The Bride Wore Flip-Flops

The Bride Wore Flip-Flops

I suppose I should have paid a little more attention to the wedding announcement when it came in the mail. When I read the part where it said to come casual and to wear flip-flops if you want, I should have realized that it wasn't just another way of saying “just wear casual”. They meant it exactly as it was written. I just didn't believe it at the time.

The wedding was to begin at 1 pm at the Methodist church in Madisonburg, a small suburb a little ways north of my hometown. My wife and I arrived a few minutes after 12:30. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in this part of Ohio and I begrudged, at least a little, the necessity of attending this wedding for a 2nd cousin. The groom was the youngest son of my cousin Steve Weaver and I knew him to be a good kid – college grad, good job, level-headed. Maybe a bit car crazy, but that was an affliction of his dad's also. I originally thought that maybe we would mail this one in, to “take a rain check”, to just send the card and gift. But then I reconsidered.

He was family and family was important. And I'm very fond of his mom and dad. So we went.

I knew we were at the right place by the vehicle parked next to the door of the church. It was a bright yellow 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe hot rod. With a life-size Homer Simpson doll hanging out the driver's window seeming to wave at the people arriving, seeming to say, “Welcome! Welcome!” Oh yes, this was definitely the right place.

When we entered the church I finally got it through my thick skull that the invitation we'd received was correct in every detail, especially the part about the footwear. My wife had taken the arm of one of the ushers that were leading us to our pew in the church and the unmistakable sound of “flop, flop, flop” came from his feet. When we looked down – there they were. Brightly-colored flip-flops! They seemed so incongruous with the dressy brown formal wear he had on from his ankles up.

Like swim fins on the feet of an Olympic gymnast.

He wasn't alone, either, as the entire wedding party, including the bride and groom, was attired in flip-flops.

We took our seats and began perusing the program for the wedding ceremonies. It had the customary listing of the organ music being played, the various parts of the wedding ceremony and their sequence, the hymns to be sung and other items. It also had a one-page insert with a short bio of each person in the wedding party. One side started with the bride, Jaimi, and went through the bridesmaids – Jodi, Emily, Carrie, Michelle and the flower girl Gabrielle. The other side was headed by the groom, Andrew, and it listed his groomsmen – Allen, Mark, Christopher and Jack. At the bottom of the “mens” side they listed a wedding participant named Dutchess Weaver.

I need to quote the listing for Dutchess for a special reason. It said, “Dutchess Weaver – Ring Bearer is a perfect lady! She has been the pride and joy of her daddy for the past three years. Like a true lady, however, she will never reveal her biological age. Some would say the two are almost inseparable. Dutchess is honored to be a part of this important day in her Daddy and Mommy's life. She is forever grateful to her Granny Peg and Mommy Jaimi for making her skirt and fleece pillow, respectively, for the day's activities and hopes that there will be MANY photos to commemorate the event. In her spare time, Dutchess enjoys ripping to shreds groundhogs, rabbits, and barking at raccoons, birds and the moon! Her new favorite friend is the skunk!”


After reading the first half of the “bio” for Dutchess I pictured a little flaxen-haired moppet wearing crinolines and flip-flops carrying a pillow with the rings attached who happened to have a unique nickname. Upon further reading I realized that the ring bearer was a dog! And sure enough she was. She even had on a skirt the same color as the bridesmaids dresses when she proudly walked up the aisle!

Before the service got under way they had a tribute to the grandmothers of the bride and groom. They lowered a movie screen behind and to one side of the altar and displayed a montage of photographs of first, my aunt Lorna who was the paternal grandmother, then the bride's grandmother. Both were deceased. They played the song “Holes in the Floor of Heaven” by Steve Wariner during the tribute and there wasn't a dry eye in the church. Even stoic old me had a lump in my throat the size of a grapefruit. Then one of the photos on the screen showed my aunt Lorna during a long-ago Christmas and there was Santa Claus standing next to her. At that moment from the front of the congregation you could plainly hear a little girl's voice excitedly exclaiming, “Santa Claus! Santa Claus!” We all laughed. I'm sure that the grandmothers looking down from heaven laughed also.

The bride's father was in an electric wheelchair and looked to be quite ill. I found out later that he had had brain surgery not that long ago and was still in poor health. I'm not sure whether the surgery was a success or not. Since he couldn't walk his daughter down the aisle as custom dictated, she took a position on his lap and he drove her down the aisle in the wheelchair.

