TODAY'S NEWS: An Interpretation

Talking to the Kids

I don’t mind if the president gets on the TV and talks to the kids about trying to do a good job and staying in school. Heck, Mr. Bush was reading a story to some elementary school children when the 9/11 attacks occurred. Some of my fellow “Right-Wing Wackos” were all in a tizzy about today’s speech. They were worried that the president was going to try and warp all those little minds with a lot of socialist propaganda. My opinion is that the attention spans of about 85% of the kids listening didn’t allow them to pay attention for more than the first three or four sentences of the speech. The other 15% are the ones who will do well and stay in school anyway, and they would be able to discern whatever baloney the president would throw their way. I read the text of the speech. It was pretty much a little pep talk and most of our student bodies have already forgotten what was said. Next May or June attend the graduation ceremonies at a high school near you. Ask the graduates as they file by if they stayed in school because of the speech President Obama gave on September 8, 2009. If one in ten thousand replies with a yes then I’ll give the necessary apologies and kudos to the big guy. Until then, I’ll hold my applause.

Talking to the AFL-CIO

On Sunday, or was it Monday, Mr. Obama gave a speech at the big union picnic event of the AFL-CIO. He congratulated all those union folks, mostly union heads and officials, for all the fine work they have done throughout the years. He got them pumped up pretty good. They were a receptive crowd, some of the president’s most ardent supporters. Of course the unions have been doing all they can for many years to destroy American commerce. I know union members and former union members who actually hate the whole idea of being forced to join a union so that they can hold a job. I also know former union members who watched as their unions made it so expensive for the employers to do business in this country that the plants closed and their jobs just disappeared. About eighty or ninety years ago unions were working to improve safety and other conditions in the workplace. They helped to negotiate better wages and benefits for the working people. But like any bureaucracy, and believe me union management is exactly that, it becomes impressed with its own agenda. And the big unions like the Autoworkers, Steelworkers and Teamsters became greedy, unreasoning entities with no real regard for the people they supposedly represented. Not unlike the Congress of the United States. So I’m glad Mr. Obama had a nice time at the picnic. But I’d be willing to bet that if an election was to be held in November, and a viable opponent was available, he wouldn’t win. Too bad we can’t test my theory.

Popular Culture News Items

That couple with eighteen kids is expecting again. How about that? That other couple with a bunch of kids is split up, or maybe they’re not. The world is enthralled.

That poor athlete who had some confusion about gender is having a make-over. She runs track. The only time anyone pays attention to track is when the Olympics roll around or when there’s a drug or gender scandal. Can we say “who gives a hoot?”

There are a whole bunch of doomsday movies coming out this fall. Some of them might be entertaining. But I’d be willing to bet that most of them are pretentious and full of scenarios based on bad science and un-supported speculations. I’d also bet that they’ll make a ton of money.

Ramadan is ending. Lots of Muslims are celebrating and ending their fasts. I don’t recall too much media attention about Christians who strictly observe the Lenten season ending their fasts this past Easter. I must have missed it. The holy season of Ramadan didn’t stop the fanatics in some places from blowing up men, women and children. Hypocrisy is the same no matter who the practitioners are.

And finally, this important bit of news; Queen Victoria’s underwear, apparently a size 3x, have been added to a collection of royal apparel. Royalty, and all those who are enamored of it, are truly strange people. The idea that being born into a particular family adds some special quality to a person is really absurd. Unless, of course, your name is Kennedy. Then it’s okay.

Have a fine day.

GIBSON BROTHERS CONCERT: #2

Last night my dear wife and I went to a Gibson Brothers concert over in Rock Hall, Maryland. We have seen this band several times and they are (obviously) one of our favorites of all time. In the past I have written reviews of their performances and albums but I have always been more of the gushing fan. This time I want to write a serious review as if I were a real music critic. (As if!) So be prepared for some serious pedantry and esoteric information all wrapped up in a critical review.

The Gibson Brothers and their band are known primarily in the world of bluegrass music although they are not strict conformists to the genre. Hardcore bluegrass fans may like a great deal of the songs that the Gibson’s perform but they would not consider them to be of the same caliber as the Del McCoury Band, Blue Highway or the Osborne Brothers. The Gibson’s have a unique place in the genre somewhere between the avant garde bluegrass music of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and more traditional stylists such as Dan Tyminski and his various groups. I think of the Gibsons as being in their own niche; singer/songwriters who do bluegrass, traditional country and even new folk music. They are unique.

