The Magnolia Story(9)

I was still working at my dad’s shop, too, but it was fun for me to see Chip’s collection of little houses get all cleaned up. I liked thinking about the students who would soon be living in them and remembering what it had felt like to move into my first apartment. I wanted to make sure everything was right for those kids.

Most of the houses weren’t much bigger than eight hundred square feet, so there wasn’t a lot to work with, but I quickly saw how new carpet or a fresh paint color could change the whole atmosphere in a house that small. I liked the feeling of getting these jobs done and then watching the way those kids and their parents would go nuts as they were moving in.

There was something rewarding about that kind of work. Even if it was something as simple as painting one room, each project had a beginning, middle, and end. You could stand back and actually see what you’d accomplished at the end of the day, and there was something very satisfying in that for me—on top of how much fun it was just to watch Chip do his thing and try to imagine what he might do next.

It was more than just business. With Chip, it was everything. He was wild at heart, really. If you tried to give him a rule, he would break it. If you gave Chip a boundary, he would cross it.

Chip was just Chip. There was no box for this guy.

There’s this movie, Legends of the Fall, where the character named Tristan goes off into these wild places. I’ve always thought of myself as kind of like that.

And (case in point) the things that would come out of his mouth were unlike anything anyone else would ever think to say. Sometimes it would take me a second to figure out whether he was joking around or drop-dead serious. He kept me on my toes—and I liked it.

Chip was also extremely kind and giving. I swear every time we’d see a homeless guy, Chip would stop and talk to him. Sometimes he’d give him money. Sometimes he’d give him a job for the day. Heck, if the weather was bad, he’d even put him up in a hotel.

We’d be walking downtown, and I’d hear, “Chip. Hey, Chip!” and I’d turn to see a person approaching us who, frankly, might have scared me if I was walking downtown by myself. Chip wouldn’t be scared. He’d know the guy by name: “James! How’s it going, brother?” It seemed as if every homeless guy in Waco knew Chip Gaines.

On the flip side, every banker in Waco knew Chip too. And he talked to those two very different groups of people exactly the same way. There was never any difference in Chip’s demeanor. His enthusiasm for life and work and people was just infectious, and he surprised me with it again and again. At least once a day I caught myself thinking, Wow, this guy!

Best of all, as happy as Chip Gaines was, he seemed happiest around me.

I’m a generally happy person. My mom says I was a happy baby. But it’s a fact—I was always happiest around Jo. And I still am.

One pretty amazing thing we learned early on was that the more time we spent together, the better our relationship was. I think a lot of couples feel the need to get away from each other now and then, to take little breaks, and they come back after a girls’ weekend or a guys’ fishing trip or something all refreshed and happy to reconnect because they missed each other.

We were just the opposite, and still are. We seem to give each other energy. We function better together than we do apart, and I don’t think either one of us has ever felt the urge to say, “I need a break from you.”

Don’t get me wrong; we’ve certainly had our share of disappointment and arguments, but we just always wanted to tackle our issues together.

The two of us never talked about marriage during that first year we were together, but I knew pretty quickly that we were in this for the long haul, and I almost had to convince myself that it was okay to be in love with this man. I kept reminding myself, “With Chip, my life isn’t gonna look like what I thought it was gonna look like—but there will be adventure, and there will be some fun.”

My parents were the type of people who locked their doors and had an alarm system. For my whole life they encouraged me to go after what I wanted, to get a good education, even to go to New York for that internship. But they also encouraged me to use caution—and I did.

Chip was the polar opposite. For example, whenever we went out shopping or to restaurants, he would leave his keys in the car. Who leaves their keys in the car in today’s world? It was a real problem for us for a while, because my first instinct when I got out of the car was to lock the doors. So we’d come back after dinner and realize I’d locked Chip’s keys in the car again.

I remember that! In college, I would not only leave my keys in the car, but half the time I would forget and leave it running.

What’s ironic about Jo and my parents is Jo’s parents were pretty much hippies in their younger years. Her dad served in Vietnam, and he was this tall, quiet, lanky guy with glasses, and her mom was this vivacious Korean woman who just loved life. They both have the best stories. When I first saw pictures of the two of them from before Jo was born, they looked like John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They were right in the thick of all that went on during the sixties. But despite that youthful “rebellion,” they turned out to be the kind of cautious parents who were concerned with traditions and playing it safe.

My parents both grew up in a little bitty town called Archer City, Texas, and they were straight as an arrow, but they left the garage door open all day, even when they were out. They wouldn’t even think about locking the doors. My mom saw an upside to everything, and I think that’s part of what made me so optimistic and adventurous.