It was a poignant moment and again there were tears in a lot of eyes.

I took a look around the room after we'd all been seated and observed what everyone was wearing and tried to decide whether the suggestion in the invitation to “go casual” had been followed. My wife and I had debated that very point only that morning and we'd settled on dressing semi-casual. She in slacks, a top and a summer-weight jacket; me in Dockers and a decent knit shirt.

We both wore shoes. I don't even think we even own a pair of flip-flops.

As I looked around I could see that we were in the majority as far as dress went. There were some in full suits and dresses, a lot in semi-casual as we were and there were also a fair number in quite casual attire varying from tropical shirts and jeans to full-blown Jimmy Buffet mode with shorts, sandals and garish shirts. And, of course you could see flip-flops here and there. You name the style of dress and it was represented.

After the ceremony and the ritual farewell of the bride and groom as they exited the building, jumped into the sunshine-yellow 1940 Ford and rumbled away, we all adjourned to fellowship hall in the lower level of the church. The groom's mother was from Thailand and had earned a reputation over the years as a fantastic cook. So she, along with a number of her Thai relatives had prepared the food for the reception. My wife and I sat with a couple of my cousins, Esther, Jim and Tim, and got caught up on family news while we ate the exotic hors d'oeuvres. The food was, as expected, outstanding! After a wait that seemed eons long, the bridal party returned from their picture-taking marathon upstairs in the sanctuary and joined us in the fellowship hall. Thankfully, not long after that we lined up for the meal and spent the next period of time oohing and aahing over the tasty Thai cuisine. And messing around with the provided chopsticks which proved hilarious.

Soon our plates were clean, our belts loosened a notch or two, and we leaned back in our chairs to watch the rest of the festivities. First there was the toast given by the best man and the maid of honor to the new Mr. and Mrs. Then there was the cutting of the wedding cake and the subsequent smearing of such all over the faces of the new spouses by their partner. I was amazed at the enthusiasm demonstrated in said smearing! Their faces were absolutely coated with cake and icing. Then it was time for the first dance of the bride and groom as man and wife. Following that dance it was time for another poignant moment to occur. The next dance was to be the one where the groom dances with his mom and the bride with her dad. We saw the wheelchair approach the dance floor and two men assisted the handicapped father and helped him to his feet and into the arms of his daughter where he swayed and danced with her. The song they danced to was, of course, another tear jerker. You could see it was torture for him to do it, but he was determined to not let his daughter down on her special day. We applauded him when he left the floor, again in his chair and looking exhausted but exalted.

My wife and I had some obligations we needed to attend to about then, so we decided it was time to bid our adieus to the post-nuptial festivities. We chatted for a bit with some of my other cousins and the groom's mom and dad on our way to the door, then made our exit.

I was, after some initial misgivings, glad we went. It was fun being out amongst younger people again, the wedding party and their many, many friends. It was also good to see and be around family again, to see your face reflected and echoed in various ways in your cousin's faces, in their gestures, their voices, their lives.

And it was good for my wife and I to see two people get married who were so full of life and so much in love as my second cousin and his new bride. It brought back many good memories.

We wish Andy and Jaimi the most wonderful life imaginable!

Tin Goose Over the Ice

Tin Goose Over the Ice

The morning sun was still red and close to the horizon as I stood by the departure door at the small airport waiting for my name to be called. I was the last on the list to be seated. I'd waited patiently as 6 or 8 of my fellow workers had been called to take their seats on the aircraft. There'd been an pause after the man just before me was called and I was beginning to believe that I would have to take a later flight. Perhaps they'd run out of room? But no, there came the man with the clipboard and he called out my name. He said, “they've just about got your seat attached – you can board now.” I walked across part of the cold, windy airport toward the airplane, the raw wind making my eyes tear up. It was late February. I mulled over the ticket agent's words as I walked toward the airplane - “...got your seat attached...”

And I wondered.

As I approached the aircraft I could see an attendant finishing clamping a small seat in the doorway of the airplane. In the doorway! That was to be my seat? I swallowed a small, sour lump of fear as I approached. I'm a poor flier at best and this flight was to be a first for me from this airport, to the intended destination and in this rather remarkable aircraft.

The time was the late '70's. I was employed by an independent insurance company which was located in my hometown and our boss, the president of the company, had invited all the men in the office to go on an ice fishing trip with him. Of course you couldn't get away with an action like that nowadays. The females in the company would scream and holler and there'd likely be lawyers involved before the dust settled. But in those “unenlightened” days of the Seventies, sexual discrimination was widely practiced and bosses could get away with almost anything.

