The other night I met a friend to watch the Red Sox game, we‘ll call her Marie. Judging by the score, the Sox apparently didn’t realize that they were actually playing in this game.
I figured that good conversation would be a safer alternative to ripping the plasma TV off the wall and tossing it in the trash. As I listened to a story that my friend casually shared, three things crossed my mind:
a) I’m craving Mexican food
b) Is this story for real?
c) Uh, oh…This story involves rednecks, I must grab my notebook…immediately.
Marie regaled me with the story of, what I will call, a fairy tale wedding. The sort of unspoiled romance that little girls dream about all of their life…in Arkansas.
She’s from Texarkana. For those of you who don’t know the fascinating story of Texarkana, it straddles the Texas/Arkansas border- thus the clever name. It’s the home of something that escapes my mind, but I know that it’s part of the United States- as is Arkansas.
Marie was supposed to be married in a wedding chapel on the Texas side of the city. The only problem being, other than the fact that she should have joined the witness relocation program rather than marry this man, was that Texas wouldn’t legally recognize their nuptials because he was not officially divorced from his previous wife.
Here comes the Arkansas government to the rescue! Arkansas’ state nickname is “The flagrant disregard for the sanctity of marriage” state. You can, as per the Texarkana court clerk:
Get born (pronounced: Borned)
Get dead (pronounced with two syllables)
Get married
Get buried (pronounced: going someplace better than Arkansas)
And all of the paperwork can be issued in that very office. Even better, the clerk informed Marie that in Arkansas, should all four events converge, they will issue all of said certificates at once (Onest). For a state where you can’t purchase beer and liquor in the same store, I call this cutting edge efficiency from which we can all take a cue! So the lovebirds procured an Arkansas marriage license. The only problem? Texas, being a stickler for executing people in possession of overdue library books, would NOT recognize the license so long as the groom-to-be wasn’t officially divorced. I’m wondering how in the world David Koresh slipped through the cracks.
These crazy kids decided that it would be clever to get married in a van where they exchanged vows in Texas and sealed the deal with “I now pronounce you slacker and woman who is far too good for you” just across the Arkansas border. (Insert Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” here).
By the way, and I swear I am NOT making this up, the preacher’s daughter drove the van! At this point in my friend’s story I ordered a shot of whiskey. I believe that the newly bequeathed “Mr. & Mrs.” received guests at the Sonic drive-in. As they say, something old, something new, something borrowed and something super-sized.
Marie and her guy are from a small town…which means that she has stories that defies logic (and Darwin’s theory).
She told me of a family get together where her Uncle Doyle and a family friend were engaged in deep conversation. Even though, at this point in our conversation, I was clinically drunk, I couldn’t walk away! We’ll call the family friend Billy Joe Bobby Calhoun. It’s important to note that Uncle Doyle is trapped in a miserable marriage. Their dialogue unfolded as follows:
Billy Joe: I love the hell outta my wife Doyle (thick Texas accent)
Doyle: That’s nice. You reckon’ them steaks are done yet?
Billy Joe: Don‘t know, but I’m as happy as a pig in shit…Don’t you just LOVE these ladies in our life Doyle?
Doyle: (looking as though he wanted to toss Billy Joe on the grill) I’d love her a lot more if she’d bring me a glass of sweet tea right about now
If I had a time machine I would transport myself to that living room immediately just to see if Marie was making this up! For what its worth, Marie has since divorced. I’m not certain what went wrong but I can only assume that it had something to do with her being abundantly intelligent.
I sometimes reminisce about growing up around my mother and father. My dad was known as the cool old man amongst my neighborhood friends. They always told me how great my dad was. My response was always: “Yeah? You don’t have to live with him.”
