The union of Mary and Joe took place in a simple churchyard atop a hill overlooking the town of Mendocino and the rocky Pacific shore beyond it.

How can one explain Mendocino?  About a four-hour drive north of San Francisco, right on the coast among scattered redwood groves, it is a lingering slice of the Age of Aquarius, but with a much better view of the ocean.  Some residents (in earlier days) were salmon fishermen, loggers, and lumber-mill workers (mainly in nearby Fort Bragg), while the people I knew tended to pursue two or three humble part-time vocations in order to support their love of natural foods, fusion cuisine, earth-toned clothing, very, very liberal politics, Birkenstocks, and the lively arts.  It was a great place to live.

Of course, there was the time warp.  While living there in the late 1990s, Marlis and I were once invited to a costume party by a fellow faculty member at the College of the Redwoods, and I decided to go as a 1960s Berkeley hippie with black turtleneck sweater and love beads.  On the way to the bash, we stopped so I could run into a market and buy some wine.  Once inside, I realized that I looked just like everybody else in the store.

So Mary and Joe’s outdoor Mendocino wedding ceremony was held in a churchyard meadow on a gently sloping hill.  Since Mary was Catholic and Joe was Jewish, the ceremony was led by an ecumenical committee of what I felt to be alternative-lifestyle religious officers, including a rabbi (possibly), a priest (possibly), and some kind of feminist spokesperson.  As I recall, two of them were women.  You figure it out.

Quite possibly I’m making all of that up, but no matter how snotty I may sound, I’m trying to be objective.  Given my unease anywhere near a church, it wasn’t easy to focus at the time.  Anyway, Mary and Joe were warm, genuine, deeply nice people (and still are), and everything seemed plausible, unpretentious, perfect.

Down toward the lower end of the sloping churchyard was a canopy that might give shade in the unlikely event of an unfoggy day, though its main purpose seemed to be to delimit the immediate area where the bride and groom and the cheerful union trio were to do their thing.  The rest of us stood up the hill, just a bit away from the happy couple.

As the ceremony was about to begin, a gentle rain began, which then quickly increased to a downpour, and we were all invited to come down the hill and crowd close together under the canopy.  We did so, nudging shoulder to shoulder, and the ceremony began.

After some sincere introductory remarks, one of the officiators said, “Mary and Joe believe that a marriage is not just a union of two people, but also involves all the friends and family who are an important part of their lives.  So they join in asking all of you to participate in celebrating this union.  Please recite after me.”

Some people—okay, the person “me”—might have thought, “Hey, this is a bit much.”  But then, it was Mary and Joe—Mary and Joe!—and it seemed right.  So something like the following dialogue ensued, with the officiator enunciating clearly and strongly, and the crowd murmuring gamely.

OFFICIATOR:  Joe and Mary, we all know that marriage involves the support of friends and family.

CROWD:  Joe and Mary, we all know that marriage involves the support of friends and family.

OFFICIATOR:  We promise to support your union as the days and years go by.

CROWD:  We promise to support your union as the days and years go by.

OFFICIATOR: In good times and bad, we will stand by you.

CROWD: In good times and bad, we will stand by you.

OFFICIATOR:  You are part of us, and we are part of you.

CROWD:  You are part of us, and we are part of you.

OFFICIATOR:  Well, I see the rain has let up.

CROWD: Well, I see the rain has let up.

OFFICIATOR:  No, I mean. . . .I see the rain has let up.

CROWD:  Ah.

One of the great moments in history, and I was there.  So very, very grateful.

My college friend Larry and another friend’s sister, Geraldine, got married in a hippyish-era ceremony in a flower-bedecked backyard in southern California.  I remember him as wearing cowboy boots, jeans, a long-sleeved white shirt with subtle pin-stripes, a light-brown corduroy vest, a paisley string tie, and a blonde Fu Manchu beard.  That description may not be factual, but I believe it is faithful to the time and place.

Beautiful young Geraldine wore an exquisitely simple, vaguely old-timey dress.  And, yes, she wore a flower in her hair.  Simply gorgeous.

Just before the ceremony was to begin, as we stood behind the crowd, Larry confided to me in a low voice, “Wait until you hear the music I recorded for the ceremony.  It’s Dylan.”

I thought it was odd that he would mention this to me at that point, but on the other hand we shared a deep interest in music.  He had shown me how to play guitar, and had also taught me a lot of old-time country songs by the likes of Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe, and Reno and Smiley.  For several years, we played and sang together a lot—in living rooms, of course.

Anyway, after Larry and Gerry had completed their home-made vows and were walking back through the seated audience, a recording of Larry singing began to play from a boom box:  “New Morning.”  Very upbeat, very joyful.

A bit later, after the reception party had had a chance to settle into a groove, Larry came up to me, smiling, and said, “What did you think of the music?”

“I’m a bit disappointed,” I said.  “I thought it might be ‘Lay, Lady, Lay’.”

He laughed as if I’d made a joke.

 

The wedding of Marlis and Glenn was relatively low-key, perhaps in keeping with the conventions of second marriages.  Some second marriages.  One afternoon, we loaded the kids into the pink station wagon and drove over to the house of one of Marlis’s WSU friends, whose husband was a judge.  As we drove down a street of suburban Wichita houses, Marlis said “It’s one of these, I think.”

