"The Invoice"

The latest addition to my #ONEProject is a portrait of my good friend Don Chamblee.  He has an actual invoice- in his own handwriting- for a purchase his wife made years ago when they first met.  Prepare yourselves for another great story!

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For my “one” I had to dig deep, because honestly there are a lot of “ones” I could have chosen, and the task of narrowing it down to the one “one” was a daunting one. Without getting too Hallmark Channel on everyone, the invoice in my hand represents everything that happened in my life after it was signed.

In the mid 80’s I worked part time as a salesman in my favorite high-end audio store, Audio Concepts, in Houston. I don’t think I’m going to insult anyone by saying that audio isn’t a pastime that has a lot of female participation, it is mostly a male chest-beating hobby. Obviously, whenever a woman walked in it was a cause to celebrate, the staff of young guys that worked there immediately were on their best behavior.

Somehow, one day, I got very lucky to help an extremely cute young woman who had come into the store to purchase an entire system. Socorro impressed me with all the research she had done to determine what she wanted and her patience to build the perfect audio system for her budget.��Over the next month, or so, we got to know each other as she would return to the store to listen to yet another piece of gear as she built her system.

On one particular evening, I knew beforehand that she was coming in for another round of listening. With all the guys in the store cheering me on, I was determined to ask her out when she came in. During her visit, before I had the chance to do so, she asked me out to a movie that same night.

Ultimately, I sold her the system that appears on the invoice and our relationship grew from there. This May we celebrate 31 years of marriage, 3 amazing kids and a life I couldn’t have imagined back then. I like to think that beyond the audio gear I sold her, I also sold her a lifetime warranty. �

As an interesting epilogue to this story, the store must have had some kind of magic to it. Over the years the store had 2 different owners and both of them met their spouses at the store. One store, 3 marriages.

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