To assess a live performance of a band such as the Gibson Brothers one needs to ask a few basic questions. Did the band take full advantage of the characteristics of the venue? Did the band provide music to satisfy their long standing fans? Likewise, did the band provide music to win over the doubters in the audience, especially the hardcore bluegrass types? Did the pacing of the show fit the mood of the audience? Were songs played spanning the entire career of the group? And finally, was the band technically proficient as well as entertaining?

I’ll tackle the last question first. The Gibson Brothers band is as technically proficient as any group playing in bluegrass today. Eric Gibson is a solid banjo player who tends to understate his lines. But when called to the front for solo riffs he is an excellent player and showman. Leigh Gibson on flattop guitar is also a solid player who can carry a solo with some of the finest in the business. But the brothers’ primary instruments are their voices, and this is where they rise above so many other musicians. The harmonies they create, as well as their own individual sounds are uniquely adapted to the songs they write and cover. They take a song and make it their own. After a listener has heard some of the work of these gifted singers he can immediately recognize a new song as being from this band. They’re original. Other members of the band supply the instrumentation that adds to the originality of the group. Mike Barber plays the stand up bass as if born to it. He lays down the rhythmic line so necessary in a group without percussion instruments. But he also adds an interesting dimension of skilled nuance and subtle musical influence. Clayton Campbell on the fiddle is an intense and gifted performer. He can play the dazzling solo or the romantic background line of a soft ballad with equal skill and feeling. And Joe Walsh, mandolinist, has added a new dimension to the band’s driving sound. Joe has been with the group for about ten or eleven months but he sounds as if he was there for years. He is an amazing player, always in the moment, and always contributing in just the right way. This band is a musical powerhouse, technically and artistically.

Last night’s concert took place at the Mainstay, a small town store building that has been rather haphazardly converted into a theater. There is a small stage at the back of the room with a collection of various kinds of seating set up in rows all the way to the front of the building. The seating is eclectic ranging from wicker couches to dining room chairs to folding chairs that may have come from a funeral home. The room is very good acoustically and the lines of sight are all pretty good. Intimacy between the performers and the audience is impossible to avoid due to the small size of the place. Eric and Leigh share the duties of announcing the songs and interacting with the audience. These guys are genuine, nice people. They treat their audience with respect and love. The audience responds in kind. When they came into the room they looked around and said “this is our kind of place” and they used it like it was their living room at home.

The play list for the concert consisted of about twenty vocal numbers and three hard driving instrumentals. Seven songs were from their most recent album and the rest were culled from five older CDs. Story songs, love songs, gospel and traditional bluegrass and country were all represented. Both brothers write with a strong poetic sense about the people, places and things from their youth and experience. They joke about having the corner on the market for songs about the people and places of Franklin and Clinton Counties in northern New York. While that may be true, every one of their songs about that area is understood and identifiable to their entire audience because they are songs of the people. A beautiful anthem to the farm they grew up on, “Farm of Yesterday” is typical of the poetic pieces they write. “Iron and Diamonds” a song about miners and baseball in a small town reaches into the experience of hard working people from near their hometown. This song, incidentally, has been nominated for IBMA song of the year for 2009. They played a railroad song, a mountain song, a couple of gospel songs and even a song about a psychotic homeless guy called “Ragged Man”. They played cover songs from Tom Petty and The Band. So their concert satisfied their oldest fans and the folks who had never been to a Gibson Brothers show.

When it came to winning over the more entrenched bluegrass fans in the audience the Gibsons turned to three very strong, extremely upbeat instrumental pieces. I didn’t record the names of each piece (bad form for a music critic, I know) but they each kicked butt in a serious bluegrass way. Also “I Know Whose Tears”, “Mountain Song”, “Two Dollar Bill” and “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” showed the considerable bluegrass chops of the whole band.

