Best Man

There's an event from January of 1972 that I skipped over, and that was my friend Wayne's wedding in Tyler. Now I usually don't go to weddings (if I can help it), but I was the best man so I kind of needed to be there. I don't recall exactly what day it was, but I do recall that the overnight low afterward was around 20 degrees, and based on the historical weather records it was probably the 15th.

BTW: The reason I remember the temperature is that the Charger was rather unhappy about it the next morning. It would barely idle - really rough and slow. Every time I came to a stop it was a battle to keep it running (it died once but started right back up)... And that's enough about the Charger (for now).

A few weeks before the wedding Wayne and I had agreed that we would just dress as usual (blue jeans and a shirt) but that idea didn't go ever very well with the bride-to-be's family so we ended up wearing suits. (I still had one left over from my private school days in Winnipeg so there was no extra expense.)

In most ways it was a pretty traditional affair. I headed down to Tyler a couple of days ahead of time and stayed with Wayne at the house he inherited from his grandmother. The night before the rehearsal we went over to another guy's house, drank beer and watched some 8mm stag films... Yeah - that was the first time I ever saw hardcore. They were doing things I hadn't thought of in ways I would not have thought of :-)

Then there was the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner - and finally the wedding... I have to admit that I was pretty nervous (I'd been having nightmares about misplacing the ring) but not as nervous as Wayne.

The wedding went off without a hitch and afterward we all headed from the church to a local hotel for the reception... And I missed most of it. Here's why:
At some point the bride's brother Doug(?), who was about 16, noticed an unmarked side door and decided to go exploring... I was bored (and curious) so I tagged along. The door opened onto a long hallway, and at one end there was a set of swinging doors which (judging by the noises coming from the other side) went to the kitchen.

Now, at that point my curiosity was pretty much satisfied and I was ready to head back to the reception, but Doug decided to take a quick peek through the gap between the doors to see if he could sneak through them unnoticed. That's when a kitchen worker swung one of the doors open, knocking him senseless.

I don't think he went completely "out" because he kind of slowly crumpled to the floor, but the door had left a serious gash above one eye and (like most head wounds) it was bleeding profusely - within seconds there was a small pool of blood next to him. The worker who had inadvertently hit him and I were standing there trying to figure out what to do next when a cocktail waitress passed through the kitchen and saw Doug lying there bleeding. After asking "What the #$%# happened?" she grabbed a towel and started applying pressure to the wound.

Aside: I should point out that in early 1972 the 911 emergency system was not yet in widespread use. There were a few places that had it, but not very many. So when you needed assistance you had to find a phone book and look up the number for police or fire or ambulance (or call the operator).  It was enough of a hassle that people generally didn't think of calling for help until they knew it was needed. And that explains why nobody immediately headed for the phone when Doug went down.

OK - here's is the funny part: The cocktail waitress was exceedingly well endowed and wearing a very low cut dress. When Doug started to regain his senses and opened his eyes she was kneeling over him in such a way that the first thing he saw was that magnificent cleavage...You should have seen the look on his face... He must have (at least for a moment) wondered if he had died and gone to heaven :-)

After a couple of minutes he was completely coherent and clearly enjoying the attention of the aforementioned cocktail waitress, so we figured we didn't need to call for an ambulance. Still - he did need to go to the E.R. to get stitched up.
So I stayed with Doug while one of the hotel staff went off to try and find a parent to drive him to the hospital. And apparently the whole episode had taken a lot longer than I realized because the next thing I knew I was being told that Wayne and Karen were ready to leave the reception.That meant that I needed to go fetch the Charger because Wayne had hidden his 65 Mustang in an undisclosed location many days earlier and he asked me to drive them there because he figured I could lose anyone who might try and follow us.

BTW: I'm seriously not making that up. We even made a bunch of wrong turns to make sure we weren't being tailed. He really didn't want any of that white shoe polish to touch his Mustang :-)

I pulled up to the curb out front and waited for them to emerge. It took them a minute for them to get situated in the vehicle (I think the bride ended up climbing into the back seat) and for some reason it had never occurred to me that people would be throwing rice that whole time. I was rather dismayed at how much of it was ending up the Charger but I kept telling myself "I can just vacuum it out later"...

Wrong! ... As it turns out, it is impossible to completely remove rice from the interior of a vehicle. You can vacuum and vacuum and it will look like it's gone, but a few days later there will be rice all over the place again. I don't know how many times I thought I got it all but there was still bits of it on the carpet the day I had to sell the Charger... And  I digress...

Nobody followed us (despite all the threats from his friends and relatives) and after I dropped them off I headed back to his house where I spent the rest of the evening listening to Aqualung (Jethro Tull - one of the greatest albums of all time) while freezing my tail off. And the next morning I headed back to Denton.

I guess this is one of those stories that doesn't really have much of a point (other than "be careful around swinging doors" and "don't let people throw rice into your car".) ... It's just another one of those experiences that I can still clearly remember after all these years...