Fifty Years in the Canaries

It's kinda funny but Ricky wasn't the first person from Harper to live in the Canary Islands. We had a woman (I was telling about her and her family last year) that married a man who was from Spain. They settled in the Canaries and she came back to Harper about the same time Ricky left after that trick they tried to get on him. Anyway, Ricky and his girl, Marie, drove straight to Savannah, Georgia where they caught a boat to Lisbon, Portugal and from there they went to one of the Canary Islands. Ricky told us they were married on the boat by the captain. I reckon captains can do that, that's what I always heard. When they got to their final destination, Marie's uncle had a job waiting for Ricky. He must have done well and the uncle must have liked him because he ended up owning the banana farm. Ricky calls it a plantation, but that has other meanings in the South, so I'll keep calling it a farm. Ricky says Marie's uncle was the father he never had here in Harper and that he and Marie had a real happy marriage except they were never able to have any children. I asked Ricky who was running the farm while he was gone and he said a young fellow named Jose was there and everything would go just fine with him in charge. In fact, Ricky said Jose was like a son to him and Marie and they planned to leave the banana business to him. He said Jose had married a girl from England he met on one of his marketing trips. Seems like most of the bananas they grow go to England.