The brothers paced their show to the mood of the audience mixing upbeat and slower songs in a masterful way. They took some requests and had some extremely funny brother to brother verbal exchanges. (By the way Maryland does not have an official state rodent but New York has the beaver.) Before the show, during intermission and after the program the brothers and the other members of the band mingled with the audience, willingly signing autographs and posing for photos. Did I say they were nice guys; well it bears repeating.

So there you have a serious review of the Gibson Brothers concert. It still sounds like a fan letter I guess. But I like good music delivered by good people and these guys are the real deal. Buy their CDs from Amazon or Compass Records online because you probably won’t find them in a lot of record stores, although I have seen some in Border’s and Barnes & Noble. If they come anywhere near your town go to see them. You’ll have a great time. Let me know if you’re going and I’ll probably join you. Yes I’ll buy my own dang ticket.

Have a fine day.

TAKE YOUR MEDICINE

The good old USA has the best health care in world. I guess there’s some debate about that but it has done okay by me. Just the other day my doctor said if it wasn’t for him I’d probably be a goner. Since he’s a significant part of the health care system (as far as I’m concerned) then the fact that I’m upright and walking is confirmation of that claim to be the “best”. I’m not going to get into a big rant here about the current arguments for and against the reform of the health care system. Anyone who knows me knows where I’ll come down on that particular seesaw. To my way of thinking it doesn’t take a lot of logic or observation of the results of previous governmental programs to see the value of a truly competitive private system. But even good private systems are operated by humans and sometimes errors occur and difficulties arise.

For instance, this past Tuesday I realized a couple of my prescriptions needed to be refilled. In fact one of them had no more refills left so I had to call the doctor’s office to get a new one. When I called the office I was told that I had not scheduled the requisite follow up visit yet and must do that before I could get a new prescription. The reason I had not called for that appointment was pretty obvious. My dietary program had done a little backsliding and I was avoiding the lectures my doctor loves to give disobedient patients. But I needed the pills so I told the girl to set up an appointment and call the prescription into the drug store. She said that wouldn’t be necessary because the doctor had a cancellation (another fearful backslider, I bet) and I could pop in at five o’clock. Rats! So I agreed.

A few hours later I was getting the lecture as the doctor re-checked my blood pressure. Apparently he didn’t believe the dangerously high reading that the nurse had gotten a little earlier. When he confirmed the numbers he ratcheted the lecture up a couple of notches. He also did a few more physical examination items just to make sure I wasn’t going to drop dead on my way to the drugstore. My jokes about him being out of business and working for the government if Obama’s plan got fully implemented didn’t help his mood at all. He said it wouldn’t make much difference as far as my case was concerned because my current path to longevity was heading for a big cliff. I’ve know this doctor for over twenty years so we have that kind of playful banter all the time. Unfortunately this time he wasn’t laughing so much.

Well he jacked up my dosage on the blood pressure medicine, which he had reduced about eighteen months ago, and scheduled me for a follow-up and, for good measure and just to show he could get his revenge, also referred me to the evil colonoscopy guys. As you can imagine, my head was hanging low when I left that place.

So I headed to the drugstore to pick up my prescriptions (or “scrips”as those of us who are frequent drug users say) which were electronically sent there by the doctor. I picked up my little package and went home. When I got home I started to fill up my little day of the week pill dispenser. This sectioned off plastic box is a required accessory for us over-medicated senior citizens. When I opened the bottle of what was supposed to be my new medicine I noticed it was the same pink and white color as the old capsule. At first I thought that was nice because I kind of like that look. But when I looked closely at the bottle I saw that the dosage hadn’t been increased. So I grabbed the bottle and got in the truck and headed back to the store. The dummy that waited on me earlier was still there so I told him my problem and he looked blankly at me, then blankly at his computer screen and then blankly back at me again. He said that the bottle matched what the doctor’s office had sent over. I asked him to call the office and get this squared away. But of course by that time of day the office was closed. So I told him I would go there in the morning and get this settled.

This morning I got to the doctor’s office at opening time and after a brief wait of a half hour was allowed to talk to one of the clerks. She said that the proper prescription had been sent over to the pharmacy. I said they didn’t have it and maybe a phone call would get things handled. She said she would check and she disappeared for about fifteen minutes. She came back and said again that the proper prescription had been sent over and that I should go talk to the pharmacist. If there was any further confusion the pharmacist, who has a secret hot-line to doctors, could call at any time. Once again I drove to the pharmacy.

