December 28th

A date that I just can't seem to erase from my brain. A gazillion facts and memories slip away, but I can't make this one GO away. How weird is it that I still count my wedding anniversaries? It would be 34 today. EEEK!! The fact that the divorce was several years ago seems to make no difference. The date still flags in my brain, for some reason.

It was a bit odd, even by my standards, back in 1975. We boarded the ferry in Anacortes headed for Shaw Island in the San Juans. My soon to be had written to the Universal Life Church and had hisself and a few others ordained. I had called the courthouse and made sure all was legal and legit. I wasn't going to go through all the marriage stuff and find out it wasn't legal...although that might have made things easier 27 or so years later. So, we headed to Shaw to a small one room cabin that was being rented by his first wife. Yep, she was going to be the official officiate at our wedding. (Nice lady, btw, and I perhaps should have listened to her pre-nuptials advice.) We had invited a few friends, but it was all hush hush with the parents. Why? I really don't know. Our current landlord "Arjuna" and his wife "Savitra" (Steve and Margie, legally; eyes rolling big time), our dear friends Gerry and Harriet, his friend Larry, and his sister and her boyfriend; both of whom were bus drivers and he ended up getting in a very bad bus accident so she was at his side at the trauma center. We had written our own vows and gathered in the front room. The Irish Setter, Cabernet, placed herself under the table with the lace table cloth and peeked out, looking like a child preparing for her first communion. At about the five minute mark we looked out to see the neighbor's calf cavorting in the front yard so the chase was on. One of the oddest things, when I ponder this whole thing today, is that my ex still has the weird shirt that he had made a few years before...some kind of green curtain material, and still wears it!! (Yes, a vision of Maria and the Sound of Music does come to mind.) The calf was safely rounded up, and we all went back to the cabin for a wedding carrot cake made by our host/minister-ess. We then went down to the ferry landing to use the pay phone and call the parents. Nope no cell phones back then, in fact no phone at all to the cabin, nor electricity, nor plumbing. We had taken the hippy van (Chev, as we were not REAL hippies) and our wedding night was spent parked in front of the ex-wife's cabin. The next morning she had made us a wonderful mushroom quiche. She baked with an old woodburning cookstove and kerosene lamps lit the cabin. We headed home later that day so that we could check on Michael at the trauma center. Wow, the things my dear parents endured with me.

This, dear readers, is all the truth; one cannot make this stuff up!

So, to keep this day in perspective, I will concentrate on the humor of the event, and not the tough years that followed. To them I say "rotten tomatoes."

12/28/75 A day that will forever live in infamy in the nooks and crannies of my brain. sigh.

G2