June 27, 2007

• My Second Wedding

  December, 1958, North Texas

  I don’t have pictures of the wedding in 1958, my first “real” one.  Nobody took any.  Here is a picture of my first wedding, circa 1950, instead.  That’s not my first husband, Ford, of course.  It is one of my first playmates, Donald Ray Walker.  Memory is such an interesting thing.  I can smell the petroleum scent of those dusty old wax roses as they softened in the hot sun.  There were no flowers, wax nor otherwise, at the real first wedding.

  Among the many questions my mother asked during the discussions of my marriage to Ford were issues such as where and how we would live.  His step-father’s family solved the former problem by offering to let us live in the old house where “Grandma and Grandpa” had lived until the end of their lives.  It had been sitting empty for years, and needed furniture as well as some repair, but they would help us deal with all of that, and it would be ours, rent-free.

  Ford and I had talked about income and living expenses.  Each of us received Social Security survivor’s benefits from our fathers.  Mine was $56.40 a month, and his was the same or close to it.  We figured we could live on that until he found a job.  He wouldn’t consider letting me get a job, and at fourteen there was a little matter of child labor laws, anyway.  Maybe I could have done some babysitting, but he wanted to provide for me.  Whatever he wanted was all right with me.

  Our mothers burst that little fantasy bubble for us.  Our marriage would end our eligibility for the Social Security.  They would cash the December checks and give us the money, but there would be no checks for us in January.  I had a few dollars in my piggy bank.  Ford didn’t have that, but he was confident that he would find a job right away.  Nothing was going to deter us.

  My mother-in-law-to-be phoned the preacher of their church as soon as we had our license.  They made an appointment for Thursday evening at his home, a trailer somewhere near the church, I suppose.  I don’t know, because I was never in the church and never saw the neighborhood by daylight.

  I had a new dress, paid for out of that final Social Security check:  $7.88 on sale, cheap light blue double-knit with a contrasting brown and white ribbed collar and fake pocket flaps.  I didn’t like it, but it was the best of a cheap lot.  I didn’t want to spend the money, would rather have worn my full red skirt and stiff petticoats with an embroidered peasant blouse, but Mama and Ford’s mom thought I should be wed in a new dress.  “Marry in red, you’ll wish you were dead,” Ford’s mother said.

  The dress took care of “new” and “blue”.  For “old”, I wore a heart-shaped locket and expansion-band bracelet with a “K” engraved on each, that my father had bought for me when I was small.  Ford’s mother loaned me a lace-edged hankie.  I ended up carrying the hankie in my hand because I had no pockets, and it got twisted all out of shape from my nervousness.  Ford wore something semi-dressy, not his usual casual clothes, and he looked uncomfortable in them, but showed no nervousness.   His posture and voice projected pride.

  Ford guided me with a hand on my back along the narrow path to the preacher’s door.  Mama had driven us there, but declined to go inside.  She waited in the car.  The preacher’s wife let us in and apologized for her husband’s absence before disappearing back into her kitchen.  He was working late, on his day job.  He got there about forty-five minutes late, in grubby work clothes covered with cement dust.  He vanished into the back of the trailer after a brief greeting and apology for being late.  When he came back, his sleeves were rolled up, and his hands, face, and stringy forearms were clean and damp but his hair and everything else were still gray with dust.

  The first thing we had to do was correct his misconception.  He thought that Thursday night was to be the rehearsal, and the wedding would come later.  When he understood that we wouldn’t be using the church or inviting guests, etc., he seemed confused.  I’m sure the preacher and his wife found the whole thing peculiar, even for a shotgun wedding.    Finally, with a shake of his head, he shifted gears and started counseling us on the sacred responsibilities of marriage and family life.  We nodded our agreement and muttered our understanding and waited for him to get on with it. 

  Eventually, the preacher reached the conclusion that we were determined to go through with it, asked to see the license, and brought his skinny, mousy little wife out of the kitchen to witness the ceremony.  He read from a cheat sheet that he’d unfolded from its place in a bible, we each said, “I will,” and it was done.  It had some of the earmarks of a shotgun wedding, without any of the usual concessions to appearances.  Any wounds we suffered were self-inflicted.  They signed the license, the preacher kept the form for filing, and gave Ford a certificate, which he folded and stuck in his pocket.

  After we picked our way back out the dark pathway to Mama’s car, she drove us to a motel on the edge of town, where Ford’s step-uncles had reserved and paid for a room for our wedding night, our honeymoon.

  The next installment will be a protected post.

  

  • 4:03 pm
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