My fling with a summer intern

Twenty-one summers ago, while working as a staff writer for a small daily newspaper in Nebraska, I became involved with a summer intern from the University of Nebraska.  I won’t go into detail, except to note that she apparently had a weakness for socially awkward newspaper guys in their mid-20s with big mustaches, mullets, late model Chevy pickup trucks, and spit cups in the top left-hand drawer of their desks.  For my part, I had a weakness for whip-smart, quick-witted, tall, attractive, athletic red-heads exuding attitude and competence.


At the end of the summer, the intern returned to Lincoln to finish her journalism degree while I quit my newspaper job for the opportunity to paddle a canoe down a couple of hundred miles of the Yukon River.  Before heading in opposite directions, geographically and metaphorically, I persuaded her to join me on a 20-hour non-stop road trip from Nebraska to Idaho (via South Dakota to hitch a ride with my cousin, Cheryl).  The purpose of the trip was to attend the 1991 edition of the Miller Family Reunion™, an event that is not for the timid.  At about 9 a.m., we rolled into reunion headquarters at my Uncle Donnie’s place in Post Falls.  Before we could unfold ourselves from Cheryl’s two-door Pontiac, we were greeted by the happy smile of a bleary-eyed, unshaven man wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt that exposed a bare gut, jeans and flip flops, a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, arms opened in the international gesture of “let's hug!”  This is how the intern met my father.

She survived the Miller Family Reunion™, even the act of driving Aunt Maggie’s Lincoln Town Car home from a Rathdrum  bar while eight intoxicated Millers stuffed impossibly into the vehicle shouted navigational instructions at her.  A few days later, she survived meeting my mother, who believed that Clark’s new girlfriend was moving into her house while Clark looked for a job after his Yukon adventure (her belief being the result of a stunningly brilliant practical joke designed and implemented masterfully by my step-father, Larry, and of which no one was aware except Larry).  Mom warmed up some after she learned the intern would be returning to Nebraska for her senior year and not shacking up with her son in the basement.

June 20, 1992

June 16, 2012

After I returned from the Yukon Territory, I landed a newspaper job in Twin Falls, Idaho.  I stayed in touch with the intern, Carissa Moffat, who graduated from Nebraska in May of 1992.  Although she knew perfectly well what she was getting into, she went ahead and married me a few weeks later, on June 20, 1992, at the Lutheran church in her home town of Oshkosh, Nebraska.  Wednesday will be our 20th wedding anniversary. We've gone from Twin Falls to Laramie, Wyoming, to Washington, D.C., to Boise.  Carissa worked full time while earning a master's degree and then her doctorate degree.  She worked full time while allowing me to work part time (or less) while earning a master's degree and a law degree.  Eleven years ago we finally worked up the courage to bring a child into the world.  Four years ago we were brave enough to add another.  It’s been a grand adventure that gets better and more interesting every year.  And I'm grateful that she was crazy enough to give me a chance.