The dummy from yesterday wasn’t working the counter so I talked to today’s dummy. She wanted to settle the matter by spinning the computer screen around and showing me the electronic renewal they had received from the doctor’s office. Since I didn’t have my more powerful medicine yet my blood pressure was up a bit and I kind of exploded, just a little. The pharmacist (and pretty much everyone in the store) heard my string of expletives and quickly arrived to help. She determined that I was unhappy with the way things were going and called the doctor’s office, got a verbal confirmation of the new prescription and in an amazingly short time had it filled.

Just imagine if I had been a lackadaisical customer. I might have gone on to take the lower dose of ineffective medicine and had a major medical event or worse. But I was a savvy consumer and I’ll probably be around for a good long time, especially now that I’m fully back on the weight loss program. Again!

Have a fine day.

BRAINS, BLUES AND BAND-AIDS

There was an article in one of our local newspapers yesterday about brains. It wasn’t about the nutritional value of brains as a food or anything like that. It was about the development of the human brain during various stages of life. One of the major points of the article was that teenage brains are wired differently than smaller children or adults. Well, duh! If that isn’t the most obvious conclusion in the history of medical science then I don’t know what is. They spent thousands and thousands of research dollars to come up with a fact that anyone who has been the parent of a teenager could tell you in ten seconds.

According to the article, when a teenager is faced with a decision – let’s say to drink that beer with his friends, or not – the teenager will not be guided by a logical sequence of thought. He or she will not think “I’m under-age, my parents have warned me about drinking, I’ll get in trouble, and therefore I won’t drink”. No, the kid will think “beer, friends, get drunk, fall down, cool”. Scientists have actually observed the electrical impulses in teenage brains which reflect this kind of thinking, or non-thinking, as it were. My question is, if they can observe this behavior then why can’t they fiddle with the circuitry and fix it? I’m sure it would just be a matter of sticking some ultra thin jumper cables in there somewhere. Every teenager could go into a brain wiring shop when they hit age thirteen and get the upgrade done, just like they all get braces for their teeth. Maybe they could do it at the same time. One small step for mankind, I’d say.

On a different page in the same newspaper there was an article about the blues. It wasn’t about “The Blues” music, it was about blue moods. Once again the article was based on a bunch of scientific research done by psychologists. Basically the research concluded that just about everyone gets into a blue mood once in a while and the causes are extremely varied. Once again I say, well duh! Who in the hell comes up with this stuff?

I read the article with some difficulty because my head was shaking at the preposterousness of every line. Of course, based on the “findings” of this extensive and expensive research the author offered several practical suggestions for “beating the blues”. Some of the suggestions proffered were “take in a movie”, “go out dancing”, “attend a concert” and my favorite “treat yourself to a nice glass of wine”. Can this be the reason people don’t read newspapers anymore?

The other day I cut my finger. You don’t need to know how I cut my finger. Accidents happen, even to smart and careful people. Those of us who aren’t so bright and are somewhat careless have a few more incidents with sharp objects than other folks. But I digress. After cleaning the little wound and putting some antibiotic cream on it I attempted to apply a bandage. The bandage was a Band-Aid brand strip which is usually a good choice. But for some reason this one was acting like the cheap substitutes you find at the dollar stores. So I tossed that one and grabbed another with the same result. I knew the box was pretty fresh because we have two grandsons who go through bandages very quickly, usually because they want some decorative items on their most minor scratches. It was possible that the first aid cream was messing things up so I took one of the largest bandages in the box and applied it to the finger. This one stuck really well. In fact I had put it on a little too tight. When I tried to make it looser it got all messed up and I actually made the cut a little bigger. So then I applied a little more of the cream and put some pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding which had started again. There was only one of the large bandages left in the box so I knew I had to make this one work. The bleeding slowed to a slight oozing and I carefully applied the bandage. It was perfect. So I went back to the chore that I was working on when I got cut. I plunged my hands back into the soapy water to finish washing the dishes. The Band-Aid promptly slid off. Sometimes I amaze myself with my own stupidity. You don’t have to agree, you know.

Have a fine day.