“Which one?” you might ask.  I know I did.

“I’m not sure,” she said.  “Maybe you could just knock on a few doors and ask?”

Premonitions, premonitions.

At this point, the three kids noticed that they were a block or so away from a friend’s house, and wanted to know if they could go visit.  Right then.

“Not now,” said their mother.  “Glenn and I are getting married right now.”

I thought they already knew, since they seemed to be neatly dressed for it, but maybe not.

Somehow we found the judge’s house, went in, and began a wedding ceremony that had been promised to be the equivalent of a brief courthouse civil proceeding.

Since Marlis had not long before been hospitalized in traction for her back, the first significant pause came when the judge asked for a promise of lifelong fidelity “in sickness and in health.”  She peered at me out the corners of her eyes, looking for a response, but by the time I realized what he had said, the moment had passed.

A more resounding silence came when the judge asked me for a ring to give Marlis.

“Ring?”

“Here,” said Marlis, eventually–producing her mother’s wedding ring. . .with perhaps a hint of another sideward look as her own premonitions arrived on the scene.

Yeah, definitely a sideward look.

Just when things seemed to be over and settled–and completely out of keeping with the agreed-upon Wedding Ceremony Check-List–the judge announced his wish to read aloud a relevant philosophical musing from a source purported to be Native American.  So he did, and at some length.  Really quite a bit of length.  Something about nature, ownership, sharing, earth, oneness, the stars in the sky, the prairie, treading softly in one’s moccasins, clean air, responsible stewardship of the land, letting what you love go free, the Great Spirit, whatever.  You could look it up.

The moment that most lingers in one’s memory, however, came afterwards, as the judge escorted us all outside to his driveway.

“Wait a minute, ya gotta see this” he said, opening the garage door so that we could view—and hear, and appreciate—his new riding lawnmower.

 

Sickness and health.  Great Spirit.  John Deere.  Your full-service wedding in Kansas.

 

Back in the 70s, Billy and Debbie were two of the younger denizens of Kirby’s Beer Store, a tavern located just across the street from the Wichita State University campus.

Kirby’s was a decidedly grungy bar, and kind of scary at night, but in the afternoons it was populated mainly by WSU students (especially petroleum geologists) and a few bottom-feeding professors from various disciplines (I represented English), along with a large contingent of non-academic patrons running the gamut from interesting through amusing to deeply disturbing.

Billy belonged to Mensa, but even so asked Jim the bar owner, another student, plus three faculty patrons (including me) to appear as groomsmen at his wedding, which transpired at the biggest Catholic church in southeastern Wichita.

In true 70s fashion, for lack of a better word, we groomsmen were elegantly costumed in cream-colored tuxedos with brown piping along the lapels and pockets, and with shirts accented by ruffles at the cuffs and chest.  More or less the Pips, except Gladys couldn’t make the gig.

The huge reception—featuring a polka band brought in from Nebraska—was held way across town in southwestern Wichita, the cowboy-tough part of the city which at the time was more rural than suburban.  To get there, I rode over with Jim in his faded-blue, 40s-era Ford pickup.

Jim had earlier delivered several kegs of beer to the hall where the reception was to be held.  But now, immediately after the wedding ceremony, as we drove along ancient Highway 50 to the reception across town, he suddenly wondered whether Billy had ordered enough ice to keep the beer cold.

Concerned, he pulled into an isolated, ancient filling station that might well have serviced the 1919 cross-country convoy led by young Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Off to one side, we could see the station had a separate cold-facility on which, sometime in the very distant past, someone had stenciled the word ICE.  Along the front of the main building, some old-timers in overalls and cowboy hats sat sunning themselves, tilted back on wooden chairs.  There we pulled up near the old-style pumps.

Kirby jumped out, saying “Let’s go see about some ice,” and then remembered that there was no interior handle for the right-side door of the pickup, and also that the right-side window was broken and couldn’t be rolled down.  The door could be opened only from the outside.

So as I waited patiently, Kirby did a half-circle around the pickup, grasped the outside handle, and opened the door for me.  Still dressed in my cream-colored tux with brown piping and ruffled shirt, I stepped demurely onto the cracked concrete.  Kirby, ever the gentleman, closed the door after me.

“Thanks,” I said, almost audibly, and probably taking too much time to observe the eyebrows of the crusty gents arrayed along the station front.

“Got any ice?” Kirby asked a guy who was in what might have been a uniform.

It turned out that this guy was the station owner, and he gave a quick backward head jerk over his right shoulder.

“Yep.  Back there,” he said, turning, and adding pointedly, “You’ll have to haul it yourself.”

Once in the cold room, the owner literally kicked several huge blocks of ice toward us.  We silently loaded them into the back of the truck.  When we were done, Kirby took out his wallet and paid.

Slowing double-counting the bills, and speaking loudly enough to be heard by the old farts in the row of chairs, the station owner slyly drawled, “You boys havin’ a party?”

A brief silence, then–

“Just a few guys over for poker,” I said.