It was a good time to be a man, I'm ashamed to admit.

Anyhow, all the men were going ice fishing. Including me! I was excited and really looking forward to it. I'd been a fisherman for many years, of course, but all of my previous fishing experiences had been in the warmer months of the year. In fact, this company for which I worked had booked a party boat in the autumn several times in the past and we'd all gone out in Lake Erie perch fishing. (The men, of course.) We'd car-pooled from our inland hometown where the insurance company was located to Port Clinton, Ohio, where the boat was docked. Then the party boat would motor out to a likely spot – the captain knew just where to get us into fish – where we would drop our lines in the water and start hauling up perch. A lot of the time we'd catch two fish at once. We were using Lake Erie spreaders, a two-hook setup, and that allowed you to catch two at at time. By the time we'd finish we'd have a good portion of a garbage can full of fat yellow perch ready to be filleted and eaten. The boss would have the perch professionally cleaned and frozen after the trip and we'd get our fair share at work the following week.

Fresh Lake Erie yellow perch is mighty fine eating! Rolled in corn meal or dipped in beer batter and deep fried it was a meal fit for a king! Add some tangy tartar sauce, some home-cut French fries and a cold beer? Mmmm...!

But this year was proving to be something different. This year we were going to try our luck through the ice. Yes, the boss was taking us guys ice fishing this year.

So there I was, approaching the airplane that was to fly me through the cold Ohio air to the island of Middle Bass out in frozen Lake Erie. And the airplane which was going to do this was old. Really, really old. It was getting a bit long in the tooth even in my father's day. To be honest, it was an antique. And beside being an antique, it was one of the few of its kind still left flying in the world.

I was going to fly in a Ford Tri-Motor.

Ford Tri-Motors were built between 1925 and 1933 and the history of these aircraft is fascinating. They only made 199 of them in their production years and yes, they were made by the Ford Motor Company. They had 3 Wright air-cooled engines for power and the engine gauges on these old birds were attached to the engines themselves and were read by the pilot by simply looking out the windows. They were one of the first all-metal aircraft with aluminum wings and fuselages which were corrugated for strength. They originally were fitted out for 8 passengers, but could be retrofitted to cram in 12. The one I rode in surely was a 12-seater. The rudder and elevators were controlled by mechanically operated cables strung along the outside of the airplane. The Tri-Motor was known as a ruggedly built beast and one of them ended up being quite famous by carrying Admiral Richard E. Byrd on the first flight over the South Pole. They cost $42,000 in 1933 and each of them were affectionately called “The Tin Goose.”

(As of 2008 there are 18 left in the whole world - only 6 of which are flyable.)

But in the late '70's there were more around and I was getting into one of them.

I gingerly took my seat and strapped on my seatbelt. An attendant shut the door and latched it. I noticed that the latch was a simple sliding bolt – exactly the kind I have on the side door of my house. The man sitting next to me looked over at the latch and smiled. He said, “I see they got the door latch fixed.” I asked him what he meant. He said, “last year it was broken and the door just swung in the breeze the whole way over to the island!”

I looked back a the latch. I was glad it was fixed. Very glad!

The pilot fired up the 3 engines and we taxied out to the runway. He did some energetic things with some of the controls up front, cranking and cranking some device, and soon we were off and up. I think he was lowering the flaps. The old bird flew fine – slow and steady through the air, its fat doughnut tires slowly turning in the slipstream, and soon we were landing on the gravel runway of Middle Bass Island. It was a memorable flight in what was undoubtedly a museum piece!

As a side note, I found out a few years later that the Tin Goose I'd flown in had crashed somewhere up around the lake and was too banged up to fix. Scratch another one of this dying breed.

After landing on the island our host picked us up at the airstrip in an extended van and took us out to the lake, where we jumped onto snowmobiles and other stripped down vehicles for our trip out onto the ice. After a run across the ice for a mile or two we came upon what looked like a village of shacks. Each of the shacks were set up to accommodate two men and he dropped a pair of us off at each one. My partner and I entered ours. It was about 8 feet square, plenty of room for two and the stove inside was already lit. It was nice and warm inside! There were two holes cut in the ice already and two fishing lines dangled into the water. Our host had already baited our hooks and we needed only to give them a jiggle to start feeling fish bites. We immediately set to business and soon were pulling up perch. We opened our door after each fish was caught and tossed the catch out onto the ice where they'd soon cool down and stop flopping.

