On love, persistence, and the world’s best love story

It was love at first sight.

That’s how my grandparent’s story always began. Always with those six words. I remember my grandfather telling his version of it, delivered with a showman’s flair while sitting at his kitchen table, or my grandmother’s less flowery, matter-of-fact version, giving it her own warm, baked-bread spin, often telling it — whenever one of us grand-kids would ask her to — while we were playing Scrabble or Yahtzee.

The ritual went on long after my grandfather passed away. And when my grandfather died, it was my dad who took up the story, sharing it on long drives or over dinner in a restaurant, delighting in telling it again, no matter how many times we’d heard it. To us, it was the world’s best love story.

It was theirs, but in a way it was also ours.

Ten years ago, I set out to write a play, a two-actor romantic comedy that I eventually titled “Pinky.” It was based on my youthful friendship with (and embarrassingly clumsy teenage courtship of) a freckled, fairytale-loving girl whose nickname was, in fact, Pinky.

That, too, was love at first sight.

It was for me, anyway.

It’s a long story.

Anyway, when I decided — at the suggestion of my friend Sheri Lee Miller, a longtime Sonoma County theater director and actor — to capture some of my memories of that long-ago time in the form of a heavily-fictionalized theater piece, I knew the play would have to begin with the telling of grandparents’ story, the story of a five dollar bill and 99 nickels. It’s the story of how my grandmother and grandfather found each other when neither one was really looking, how at first she wasn’t the least bit interested, and how he wouldn’t give up until she finally loved him as much as he loved her.

One of the joys of playwriting is that, every once in a while, when someone new stages a particular script, I get to watch all over again as different actors speak my words. Everyone interprets things differently, of course. That’s part of the fun. I recently sat in on a Zoom “table read” of “Pinky,” which is being produced as a live-streaming show from the living room of Mark and Julianne Bradbury, a married couple from Santa Rosa who will be bringing my story to life as a fundraiser for Sonoma Arts Live theater, beginning this weekend — just in time for Valentine’s Day. Petaluma’s own Larry Williams, who played David in a 2017 production in Marin, is directing this one. It’s been a while since that Marin County staging of “Pinky,” so at the time of the Zoom table read last month, I hadn’t heard my grandparents’ story in quite some time.

But sitting there, watching Mark read the tale again over Zoom, it took me instantly back to those days as a kid, long before I myself had experienced my own “love at first sight” moment. I remember how good it always felt to sit and listen to their stories. I suppose, to a degree, I own my career as a writer to their early inspiration.

Which never would have happened, of course, had they never met.

That was in 1920.

My grandfather was an electrical designer and inventor. Having traveled to Southern California from Toronto to escort his mother to her new home in the town of Ontario, in San Bernardino County, he decided to stop in at the Hotpoint factory that was located there. He held the first patent for a particular kind of electric oven thermostat, and he was curious about the appliances Hotpoint was making at the time. The way the story goes, when the electrical engineers there heard my grandfather’s name, they took him into the lab and showed him one of his own thermostats, which they’d been studying to determine how it might be used in an electric iron.

On the spot, they offered him a job.

He turned them down.

He had a business of his own back in Toronto.

But while he was there, he decided to have some lunch, and the factory happened to have a large cafeteria. A long line of workers were already cued up for their lucnhes when he walked in. There was a sign posted: “Lunch - 5 cents.” Grandpa got in line, picked up a tray, and started making his way past the counters piled with food, to where a slender cashier sat, graciously accepting people’s nickels with a smile that reached straight into my grandfather’s heart.

That, of course, was my grandmother.

And it was love at first sight.

But not in both directions.

My grandfather flashed what he hoped was his most charming smile, and asked her name, but instead of answering, she said, with her best “Don’t-mess-with-me-fella“ expression, ”That’ll be five cents.“

My grandfather had no change in his pockets. Only a five dollar bill. When he handed it over, my grandmother’s expression turned from resistance to annoyance. All she had in her cash register were nickels. It was no easy task to pull together the 99 nickels it would take to give my grandfather his change, but she did. And as she counted the last coin into my grandfather’s hand, he must have caught a glint of something on her face, a gleam of interest or curiosity in her eyes. Because after my grandfather was done eating his five-cent lunch, he made his way back to the lab, found the chief electrician, offered his hand and said, “I believe I’ll take that job.”

Now, he knew that winning my grandmother over was not going to be easy. But he did know where to start. He took his 99 nickels to the bank, added another and traded them in for a fresh five dollar bill. When he handed that over to my grandmother, on his official first day of work, he stood there and watched as she once again scrambled to pull together 99 nickels.

Once again, she was annoyed. But he knew he’d at least gotten her attention. Still, she continued to resist his attempts at charm.

Then, seven days later, after a week’s worth of lunches, a week’s worth of five dollar bills, 495 nickels having changed hands between them, one day at lunch, my grandmother nonchalantly exchanged my grandfather’s five dollar bill with four ones, three quarters and two dines.

Clearly, she’d been thinking about him, planning ahead for his next lunchtime appearance. My grandfather’s scheme ... was working. Several months later, after theyd been dating for a while, when he asked her to marry him, this time she said yes right away, and they spent the next 45 years together.

I don’t know if it all happened exactly like that, but I grew up believing every word. I do realize there may have been some embellishments. I certainly added a couple of my own when writing my grandparent’s meet-cute moment into my play. But entirely true or not, it definitely shaped my own perceptions of love, and taught me a thing or two about storytelling.

This weekend, I’m looking forward to seeing what Mark, Julianne and Larry do with “Pinky,” and the story of the 99 nickels. I’ll be watching, along with my family, though from separate places, as is the state of things these days. It’s nice to know that decades after their passing, my grandparents’ love story still continues.

This Valentine’s Day, so very different and difficult compared to other’s we’ve known, I think it’s a good goal to do what my grandfather and grandmother did. To share, often and openly, the stories that bind us together. To (maybe) love someone so well, so simply, and so beautifully, that people will still be talking about it long after we’re gone.

(“Culture Junkie” runs every other week in the Argus-Courier. You can contact David at david.templeton@arguscourier.com. For information about Sonoma Arts Live, find them on Facebook or their website at SonomaArtsLive.org)