"THE WANDERER"
BY   TED PANNELL
  "I'm the kind of guy who likes to travel round ; I'm never in one place I roam from town to town.  When I find myself falling for some girl, I hop right in that car of mine and drive around the world cuz I'm the wanderer, yes , the wanderer."

  Yep, that was me, way back when.  I had a life style of living and traveling all over the united states.  It began in the late 60s after serving in Vietnam.  The early 1970s found me in beautiful  Hawaii.  Ah, yes, sand and surf and pretty people.  After a year of frolic and beauty, I grew restless and hopped on a plane bound for the Marshall Islands, which turned out to be just   dazzling, but very little of it.  At one high point, you can see clear across the island.

   I had taken a government security job to secure missile tracking stations located there, so most of my time was spent waiting...and waiting for missile shots from Vandenburg Air Force Base, boring.  Couldn't take much more of this.  We would drink, listen to music, and play poker but none of this was done with women.  The  only women there were married to the other employees. After  six months, I broke my contract and "hop right in that car of mine and drove around the world"; or rather flew back to Hawaii.

  After being on Gillian's Island, Oahu looked pretty good, as did the women.  But after a few more months of the beach life, island fever began to set in - it was finally time to return to the real world or at least Los Angeles.

  Christmas in December of 1972 was a lonely time for unconsciously I was still searching for something. A couple of meaningless jobs did not fill any of my needs either.

  One evening in February, I walked into a nice little lounge for a couple of drinks and my life was never the same. Valentines or Cupid was the last things on my mind, but there was a girl...name; Sylvia - we struck up a conversation, and it was amazing. Our lives were so parallel that it was freaky. Everything we talked of was, you too, me too. 

  It started with our birthdays. We both were October, both on the 12th. Both married twice. Both of us divorced for five years. Neither of us smoked. We were members of Jack La Lane Club, only it wasn't co-ed at that time.

  After that night, we were never apart again-my search was over. Once Sylvia asked me why I ever left Hawaii?

  I didn't even have to think about the answer. "Because you weren't there",  It was the truth, I'd been looking everywhere for her. So, what does love have to do with it? Everything. All the success, all the money, all the material things in the world is meaningless without love.

Thank you again Ted, what a wonderful  love story!
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