Another Wedding

The time-frame surrounding June of 1972 is rather muddled in my memory. I know that I must have stayed at Karina's apartment in the Oak Lawn area for at least a few weeks but I have very little recollection of it.

Aside: I do recall that one evening I sneaked off to one of the "X-rated" theaters north of downtown Dallas to see "Dagmar's Hot Pants". (That was before it was re-cut for an R rating). But that's not particularly relevant to anything :-)

Here's the part that confuses me the most:

Back when mom was selling advertising for monitors at cattle auctions one of her regular stops was Ardmore, Oklahoma. And while she she was there she ended up becoming close friends with a couple of the local women. As it turned out, one of them had a son (Mike) who was around Karina's age. I recall that Mike was a drummer, looked a bit like Jerry Garcia, had type 1 diabetes and was legally blind. (However, that did not stop him from driving - and yes, I rode with him many times. It was frightening.)

Anyway - apparently mom had been visiting them regularly (with Karina) before getting sick... And after mom got out of the hospital Mike proposed to Karina... Yeah - I was in shock. (I had never even heard of the guy.) All I know is that very shortly after I arrived in Dallas we all headed to Ardmore for the wedding.

Aside: I probably need to mention that mom's improvement after getting out of the hospital was stunning. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone recover from a lengthy hospitalization so fast.

So - Mike was a nice enough guy. He was definitely not emotionally equipped to deal with Karina, but he was a good drummer :-) Also, he did me 2 big favors:
The first thing was giving me the best pair of blue jeans ever... Mike made a lot of his own clothes (despite being legally blind) and his specialty was bell-bottom jeans with 30 inch bells. (The "bell" refers to the bottom of the pants leg.) The "brand name" bell-bottoms back in the day had 12 inch bells - you couldn't buy anything much wider. A lot of people would extend their bells by inserting fabric in the leg seams, but that looked kind of "hokey". Mike's looked like they were factory made. We were about the same size and he gave me a pair of his - they were freaking outrageous!
The second thing he did was to introduce me to the Machine Head album by Deep Purple. It had just been released a couple of months earlier and the only song that was getting any air play was "Smoke on the Water"... That album is a masterpiece - (in my book) it is right up there with "Sergeant Peppers" and "Electric Ladyland". In the 40 years since I've worn out 2 vinyl copies of it and now have it on CD.

But back to the title topic:

Mike still lived with his parents and the wedding was held in their living room. There weren't many people in attendance and he was so nervous he had trouble repeating the vows. After a couple of "Say again!"s the minister started breaking it up into 2 or 3 word snippets... Yeah - even before meeting Mike I had a pretty good idea how it was all going to turn out... I felt kind of sorry for him.

After the wedding they still hadn't decided whether they were going to stay in Ardmore or return to Dallas. I recall that his mother was deeply concerned because he'd never been away from home before. (Yes - he was a total mama's boy.) But after hanging out in Ardmore for a few days (and meeting all his buddies) Karina decided that they should give Dallas a try. She never could stand being in a small town.

So Mike (reluctantly) loaded his stuff into his red Datsun 510 (those were really cool little cars, by the way - people still rally race them) and we all headed back to Dallas - mom and I in the Fairlane - Mike and Karina in the Datsun.

And that is the story of Karina's second marriage in as many years...

Yes - I was back in "Crazy Town" :-)