FASHION OBSERVATIONS

My series on marriage is on hold. Or maybe it’s over. Whatever, I’m putting it aside now so that I can focus on a new topic. This topic is of great importance. It affects every man and woman in America. No it’s not Obama’s health care plan. And it isn’t global warming or social security. It’s much more important than all of those big issues. SEX! No that’s not it either, I just threw that in to make sure you’re paying attention. Go on to the next paragraph and I’ll tell you what is on my mind.

Bellies. Yes that is correct. I happen to be an expert on this subject having grown and lost and grown again a prodigious belly many times during my life. And I have absolutely no objection to the object on either a man or a woman. In fact a nice bit of extra padding around that area is a comfort. I know that the medical people, insurance companies and those obsessed with fitness disagree. And severe obesity, which is probably not far from my current condition, is a real health problem that shouldn’t be ignored. But a reasonably ample midriff is not always a bad thing. Men and women so endowed can dress to minimize the fashion faux pas of belly exposure in public. Most do. But lately, and here comes the real focus of today’s rant, many do not bother to properly dress their middle parts.

Young men and young women no longer worry about covering their bellies. In fact the fashion trend seems to be all about more and more exposure. Young women seem to be the worst offenders although if a young man isn’t wearing a baggy shirt down to his knees then he’s usually making an effort to expose his gut. But young women wear low slung shorts, sweat pants or pajama bottoms and top them off with a shirt that exposes skin from the top of the pubic bone to the middle of the rib cage. The more amply endowed with belly flesh the woman or girl is, the more effort to expose said amplitude is taken.

There’s some sort of ethical or moral issue in here I guess. Modesty about this kind of clothing, or lack of it, is a long forgotten concept. The cultural influence of popular female role models destroyed that idea years ago. Madonna started the trend I think. But it has been extended by so many film stars, pop and rap singers and cartoon characters that a modestly dressed girl is considered something of a freak. But I’m not that concerned about the sin of immodesty here. Hell has plenty of room.

I’m more concerned about esthetics. I appreciate beauty. And the female form is a constant source of esthetic pleasure. But there is something much more pleasing about a properly draped and dressed female form than you’ll see in the average crowd of college girls. When I was at the mall last week (a reluctant journey at the best of times) a group of young women from a nearby college were walking around spending their parents’ hard earned money. What they seemed to be buying were clothes that fit as poorly as possible. They were buying tops that were several sizes too small both in length and girth. They were also buying garments for the lower extremities that were made by companies short on fabrics for the hip and waist area. As they paraded in and out of the fitting rooms they seemed to be having a contest for who could be the closest to undressed while paying the most money. There was more belly flesh, hip flesh and bosom showing than in some of the more modest nudist colonies. These girls were not what you’d call petite. They were normal, healthy and well fed young ladies. I studied this phenomenon in the interests of science and sociology of course.

In my ancient and un-hip way I prefer a different type of woman. A woman who has a presence, who is clearly feminine and who is dressed in an alluring but not all-revealing way will always catch my eye quicker than those college girls did. Call me a hopeless sexist pig; many have. But the woman who wears clothes that fit decently looks more attractive no matter what size she is. Imagination probably has a lot to do with how men see a woman. Much of the stuff that young (and lots of older) women wear leaves a man wishing he wasn’t being forced to imagine what happens after the clothes come off before he’s imagined the clothes are coming off..

Well, that’s it for this topic. So if you’re a casually dressed, but mostly covered, lady and you spot a gray haired old codger looking at you with a certain longing in his eye, even if you’re walking with a couple of under-covered eighteen year olds, don’t be offended. Consider yourself complimented.

And have a fine day.

MARRIAGE PART IV: The Honeymoon

The tradition of a honeymoon trip after a couple gets married is a long and revered practice. As I was looking through the wedding announcements in the newspapers recently I noticed that every couple had some sort of trip. Mr. and Mrs. Newlywed will be honeymooning in Puerto Villarta. Or, the couple will settle in Podunk after a two week cruise on the Mediterranean. It always seems like a big expensive trip is planned for the bride and groom. One couple I know about actually rented a big fancy sailboat and spent a whole month in the South Pacific. That trip cost them about thirty thousand dollars.

