Now to go back in time:
Forty years ago yesterday (sorry, Kids, I couldn't get to this yesterday - too busy) on May 6th, 1967, I woke up, crawled out of bed, looked out the window and started to cry. It was snowing. Great big huge fluffy flakes of snow causing visibility problems. And this was supposed to be my wedding day!! I had a hair appointment in town and took off in my '67 Mustang, slipping and sliding all over the highway. By the time my hair was finished, the snow had quit and the sun was shining. Whew. I had a lot of out-of-towners coming for the wedding and I didn't want them to have trouble getting there in the slippery, sloshy stuff.
My wedding cake was being made by a bakery in town, but they didn't deliver out to the country churches, so early in the afternoon my Dad, Big Brother and I headed to the bakery to transport my cake the ten miles to the church. The four layers were all assembled, and the cake was sitting on a board which we loaded into the backseat of the car with me sitting on one side of it and Big Brother sitting on the other trying to hold it steady and keep it in one piece. All went well for the first nine miles until we crossed a railroad track just a mile from the church. My Dad slowed WAY down to just barely a crawl, and we were holding the cake board very steady, but as the rear wheels crossed the tracks there was enough of a wiggle that the cake top toppled - off the cake and upside down onto the floor of the car. We managed to get the rest of the cake into the church and onto the table without further adventures.
Well, now, this was definitely a catastrophy. You couldn't very well have a wedding cake with no top. So my sister called a friend of hers who was an amateur cake decorator and she came rushing to the church with her tools and equipment to see what she could salvage. This was only four hours prior to the wedding, so we definately couldn't bake another one. She was a miracle worker and by the time she finished her task, if you didn't know the cake had been upside down on the car floor, you wouldn't have guessed it. As was custom, we saved the top layer, froze it and celebrated by eating it on our first anniversary. We did come across a few small pieces of gravel embedded in the frosting - but oh, well, neither of us broke any fillings so all was well.
The wedding was scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. so the wedding party was at the church a couple hours ahead of time. During this time my little Norwegian Aunt cautiously came up to me to wish me well and ask me if I was really SURE I wanted to marry this "fella." I told her I was sure but was curious as to her concerns. Her response was, "Well, he's a Finlander and they carry knives, ya' know." Well, maybe they did back in the Olden Days, but I had never seen Ole carry anything other than a pocket knife. I assured her that everything would be fine and the wedding would proceed as planned.
The church bells were ringing and it was time for my Father to walk me down the aisle. By this time I was so nervous I was shaking uncontrollably, don't ask me why. I remember him taking my arm, squeezing it tight, giving me a peck on the cheek and telling me everything would be fine. My Father was never a very demonstrative person, so that little incident has always stuck with me.
So down the aisle I went, took Ole's arm and the ceremony proceeded. Now my little niece, age 5, and nephew, age 3 were the flowergirl and ringbearer. When my little nephew was asked what he was going to do in the wedding he told everyone he was going to "bury the rings." Well, unfortunately he got pretty bored standing there holding those rings on a pillow, waiting for the long-winded minister to get to the point here, so he started sticking his head through the vertical posts on the alter railing. His mother tried to stop him several times, but that didn't work, and before you knew it he had his head stuck between the verticals and couldn't get it out!! He turned to his mother and whispered in a loud voice, "Mom, I'm stuck, what do I do now?" By this time the congregation was in giggles and the minister was getting upset. Finally in frustration, the little guy was able to get his head turned enough so that he could see his father who was seated in the balcony and yelled out in a loud voice, "Dad, come help me get my head unstuck." Now the congregation was roaring and the minister was getting angry. He was such an old sourpuss anyway - no sense of humor. Well, nephew finally got his head unstuck, the ceremony went on and in the end, regardless of what happened, we were married anyway!
Then as we came out of the church we were both "captured" and put in the back of a pickup and driven all over the countryside and through our little town, horns honking, etc.
Of course there was the usual messing with the car. It was stuffed FULL of gift wrap paper, the plug wires were all pulled from the distributor, which caused some real problems, and shaving cream spread from one end to the other. But we overcame all of that and took off down the road to a location that we THOUGHT no one else knew about. But we were wrong.
And that's today's history lesson of what happened 40 years ago when we got married. Stay tuned for tomorrow's edition of the soap opera.
