not a wedding

[tabitha]

To understand this story, you have to know a few things  about different wedding traditions.

That was long time ago. 

When someone got married, of course it was read from the church pulpit a few times.

The cobbler's oldest was getting married, a close neighbor and good friend of my parents. Really nice guy, His name was Luke.  In the morning, he went from house to house with a couple of musicians, carrying a big mug of beer. His  sister, if he did not have one a cousin, a young unmarried female, wearing a fancy dress for the occasion and having a bunch of little green sprigs, rosemary mostly usually was along.  At every invited guest's house the group stopped, the music played and the designated wedding attendee came out,  took a slug from the beer mug, the Kranzljungfrau pinned a sprig to his/her lapel  and joined the group.  When they came up our hill, grandma handed  my sister and myself  a rope and said, Hoidssna aaf. Which is the equivalent of, stop them. So we stood on each side of the drive holding the rope between us. Luke laughed and gave each of us twenty pfennigs, about 2 and a half cents. Wow, we were rich.  I am sure we blew it on candy.

You could not get married without kids constantly hindering progress.

After all the guests were assembled they marched in procession down to the village and to church. In front the music, the groom or bride, and the guests.

That was in the morning.  The church bells would be ringing, the village population would be standing by the side of the road to see the bride and comment on her dress,  and after mass and nuptials the new husband and wife stepped out of the church and faced the assembled youth of the village. But the bride was prepared and had gobs of pennies and candy to toss out among the young crowd.

We lived a mile up on the mountain and so were not among the crowd. 

It was not long after we stopped Luke's wedding procession.

Over on the other side , where a parallell road lead to a small farming community down in a "dale", we heard music playing.

 A procession of people with a band in front came over the knob. sister and I ran to the  wood shed, grabbed the rope, ran down the hill, over the meadow, jumped over the creek and got to the road in the nick of time.  The band stopped, the  man in front took the slide out of his thrombone, drained it out and said: "kids, go home, this isn't a wedding. This is a funeral"

[Ozarks Tom]

Oops! But then again, in some cases there's little difference.

[Deleted]

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[blackfeather]

I have a confession, When there is a funeral procession on the road, I have attached my car to the end of it and run all the red lights till I have had to go in a different direction.

[joebill]

A somewhat similar story...…

I had an English teacher whose family owned about half of a nearby town's businesses. Everywhere you looked in Toledo Il, some business was named "Lashman's", be it a movie theater, furniture store, whatever. The teacher and I had a somewhat rocky relationship, as I did with most of my HS teachers, and he was always seeking a cause to come down on me like a herd of turtles.

One summer weekend, I had a hot date available that I was unprepared for, since the young lady did not know she would be in town until a couple of days before arrival, so I was frantically calling all of the small town movie houses in the area to see what movies were playing.

When I dialed the Toledo house and asked "What have you got showing?" I first got a shocked silence and then somebody said " WHO IS THIS?", so I told him, and got myself a cussing out.

I promptly returned the favor. Not school hours nor school property and I did not have to tolerate that stuff without responding. That shocked him to silence, but finally he asked me where I thought I was calling. It seemed that they were too cheap to get a different phone line for the movie house than for the funeral home, so he was standing in the funeral home in his best bib and tucker, phone rang, some punk kid asked hi what he "had showing" with a sense of great anticipation.

He told me what movie was on at the movie house and we never spoke of it again......Joe

[meandtk]

Oh, joebill , how I wish I had all of your tales in a book!

[joebill]

Well, meandtk, I will give you another more nearly associated with your profession.

Around 1965, I was making about half my income by racing street class stock cars at Shaheen's Speedway in Springfield Illinois. It was what was known as an "outlaw track", not sanctioned by any official organization, and not following any particular set of safety rules, and also known as "the fastest track in the midwest", because it was banked so steep that it was like driving inside a barrel.

Races were on Sunday evenings, which meant that most of the sabbath was spent getting the cars running, wandering around the Springfield suburb of Mechanicsburg, Ill, robbing parts off of other wrecks from previous years.

My friends mostly lived in that small town and attended church services there, but on race days they had to refrain from formal worship in order to compete.

The problem was that wherever we went and whoever we met, they would say "Larry, (or Ted or Gene or whoever) I noticed you did not make it to church this morning, so I tossed $20 in the collection plate for you" and then hold out their hand to be made whole...

It seemed to be an established tradition in that time and place, because the local boys would pay and pay and pay until they were broke, then make promises for payment at later dates, never letting on that they were angry or frustrated.

I think they would have to win at least one heat race to break even.

The speedway closed decades ago, and I betcha none of them miss services these days......too dang expensive!....Joe

[meandtk]

Wow!