Forty years ago the trips were a little less elaborate. Couples would go to the Pocono Mountains for a week at a resort. Or they might go to a big city and spend a long weekend in a nice hotel, dine out and see a show or two. The fancy honeymoons might cost a thousand dollars or so. My wife and I had a somewhat less expensive trip. If you include the price of the carwash to get all the nasty green writing off our car I think we spent about sixty or seventy dollars. It was a short trip.

When we left our wedding reception we drove about an hour to the Niagara Falls area. Since we had only eaten wedding cake at the reception we decided to have dinner. We didn’t have motel reservations yet so we stopped at a Lum’s restaurant. We had hot dogs, fries and I think we each had a beer. I asked the waitress where we could find an inexpensive motel. She said that would be a problem since it was Labor Day weekend. Most hotels and motels would be full and if they weren’t they would be very expensive. She suggested that we drive down along the Niagara River towards Buffalo. In some of the industrial areas we could find a couple places that would be cheaper.

So after our dinner and carwash we started driving aimlessly south along the roads that border the river. We checked a Howard Johnson’s but they were full. We checked a place called the Riverside but they wanted almost thirty dollars for one night. Finally in an area right near a couple of factories, bars and strip clubs we came across a place called the Anchor Inn. I went to the desk and asked the guy for a room. He looked out to the car and saw my lovely bride waiting patiently. Then he said he had only one room left but it was the special honeymoon accommodation and it was $14.95 a night. Feeling like we deserved a special treat for our wedding night I agreed to the price. He said it was cash, in advance and no refunds. So I paid.

The room was almost clean. The bedding, except for the smoky flavored and cigarette burned bedspread, seemed recently laundered. But the bathroom was another story. My new bride went into that den of dangerous bacteria and came out very quickly. She grabbed a pen and piece of paper, made a list of cleaning supplies and sent me out to find them. After hunting around for a little while I found a grocery store, bought the items and headed back. The bottle of champagne that we brought was sitting in the ice bucket. It had been opened and was about half empty. My wife grabbed the cleaning stuff, took off most of her clothes and headed into the bathroom to do battle. It was at that time that I learned she always takes off most of her clothing to clean bathrooms. After about forty-five minutes the job was done to her satisfaction and the bathroom was deemed useable. It was now after ten o’clock. She drew a bath, grabbed the flimsy, sexy night gown she had brought for this most auspicious of nights, entered the bathroom and closed the door. I was thinking things were rolling now. I poured myself a big tumbler of champagne and chugged it on down.

That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up at about three in the morning. My new wife was snoring softly beside me totally wrapped up in the blankets. She had even pulled the nasty bedspread up over her body. What woke me was the intense cold in the room and the chattering of the ancient air conditioner mounted in the window. We had turned the a/c on as soon as we arrived because, as you may recall, it was a hot and humid day. I went over to the bathroom and turned on the light. When I looked at where the a/c unit was mounted all I saw was ice. It looked like the inside of an old freezer compartment that hadn’t been defrosted in three years. There was so much ice I couldn’t even get at the knobs to turn the thing off. So I pulled the plug. My wife, hearing my banging around and colorful language, woke up. She went to her purse, reached inside and pulled out an ice pick. When I asked her why she had an ice pick in her purse she just said “emergencies”. She crawled back into bed and fell sound asleep immediately. That was another thing I learned on our wedding night. My wife can fall asleep at any time under any conditions.

So I chipped most of the ice off the a/c and put the “bergs” in the bathroom sink to melt. Then I reset the unit to medium cool and went to bed. My wife didn’t stir.

The next morning I woke to find my wife up, dressed and ready to go sight-seeing at the Falls. We only had one day to see everything. The plan was to get a room that night near our hometown, pick up a U-haul trailer the following morning, and pick up our furnishings that were stored at various places and move into our new apartment. So we went sight-seeing. After roaming around the tourist spots for a short time we stopped at a diner for a combination lunch and dinner. Then we headed back towards our hometown. By the time we got to the motel where we planned on staying my wife was feeling queasy. She thought that the liver and onions she had eaten were upsetting her stomach. I hadn’t eaten that delicacy so I was feeling fine and thinking about a big old cheeseburger at the stand near the motel. We checked in to the motel, a much nicer and cleaner place than the previous night’s disaster. As soon as we were inside my wife became quite ill. She made it to the bathroom just in time and there she stayed for quite a while. I went and got my cheeseburger.

