Hark and Ferd and a story that goes nowhere

When I was stationed on Crete back in 70-71 I had two friends named Hark and Ferd.
Hark was married.
Ferd was single.
Most of the single guys had a crush on Hark's wife probably because of her long legs and her short skirts.
Hark's wife also had a whiny disposition which in small doses a lot of the guys I guess found endearing.
I guess you could have called her cute, maybe even pretty, except to me she always seemed to be sucking on a lemon.
Yeah, she wasn't my favorite person.
Hark was middle america and as middle class as you can get. His parents were both high school teachers in central Ohio, and Hark was a high school basketball and baseball star who got a baseball scholarship to Ohio University.
Ferd was irish urban working class from Boston with a half dozen brothers and sisters, and he was also a high school sports star, but no college.
Hark's wife?
She was from an upper middle class suburb of Cleveland who met Hark while they were students at OU.
Hark and Ferd were really tight.
If you want my honest opinion, I thought Ferd had more than a simple crush on Hark's wife. I thought he was in love with her, unrequited, but still in love.

Sidenote: There was quite a bit of single guy and married guy's wife stuff going on at the time. Not just unrequited, but a lot of the requited variety going on too.

It was the spring of 1971 and Hark's wife's sister flew over for a visit.
Can you see where this is going?

Yeah, Ferd fell in love with Hark's wife's sister and they eventually got married.

Ok, call my cynical, but I knew from the start that this marriage wasn't going to work. Come on, Hark's wife's sister was just a substitute for Hark's wife, it was obvious.
Not only that, I couldn't see Hark's wife's sister's upper middle class waspish upbringing meshing with Ferd's working class irish roots.
This marriage was doomed from the start.

Flash forward thirty years.
Through the miracle of the internet a bunch of us from the Crete 70-71 era were able to hook up. It was kind of cool, you know, retelling old war stories and catching up on what life had dealt a bunch of twenty year olds who were now fifty year olds.
Eventually, the online network sort of faded away and we drifted apart.
Hey, that's what happens.

Oh yeah, Hark and Ferd, and Hark's wife, and Hark's wife's sister ...

Ferd and Hark's wife's sister are living in Phoenix. He cleans pools and she works in an office, they play golf everyday, and have no kids.

Hark and Hark's wife had a couple of kids and were divorced.
Hark remarried.
Hark and his current wife are both high school teachers in eastern Ohio.
Hark's ex-wife, remarried and divorced a couple more times and is now a social worker and living alone in Buffalo. I bet she's still sucking on that lemon, and I bet she's a cat lady too!

That's it, there's no moral or anything, except that then, as now, my instincts suck.