No Cooking Today

There will be no cooking for me today because it’s my birthday. It’s also the day my husband Meakin proposed to me forty years ago at this beautiful fountain in Houston, Texas. This photo was taken by my husband the day he proposed and it’s faded somewhat and stuck in an old album, thus it isn’t as sharp as it once was.

The fountain, known as one of the Mecom Fountains, is at the middle of the five way intersection of Main, Montrose and Herman Drive in Houston, Texas, near Rice University and the Medical complex. It was beautifully lit at night but our photo of the lit fountain has seen the effects of what heat does to plastic album covers and is not worthy of showing. It is across from what was then the stately Warwick Hotel. The fountain is named after John Mecom, Jr., a wealthy and successful Houston oil and cattleman who, at the time, owned the Warwick Hotel in the background. Mr. Mecom also founded the New Orleans Saints NFL team in 1966 and was well known in the Indy car racing world with his Mecom Racing Team. Successful drivers such as A.J. Foyt, Roger Penske and Jackie Stewart drove for his team.

Since then the Mecom Fountains have experienced some bad times. In the fall of 2006 someone stole the 264 bronze canisters that lit the fountain. After staying in the dark for months, it got some help with floodlights from high atop the nearby Hotel ZaZa and is beautiful once again. Fortunately for us our marriage seems to have had a better fate through the years than the fountain.

I met my husband on a blind date. My roommate had a friend in the Army and he and my future husband, who was also in the Army at the time, came to Houston for a visit. He tells everyone he found me in the bargain basement at Foleys Department Store, which is true. I had been recruited off campus at the University of Arkansas to be in Foleys Executive Management Program and was an Assistant Buyer in Women’s Sportswear at the time. We lived in Houston during the early years of our marriage and, as a coincidence, later belonged to the fancy private club that had an outside glass elevator that took you to the penthouse club of John Mecom’s Warwick Hotel that overlooked the fountain where I said yes and we’ve lived happily together ever after.