It was turning out to be a great day!

Around about lunch time there was a knock at the door to our shack and, when we opened it, our host stood there and greeted us. He then slid a picnic basket into the shack with our lunch inside – sandwiches, hot chili, fruit, cold drinks and coffee. Very nice.

During the course of the day, when the fishing had slowed a bit, we would occasionally slip out and visit the other guys in their shacks to see how they were doing. I remember that one of the vice-presidents, who we were all fond of, was doing quite well and had a good pile of perch outside his shack. So about every hour one or another of us would sneak over there and steal some of his fish and put them in our piles! He stated later in the evening that he couldn't figure it out. He was catching fish after fish but his pile wasn't getting any bigger! He actually walked around his shack a couple of times to see if the fish had flopped their way somewhere else. We all got a big laugh out of his consternation.

Late in the afternoon our transportation came back and loaded us up for the trek back to the island. We were one of the last parties to be out on the ice fishing that year and there were pools of standing melt-water that we splashed through on the way back in. The sun had really warmed things up that day and it was a bit scary, but we arrived at our host's house unscathed. I was very glad to be back on dry land and I didn't envy our host having to eventually go out on the ice again to retrieve his shacks.

The host's wife cooked all of us a tasty supper and, after eating like starving weasels, we sat around their big table shooting the breeze and talking about the fishing. Soon after the meal was over the table was cleared, the cards and poker chips came out and we played poker until late in the night. Then it was upstairs to bed. Our host lived in an old farmhouse with many bedrooms upstairs and we all fit in somehow.

The next morning, after a full breakfast of bacon, sausage, pancakes, eggs and the works, the owner returned us to the airstrip for our flight back to the mainland. Our plane this time was an Otter, an S.T.O.L (short take-off or landing) airplane produced from 1951 to 1967. It sat 10 – 11 passengers. Apparently the Goose we flew over in on Saturday was down for maintenance. We piled into the Otter and the pilot taxied to the downwind side of the gravel airstrip. When he arrived there he cranked over the rudder and tried to turn the airplane around to face into the wind for its takeoff. Due to the strong wind blowing at the time and the roughness of the gravel airstrip, the airplane didn't want to turn around. So a couple of us passengers jumped out and pushed the tail of the airplane around so it was facing the correct direction. They then jumped back in and we took off. The flight back to the Port Clinton airport was slow and noisy but uneventful and the drive back home the same.

A lot of the men who accompanied me on that trip are gone now. Two of the vice-presidents, Bob Dickason and Tauno Lintala have passed away. Several of the others I've lost contact with over the long years, but rumor has it they're gone also. Two guys, Eric Dulin and Mike Miller, both who were my age are still alive and still work at an insurance company, although it's a different one nowadays, up the road from where we used to work. What's quite remarkable about the group that shared that trip so many years ago is that the president of the company, Ken Rhode, who invited us on that expedition back in the good ol' days and who was in his late 60's back then, is still alive! He celebrated his 100^th birthday just this year and still goes into the office a couple of days a week. Just to keep his hand in, he says. He holds the title of “Director Emeritus” now. I called him up on the phone to congratulate him on his enviable milestone just after his birthday and we chatted for a while. If you didn't know it, you'd guess he hadn't aged a year since the late 70's.

People like to yammer on and on about the good old days, knowing that they weren't that good a lot of the time. Much like today.

But this trip out on the ice was, without a doubt, one of the really good ones.

The blue ice still forms thick and firm on old Erie in the cold Ohio winters and the fat perch still bite willingly on a hooked minnow. Friends still gather to harvest nature's bounty out on the ice and to share fellowship with other's of a kindred spirit.

Let's hope it stays that way for many long years to come.

Affiliations

Affiliations

If someone asked you to describe yourself – right now – how would you respond to them? What would you say?

Would you talk about your physical attributes? How tall you were? Your weight? Your beauty or lack thereof? Or would you mention your lineage, your parents, grandparents, ancestors. How famous your child was. Perhaps you might describe your religious views or the organizations you might belong to – the Masons, the Moose Lodge, the Elks. Or would you meekly say, “I'm no one special.” When you get right down to it and think about it for a while, how would you even begin to list all of the different attributes that constitute you. How long would it take you to describe all of the affiliations that define you?

Take a minute now and think about the myriad of criteria which make up the persona that's reading this message. You.

What the hell am I talking about?