When I got back to the motel room my bride was wrapped up in her “chin to toe” flannel nightgown and sleeping soundly. I turned on the TV and watched it until the test pattern came on at about two in the morning.

That was our honeymoon. Probably the best thing about it was seeing the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum. I’m thinking of trying to sell them this story.

Have a fine day.

MARRIAGE PART III: The Wedding

Way back in 1969, on the 30th of August my dear wife and I had a wedding. Things were different back then or at least they were in our family. Our wedding was a small affair; one bride, one groom, one maid of honor and one best man. After the wedding, which took place at nine in the morning in our local parish church, immediate family members went to my parents’ house for a brunch. Then in the afternoon we all went to my wife’s family home for the reception. At that party we had about forty or fifty guests.

A friend of ours has a son that just got married down in South Carolina. As the father of the groom he hosted, and paid for, a rehearsal dinner. That dinner cost about ten thousand dollars. The complete wedding, excluding that rehearsal dinner, cost a little over a hundred thousand bucks. The men in the rather large wedding party didn’t even wear tuxes. Imagine that. Admittedly that wedding was pretty extravagant even by today’s foolish standards. But I saw somewhere that the average wedding costs about thirty thousand dollars. Our wedding, back in 1969, cost about a hundred dollars. That’s in today’s dollars, as the economists say.

My wife bought the material for a simple, short wedding dress and one of her friends constructed the thing. The rehearsal dinner was at my parents’ home and consisted of spaghetti and meatballs. My Dad mixed up some whisky sours and we had a fine time. The reception at my wife’s parents’ home was kind of a pot luck deal. Her Mom made quite a lot of the food and various aunts and friends brought the rest. The food ran to the kinds of things you’d find at a large gathering of Slavic folks. I don’t remember all the dishes but I’m sure there was goulash, dumplings and various sausages. We did buy a cake and I think that cost about ten dollars. Music was provided by one of my cousins playing records. Drinks were served by one of my wife’s uncles and consisted of Genesee Cream Ale, Utica Club beer, gin and tonics, screwdrivers and something known as a highball. The booze was the most expensive part of the whole deal and probably cost about forty dollars.

Everybody had a good old time. It was about ninety five degrees with high humidity so the alcohol took hold pretty quickly. People were in the basement, out on the back deck and wandering around the house and yard. Some dancing happened in the basement but not much. It was awfully hot. Back in those days the “Chicken Dance”, “Macarena” and the “Electric Slide” were not required activities. They weren't even invented. My mother-in-law got a couple of polkas going but she got a case of the vapors and had to quit. It might not have been the vapors though. The good lady had been hitting the highballs pretty hard all day.

After doing some of the traditional wedding stuff like pushing cake into each others face, tossing the bouquet and listening to a few toasts my bride and I decided to slip away on our honeymoon trip. When we got out to our car we discovered that the car was covered with green lettering with witty sayings describing various marital acts and the usual “just married” signage. But we also discovered that a couple of my wife’s clever cousins had taken the air out of both of the tires on the passenger side of the car. I had one of my famous temper tantrums. The guys took the tires up to a gas station to re-inflate them. Unfortunately when the boys took the air out of the tires they messed up the part that sealed against the wheel. I had to borrow money from my Dad so we could buy a couple of new tires. The guys that did the damage were quite young and had no resources for buying tires. Kids didn’t have credit cards back then. Finally everything got fixed up and my bride and I hit the road heading for Niagara Falls. The reception went on for another twenty four or thirty six hours. A good time was had by most, we heard.

So our bargain wedding was pretty great and pretty cheap even if you add in the cost of two new tires. People had fun and no one was seriously injured. I don’t think a ten thousand dollar wedding would have been any more effective in the results. Not long after plenty of those high dollar affairs the couples end up in divorce court, a place we’ve managed to avoid, so far.

That’s the story of our wedding. There may be some other details that I could relate that are a lot more embarrassing. But family harmony is important so they’ll go left unsaid. However when I do the story of our honeymoon enough detail will be included to embarrass at least one of the participants. That episode will be coming soon.

Have a fine day.