Don’t get me wrong, my dad was indeed a cool dude…with waaay too much idle time on his hands- he was quite brilliant also. He retired early which largely contributed to many tense moments in the house between he and my mother. He spoke about 493-thousand languages and could build ANYTHING. Two of the most important things that I learned from him were:
1. I possess a gene which prevents me from learning any foreign language
2. I, apparently, cannot hold a flashlight precisely on the spot in which my dad asked
My mother never fully appreciated the lessons that my dad tried to instill in a growing young boy. When I was 8-years old she came home to find him teaching me martial arts- specifically, how to permanently paralyze someone with my thumb. This almost caused a divorce.
Another time when mom came home she found me in the garage pouring a volatile fuel concoction into mason jars. Since I was 9 she, naturally, inquired as to what I was doing. Upon informing her, she became anxiously curious as to my father‘s whereabouts:
Mom: Where’s your father??
Me: He told me not to tell you. I was supposed to tell him when you pulled up the driveway as a matter of fact..
Mom: WHERE’S your father?
Me: He’s in the shop out back.
Mom: What’s he doing?
Me: (Silently staring at the ground)
Mom: (Staring a hole through my soul)
Me: He’s building a small rocket. I’m mixing the fuel for him. The sooner I get this done the sooner I can go show my friends the cool spider dad caught for me.
Diverting her attention from the explosives that I had been handling, mom’s eyes locked on a mason jar on the shelf in front of me, which had become the new home for a Black Widow spider.
Mom: (Calmly) Go get your father, right now please. And then go inside.
Me: (To my dad) Mom’s home…she wants to see you.
Dad: How did she seem?
Me: She told me to come get you and then go inside.
Dad: Shit.
There was some yelling a few moments later as I recall.
Another entertaining trick that made my dad famous among the neighborhood kids was when he spit FIRE! He’d put lighter fluid in his mouth and spit it onto a matchstick…thus, looking like a human dragon! One time his fire spitting trick went askew and he accidentally set the side of the house on fire. My mother was not as impressed as me and the other kids. They slept in separate rooms for two or three days and it was REAL quiet at the dinner table during this period.
As a very young boy I was terrified of water- So my dad taught me how to swim. He took me to the middle of the lake on a small raft where he then, with nurturing tutelage that only a father can provide, tossed me through the air as far as possible as though he were competing in a midget toss. I splashed down into 60-feet of water as he rowed as fast and far away from me as possible, laughing hysterically while he popped open a beer.
My dad passed away at an early age- he was 53. For as much as he seemed to be a pain in my mother’s ass I learned otherwise. Standing with mom over his coffin, I watched as she silently stared at his lifeless body. A single tear slowly trickled down her cheek and onto his handsome dark suit.
She sweetly whispered “I love you with all of my heart.” With those words, my mother gently stroked my father’s hair as I watched, speechless, studying her face. And so, a chapter in both of our lives was sealed with the closing of that casket. But the memories live vividly in my heart and mind forever.
My mother survived my dad by 20-years, never once finding interest in another man. He was the love of her life- theirs was a love that most could only hope to find. Call me biased, but I honestly can’t think of another man who could possibly compare to dad in my mother’s eyes. He was the “cool cat” who wheeled up on his Harley, looking like a cross between Elvis and James Dean. He’d whisk her away for long weekends on the open road, edging beautiful beaches or a lush mountain pass.
He once built a motorcycle for me- another tense moment at the dinner table between the two of them, but I somehow managed not to injure myself too badly growing up.
Mom often told me of how she and my father came to be married. It was 1957- he made a bet with her at the bowling alley that if she beat him at bowling then they would go get married that week. My mom often bragged about how she soundly trounced him in that bowling match. It was the only accomplishment of which you would ever catch her exercising bragging rights.
I never felt it necessary to let her know that he threw that game on purpose- since he had also found the love of his life.
I learned many valuable lessons from my dad- I know how to paralyze someone with my thumb, I know how to lay a motorcycle down in such a way as to avoid killing myself, I can swim and I can make home-made rocket fuel- should the need arise.
I still can’t hold a flashlight straight or fluently speak a foreign language, but I recognize a true love story when I see it. I had a front-row seat.
Happy Father’s Day!
copyright Pontchartrain Press 2010
