itself from the ground at times was questionable since it could be obscured by clouds. Because of that possibility, Paul booked a tour which was a short plane flight that enabled them to see Denali which was poking itself above the clouds. The view of the mountain above the clouds from the plane was worth every penny of the cost of doing this.

Besides doing what newlywed couples are expected to do on a honeymoon which they did every night, a few times in the morning, and twice in the afternoon, they talked about what they wanted their life to be. The subject of having children was discussed. They both wanted to have children and hoped they would be blessed to have them. Standing at the stern of the ship they contributed to the ocean’s pollution when Ellen ceremonially tossed her five remaining birth control pills into the ocean. They immediately went back to their cabin and celebrated that event.

It turned out that they were blessed when Ellen gave birth to a set of twins, one boy, and one girl, who they named Nik and Kaley. With two children being what they agreed upon, Paul had a vasectomy.

Ellen continued to work as an attorney but she also devoted herself to raising the children and tried to instill in them good study habits. She was successful in doing this as Nik has now started law school and Kaley is, starting medical school. Both of them initially considered attending Ivy League schools but they decided to attend UT. The comments they made in making that decision was that UT is just as good as those Ivy League schools and the education you receive from schools is dependent on the effort you put in to get the education.

Besides being excellent students, the twins never gave Ellen and Paul any major problems. Paul would say that at times the teenage years did have some bumps in them but those problems were solved as the twins matured and appreciated the wisdom of their parents.

During this time Paul continued to do the news reporting on television along with writing his column. The ups and downs occurring in the country gave him quite a bit to comment on. The goings-on in Washington was frequently commented on but local issues and politicians were also mentioned. Subjects such as crime, celebrities, and athletes, along with stories of good news that happened were what he commented on.

Paul took delight in commenting on a big city Mayor who had gone off the deep end complaining about illegals being bused to her proudly proclaimed sanctuary city. She said among many things, it wasn’t the right thing to do. He pointed out her hypocrisy when she bused these illegals to a suburb outside of her city. He quoted a line from an old western movie saying, “This lady speaks with forked tongue.”

He had enjoyment in stirring the pot of controversy, especially in the effort in the US to go green on which he commented frequently. He tried to make the point that the pressure to do that was on the US and what was being overlooked was that other countries were not making a concerted effort to go green. He pointed out that the air over the States isn’t the same air that is always here. When a volcano erupts in another country or pollutants in some way are spewed into the air, some of what is spewed will eventually find its way to the US.

He also mentioned that when there is a heat wave the power grid here in the US is put under stress because of the high electricity demand. Rolling blackouts will occur in some sections of the country. China brags that they have no problem meeting this increased demand for electricity because of its many coal-fired electrical generating plants. Why environmentalists omit to mention that and only want to talk about what is happening in the US were the questions he asked. Maybe he said it’s because China doesn’t care as evidenced by the air quality in some of their major cities. Also, there could be repercussions by the Chinese government if they didn’t like what a person or a corporation doing business in their country said. The Chinese government is nowhere near as tolerant of complainers or protesters as we are in the States.

The broadcast news team Paul was a member of continued to be the top-rated evening news show in the Austin area. In observing the body language of his team members, Paul was not surprised when Joyce and Larry both decided to take their vacations at the same time. When they returned to work they announced that they had gone to Las Vegas and were married. Their marriage was mentioned in the “About the Town” column.

It wasn’t that much longer after their marriage that Joyce was showing signs of her being pregnant. Seven months after they were married Joyce delivered a healthy baby boy. She announce that she was going to be a stay-at-home mother and would be one till all the children they were hoping to have are in school.

Her leaving created a need for a replacement on the news team. The station’s management team solved this problem when they hired Denise Edwards to replace Joyce. Denise had been a news reporter for this station before she left to be a weekend news reader for a television station in New Orleans. She was now coming back to Austin to be the co-anchor for this television station’s main news team.

It was Paul’s opinion that there was no loss in how good the women on this news team looked with Denise’s becoming a member.