Let me illustrate it this way. There's a good joke that's been making the rounds recently that might clarify what I'm trying to say. It goes something like this:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, “Stop! Don’t do it!” “Why shouldn’t I?” he said.

I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”

He said, “Like what?”

I said, “Well…are you religious or atheist?”

He said, “Religious.”

I said, “Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?”

He said, “Christian.”

I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

He said, “Protestant.”

I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”

He said, “Baptist!”

I said, “Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”

He said, “Baptist Church of God!”

I said, “Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”

He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God!”

I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”

He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!”

I said, “Die, heretic scum!” and pushed him off.

Bypassing the religious implications of the above joke, which is a whole other kettle of fish, it demonstrates, at least a little, the concept I'm trying to describe. And that is, we are all, for the most part, the sum of our associations and affiliations. We define who we are by the definitions of the groups to which we belong.

We are exactly what we define ourselves to be.

To illustrate:

I am a man. I am a married man. I am a father. I am a heterosexual. I am an Ohioan. I am an American citizen. I am a veteran. I am employed.

The groups by which we describe ourselves can further be divided into categories. Social, personal, physical, political, religious, educational, geographical, emotional and many others. We also define ourselves by negatives - “I am not this or that.” A lot of categories in which you belong would, by their own definition, preclude your belonging to others. “I am an adult man” would preclude your being a child or adolescent female. It comes with the territory.

Each definition binds us to a mutually group-defined set of characteristics and responses. Some of the groups to which we belong are strict and we cannot change our affiliation with them without great cost and great personal sacrifice. “I am a man” is one of those groups. Others are less rigid and can be changed or modified more easily. “I am a vegetarian” might be one of them. Some ride in the center such as “I am a Republican.” Changing from that group to another might be easy but the ramifications of that change might be difficult. And then there are the ones most easily changed such as “I am a hungry man and I am a thirsty man.” Just eat and drink!

Each of the groups to which you belong also instructs you to act in specific ways, both by the definition of the group and by its customs and peculiarities. A mid-western American is unlikely to take up the practice of cannibalism, at least without a severe mental aberration driving him. A general in the military would not take orders from a private. It would negate the entire history of the military. It would also be unlikely in the extreme to imagine a Catholic nun performing table dances at a nightclub under any circumstances. Or can you picture John Wayne donning a tutu and dancing Swan Lake with the Bolshoi ballet? Or a Russian prima ballerina donning a 10-gallon hat and six-gun and going out to arrest some rustlers?

The reason these examples seem silly is because we see ourselves and others through the filters of affiliation. We define people, and ourselves, by the groups to which they or we belong or to which they or we believe they belong. And, by defining them as such, would be dumbfounded to see them doing something “out of the norm” for their groups. As we would be at least uncomfortable and more likely embarrassed or mortified doing some action proscribed by the groups we are affiliated with.

Each group to which you profess inclusion narrows your choices of actions and adds blinders to the way you perceive the world. If you belong to a specific religion, you might have been instructed that all other forms of religious practice are incorrect and yours is the “one and only” true one, as was illustrated in the earlier joke. You would not be interested in learning about other religions as you would consider them contemptible and perhaps even heretic. If you are of a certain nationality it is easy and acceptable to believe your country is the “best” and all others have flaws that make them undesirable. If you are of a certain age you might be tempted to berate those older - “never trust anyone over 30” - or those younger - “those kids don't know what they're talking about.”

Is this how we wish to carry on with our lives? Walking in lockstep with our fellow group members with our eyes lowered and our mind stagnating?

I think not.

I believe it's time for a bit of self-examination. Time to take a look at the groups to which we profess inclusion and to examine whether we should categorize ourselves as members or whether we should look around a bit. See what the rest of the world is doing in their groups. Realize that we do have choices in most of our membership groups and that being rigidly involved in the ones we belong to now might be limiting our potentials and possibilities.

Do I think we should all take up vegetarianism? Should we all immediately jump political parties and become that what we always despised? Should we all schedule ourselves for “the operation” to see what being the other sex is all about?

Nope.

But perhaps it might be enlightening to “dip our toes” into other groups, other affiliations. Perhaps it would be life-enriching to take a critical look at what's available in other groups and to at least consider the ramifications of change. Maybe it's time to take off our blinders and to remove our filters and actually see what's out there in the big world. Or even to profess our non-inclusion in any groups!

We might all be surprised. We might all be astounded. We might even be tempted!

Anyone interested in joining my fan club?