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Childhood sweethearts love small town life
Karen and Clyde Jenkins met at his sister's wedding, where he was an usher.
"I thought he was cute, but he didn't pay any attention to me--He grabbed Mary (Rendleman) Hart and ushered her down the aisle," Karen remembers.
"Well, you were about twelve," Clyde says.
"No, I wasn't!" Karen returns, in her usual feisty fashion. "I was a sophomore in high school! "
Karen insists that he didn't notice her until shortly after his sister's wedding, when they all went to the Lake.
"I was in a bathing suit--He noticed me then!" Karen quips.
Clyde, then a sophomore in college, admits that she "looked pretty good..."
Karen explains that Mary Hart is their cousin, but on different sides of the family.
"It sounds a little 'Arkansaw-y,' doesn't it?" laughs the lively kindergarten teacher.
A conversation with Karen Jenkins is anything but dull, and her husband Clyde adds a balance that makes it easy to see why this marriage works, after these years. Karen was just 19.
"I was spoiled rotten!" Karen Jenkins admits. "My mama said, 'You take her and finish raising her!' My mama really liked Clyde. I think if I didn't marry him, she would! Our families liked each other. "
The couple has three children--one girl and two boys, and they feel fortunate to live in the country near a small town like Bell City, where they took over her father's gas business several years ago.
"My dad (Ivan Dunn) said that Clyde had 'business sense,'" Karen Jenkins explains.
Karen teaches kindergarten, and anyone who has seen her classroom can attest to her unending enthusiasm and love for her small charges.
"This is a wonderful place to raise kids!" Karen says. "We love the activities--Our kids had their own horses, a pond, a tree house, bugs, frogs...all the fun country things, and our grandchildren love the trains!"
The Jenkins' home nestles in the trees, mostly out of sight.
"I've always loved this stretch of highway 91," Karen Jenkins says. "It's so beautiful."
When they bought their current house, it had only four rooms.
"It was 'double-boxed,'" Karen explains. "There aren't many houses that are like that anymore. It's too expensive to build them that way. We've added onto both sides, but the new rooms aren't double-boxed."
The garden echoes the sunny disposition of its owner. Purple verbena and bright green creeping jenny spread toward the sidewalk. Canvas prints of songbirds add bright touches of red and yellow. It is a happy place.
Clyde and Karen Jenkins sit on a swing on their pleasant front patio under the print of a cardinal.
"I like to own flat land, but I like to live in the hills," Clyde says. "I hope my children know that we bought this place for them."
Karen Jenkins' advice for marriage is simple: "Love and forgive!"
She also remembers her mother's advice: "Always let him think he's right--even when he isn't!"
"Stick with 'em! It gets better!" says Clyde Jenkins.
This Bell City couple have obviously taken their own advice.