Fifty-four years ago, Connie left work early at the Pasadena Star-News. I picked her up, and together we drove over to Rose Chapel.

That’s where we got married.

There were five people there—Connie’s parents, my parents, and one guest. The whole thing cost $65.

No orchestra. No photographers. No seating chart.

Just a short ceremony and a long life ahead of us.

That night, we had dinner at our favorite place, The Hamber Hamlet on Lake Street. I don’t remember what we ordered, but I remember the feeling—we were officially on our own, and it felt right.

The next day, we walked through a Cinco de Mayo street fair in Altadena. It was nothing fancy—just booths, music, people milling around—but it was ours. We were part of the world now, not watching from the sidelines.

At some point, we wandered into a small shop called “The Pet Place.”

It was maybe 300 square feet. Fish tanks, a few cages, basic supplies. Nothing special.

But something clicked.

Later that month, we bought it.

We didn’t have investors. We didn’t have a business plan. What we had was a joint savings account.

We had opened it the day we moved in together, and we started putting money into it right away—whatever we could spare. That account became our first real tool. Not a loan. Not a handout. Just discipline.

That little store became our entry point into business.

Looking back, it seems almost reckless.

At the time, it felt normal.

That’s the part people miss about the late 1960s and early 1970s. Life wasn’t easier—but expectations were simpler.

When you graduated high school, you moved out. That was the deal.

In my case, my mother handed me a shoebox filled with Blue Chip and Green Stamps and said, “Get what you need.”

If you’ve never seen them, they were trading stamps—given out at grocery stores, gas stations, and just about anywhere you spent money. You collected them in little books and redeemed them for household items—plates, silverware, small appliances.

That shoebox was my starter kit.

Then she said, “Call once in a while.”

That was it.

No long conversations about life plans. No safety net.

You figured it out.

Most of us did.

We had lousy jobs—blue-collar work that paid just enough to get by. Sometimes you had two or three jobs at once. Our cars were old—usually from 1960—rattling down the road, burning oil, barely making it from one paycheck to the next.

We lived with friends. We split rent. We shared food.

We shared everything.

We were free. We were poor. We were young.

And life was good.

There was a kind of unspoken understanding among us. We didn’t expect comfort. We expected the chance to try.

That mindset didn’t come out of nowhere.

Our parents had lived through the Great Depression. Our fathers worked long hours, sometimes two jobs. Our mothers ran tight households, stretching every dollar.

“Remember, payday is Friday,” wasn’t just a reminder—it was a warning.

Don’t run out of money before then.

Frugality wasn’t a philosophy. It was survival.

Work ethic wasn’t a virtue. It was a requirement.

Those lessons stuck.

When Connie and I bought that little pet store, we didn’t think of ourselves as entrepreneurs. We were just trying to build something—anything—that might give us a better shot.

There was no guarantee it would work.

But there was also no fear of failure in the way people talk about it today.

Failure just meant you tried something else.

That’s a big difference.

Today, people often say it’s harder to get started. In some ways, that’s true. Costs are higher. Competition is tougher. The stakes feel bigger.

But the fundamentals haven’t changed.

You still need discipline.

You still need the willingness to live lean.

And you still need to take a risk before you feel ready.

Looking back over more than fifty years, I’ve come to believe that two things matter more than anything else:

Frugality and work ethic.

Not the kind of success measured by a big house, a new car, or a vacation in Europe.

But the kind of success that comes from building your own life—step by step, decision by decision.

That $65 wedding wasn’t the story.

The story was what came next.

A small shop. A shared bank account. And the decision—made early and without much discussion—that we were going to figure it out on our own.