"Mommy, what's a wedding?"
In the past few weeks I had heard that word "wedding" from adult lips until
my curiosity was beyond control. My mother looked up from busy hands to reply
to my question. She was never too occupied nor too tired to answer a curious
child. Her wise and quiet counsel came to my ears often.
"A wedding, Troy, is what happens when two people like Aunt Loula and her
beau decide to get married. They love each other very much, and they want
to have a home of their own, just like Mama and Papa." A boy of five could
find in these few words food for hours of childish thinking. I went away
to ponder their mysterious meanings.
At last the morning came when we were to go to the wedding. Along with sister,
who was three, and "Buster," my year-old brother, I was scrubbed, rubbed
and dressed in my very best. No boy of five ever really enjoyed being bathed
and groomed in such a thorough manner, the one and only time when my mother
was not gentle beyond all other women was when she washed my ears with that
awful rough cloth and bittersweet soap! (I still don't care for 'Palmolive!")
At last we are all ready, and the march "up town" on the cinder sidewalks
of a mining village, breathing air flavored with smoke from manifold coke
ovens, takes us to an area of buildings with false fronts and wide "Store
Porches" of heavy planks. Every step of gritty and noisy progress was painful
to me, for I had on my new shoes for this formal occasion. "Knee pants" which
buckled about the leg above the joints they honored with steel buckles and
strips of cloth, were so tight that circulation was even hindered. They were
"bloused" down over the tops of black ribbed cotton stockings. A 'Buster
Brown" collar and loosely tied flowing tie of black sateen completed my torture
outfit, and helped to indelibly fix this wedding of fifty years ago in my
mind.
Crossing the long bridge over the river was always an unparalleled adventure.
Crossing the tracks past the railroad station, where Western Maryland engines,
puffing and hissing menacing white steam, discharging passengers and packages,
and receiving daring adventurers aboard, we finally came to the bridge. What
fun to step carefully over inch-wide cracks in the plank floor! After all,
one just might slip through in spite of all Mommy's reassurances. The water,
some fifteen feet below, was a poisonous red from sulphur discharged from
the mines, gradually clearing as we approached the western side, where upstream
flow prevailed. Another railroad crossing, the "Coal and Coke" and we were
at the foot of the long hill straight ahead up Bridge Street to the very
end. Even this was not too tiring today! Sharp sun and burning blue of mid-autumn
in the Alleghenies made any hour of that October day an adventure to a boy
of five years.
This must really be an occasion! Mommy is leading the way to the front gate
in the whitewashed paling fence around Grampa's yard. On ordinary visits
here we went in at the side gate, and up to the kitchen door. I could never
understand why Grampa had such heavy weights on the yard gates! They came
shut with a sharp snap, almost like a small firecracker, and woe to the heels
of a small boy who did not move quickly inside to escape the malicious jaws
of this sinister trap, erected by unfeeling adults!
Up the front steps to the veranda with its amazingly round posts--"Jus' like
a tree, on'ey rounder!"-and painted a powdery white which always came off
on the dark clothes of unwary little boys dressed in their Sunday best. How
I loved to lock my fingers around their slippery sides and swing back at
arm's length! And what dreaded scoldings that white paint chalk had brought
in times past!
Inside now, to Gramma's parlor, with its fancy printed carpet, (How very
rich Grampa must be!) and with walls hung about with deep dark frames fencing
the stern visages of sundry ancestors. These anguished souls, their lips
compressed in the agony of "posing for a picture", never failed to give the
child a feeling of strange pity! How strictly those post-bellum artists of
the black cloth and flash powder era must have required suffering to be registered
on the faces of every subject they portrayed!
Lots of people here! There's Uncle Andy! (Wonder why some people call him
"Bill Nye"? Wish I knew why.) There's some of Great Uncle Asie's family from
over at the Big Store in town ("A. L. Matthews & Son, Gen. Mdse.") Some
strange people here too! Suddenly selfconsciousness overcomes me so strongly
it is actually painful! ("Don't be bashful, little boy, what's your name?
What d'you call him, Bergia? And the baby? You mean he's actually a year
old, and you haven't named him yet?")
Suddenly the "Preacher" is in the room, and all is hushed and still. I am
very quiet, too awed by my very first real life look at striped trousers
and Prince Albert mat! (Jus' like on Louie Thornhill's tobacco cans. Louie
lives at my other Gramma's house.) Doubly familiar, too, from the pages of
our carefully cherished "Gummery Ward Catalog."
I was seated by fate for this austere occasion. It was on an old fashioned
footstool or hassock, a black and slippery hilltop of patent leather. It
had springs so firm that I couldn't possibly dent them to make a secure seat
for my tiny backside. Each moment on this precarious perch became one of
mortal dread! "What if I slide oft?" My feet barely touched the floor. With
hands tightly pressed to the slippery sides, I strained desperately to prevent
tiny, yet to me tragic toboggan down one or the other sides of my treacherous
throne of torture!"
"What a long wedding! Wish I was outside!" Suddenly there came an awareness
which made my misery manifold! The urgency of that moment brought cold sweat
to an unusually warm brow. Head and eyes dropped in an agony of anticipation.
"I jus' have to! I gotta go! I can't wait! I know I'll wet my pants! Why
don't they hurry? Do I dare to slip out right now?"
Even in my misery I am awed at what happens next. There are tiny sighs, cleared
throats, and even a suppressed giggle from one of Uncle Asie's girls. I lift
my eyes, and even I know it isn't proper for Aunt Loula to be kissing that
man right before all those people!
Finally there is blessed confusion! Someone sobs gently, there is much kissing
and hugging, to my disgust, and some handshaking among the men. In the wake
of this melee', I escape to the kitchen and out the door. I moved quickly
down the steps past the wash house to the flagstone walk under the grape
arbor. But it's such a long way out to the little building we call "The Closet"!
I realize that I will never get that far without tragedy, so I do the forbidden
thing! I slipped through the vines to the back of the wash house and found
timely relief! Looking up into the vines, I saw the purple gleam of a few
leftover Concord grapes missed in the September gathering. Their sweet juices
added another unforgotten memory to a day "fifty years ago."
I came to one deliberate and weighty conclusion while there by the grape arbor:
Weddings are pretty dull affairs!
The End
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The Brady Trilogy I Reclaimed Memories - (1991) I Pop Troy's Anthology - ( 1992) I Kinfolk - (1994)
