How We First Met: The Wench and The Rogue, the story of Terry and Ben Penn
Location: Southern California Renaissance Faire, San Bernardino, CA - Spring 1989
This was the first year the Living History Centre moved the Renaissance Faire to San Bernardino. Both of us were hired to work for the faire, Ben was a security guard and I was an assistant guild mistress and worked in the costume department. Ben’s father, a long time faire guild master, had told him they were hiring and Ben’s attitude was “a faire job was better than no job” so he applied. I had just left my first husband and decided it would be a good idea to take my 14-month old daughter and go have some fun.
As an assistant guild mistress I had to be at the front gate every morning (not my best time of day) before the faire opened so I could check people in and stamp their hands to enter the faire without paying. So each morning I was supposed to get to the faire about 2 hours before opening, this rarely happened and most of the time I was running late just to make the opening greeting.
Ben was a gate guard. Each morning he too had to be at his post long before the faire opened to the public. Ben lived on the faire site and had no baby to take care of so his morning routine was a bit easier than mine and he was always at his post on time, of course he only had to walk across the parking lot so he could wake up 5 minutes before he had to be at work. This was his typical morning.
Every morning Ben would stand at the pass gate checking EVERY SINGLE PERSON who came in for their gate pass or the hand stamp of the day. He didn’t care if you were running late. He didn’t care if you had a senior position to his. He didn’t care if he had just seen you the day before or every weekend day for the past 6 weeks. He checked every single person every single day every single time. The only people on the entire faire site that loved how thorough and diligent Ben was about his task at hand were his immediate supervisors. The other 3,000 people who entered the faire every day, many running late, were a bit less than thrilled Ben enjoyed his job so much.
My mornings were filled with diapers, feedings (I was still nursing), driving to faire site, getting the stroller and all the junk that goes with it, rushing to the faire site, parking, getting my daughter ready to be strolled into faire and finally but not least going thru pass gate. One stop I had to make along the way to the pass gate line was to stop and pick up the stamp of the day, which I needed at the front gate where I would be checking people in.
I was usually running late, half dressed, very frazzled and still had to take my daughter to daycare on the faire site but in the opposite direction I had to head, but first I had to go thru pass gate where Ben was so good at his job. Kathryne and I would wait our turn to have Ben check that we had the proper paperwork to enter the faire. Many times he would ask why I didn’t have our passes ready, remember I told you mornings are not my best time and I just couldn’t get it together. Also remember at this point I had the stamp of the day in hand and could have easily stamped both myself and my daughter and walked right in.
It was near the end of the 8 week run of fair and I was having a particularly difficult morning because my soon to be ex-husband had come to visit. Ben was being his usual diligent self. And of course I was running late. I got frustrated that after several days of this process he still insisted on seeing my pass. As I’m yelling “for God sake you know me” and “I have the damn stamp of the day, do you really think I don’t belong inside”. He just laughed at me and said “well you could just stamp yourself and go in, you could have done that every week”. We both laughed, so did everyone else in line. For the remaining few days of the faire I stamped myself and my daughter every morning but always stopped to show Ben we had our stamps. This was just the launching off pad for what has been 25 years of friendship and laughter. This Halloween will mark our 25th anniversary as a couple. How we got from meeting at the faire to starting a serious relationship on Halloween is quite a tale and we love to tell it, just ask us.