This introduction may be helpful for the uninitiated: Review Part 1: Thursday blog post of June 13
I spent the weekend of June 7-10 in Hull, Massachusetts, as a guest of Ned & Victoria’s wedding on June 8th. I’ve known the groom, his parents Joe and Teresa, and Joe’s family for over 30 years; and had met the bride previously too, as the young couple had been a couple for seven years and were finally making it official.
Needing more senior-aged people to round out the Cultural & Age Diversity Guest Listing in their wedding registry, the wedding couple invited Alex (72) and his wife Nancy (69) from Apple Valley, and my wife Jackie (75), and I (67) from Wannaska, Ned’s parents’ friends, supplanting the Cultural requirement with the ‘Farthest Distance Traveled’ alternative.
Joe and Alex were Dunwoody Tech grads about a hundred years ago; they, and their wives, remained close friends ever since. Joe and Teresa would go to Alex and Nancy’s to take advantage of their free parking and chauffeured rides to the airport, when they lived so close to it. When Teresa couldn’t go on trips with Joe, I was sometimes asked to accompany him, so it was on these three occasions Alex and I became acquainted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwoody_College_of_Technology
Honestly, I wasn’t excited about going. I could envision this wedding extravaganza as just another huge dawn to dusk beach party blowout with several gigantic bonfires, an endless supply of keg and bottled beer, dozens of wild scantily clad young women and men gamboling about playing volleyball and corn-hole tournaments under nightly fireworks; pop bottle rocket wars; triathlon events between the groom’s family and the bride’s--all in which my wife (Yes, my wife) would happily participate, even if she became the last standing victor, again--as she has been on more than one raucous occasion in the past seven decades, and thus, a few years ago, had coined the globally popular phrase: “This ain’t my first rodeo, baby.” (Who knew?)
I just don’t have the stamina nor endurance for such festivals and maybe I never did, although once in a while, a location can occupy my time in some interesting manner even if it’s just sipping beers for a few hours, taking photographs, writing notes and collecting mental pictures for writing creative non-fiction stories such as this.
As it happened, Jackie was unable to go because of an unfortunate illness, which allowed me to opt out gracefully, because, presumably, I would have to stay home and take care of her in her frail state. And Nancy, Alex’s wife, had to sit the wedding out too, because of due care for their three aged cats, none of whom they wished to leave at an unfamiliar pet boarding facility, so Alex was off the hook too. That is, until, Nancy insisted Alex go, because Joe was such a dear close friend whose feelings would be hurt, if he did not attend the wedding of his youngest child, Ned, the last of three sons.
“Alex called and wanted to talk to you,“ my wife told me. “I told him you were outside doing, Lord knows what, and he seemed to know what that meant for some reason. He said to call him at your earliest opportunity.”
“Hmmm, I hope everything is okay,” I may have said, thinking back to the last phone call I got from Alex--was, like, never.
The last time I even saw Alex was 2017, when Joe and I drove to Alex and Nancy’s house to bring a container ship worth of tools and equipment home with us, including a very well maintained riding mower, a practically-new snowblower, two almost-new ladders, a two-tier Snap On tool cabinet and a tugboat full of other small tools and such, because of their on-going move from Burnsville, close to the airport, into a condominium in Apple Valley, farther away, and wouldn’t need any of it. So, dialing his phone number, I called Alex.
“Oh yes, Steve ...,” Alex said, adding somewhat tersely, “I heard you aren’t going to Ned’s wedding. Why aren’t you going? If you don’t go, I won’t know anybody there. I think you should go.”
“Alex, Alex, Alex,” I probably said, lightheartedly, trying to rally his spirit. “You’ve been in Ned’s family conversations for over forty years--everybody knows you! I can almost guarantee your every need and concern will be addressed immediately by any one member --maybe two--of the clan. They’re very warm and friendly folk.
“You should go. I know you, you know me,“ Alex repeated in monotone. “Nancy thinks you should go. You can share my room.”
“YOU OWE ALEX BIG TIME!” Jackie hissed from the dining room. “YOU’RE GOING! I DON’T NEED YOU TO STAY HERE TO TAKE CARE OF ME, SO DON’T BE USIN’ ME FOR NO STINKIN’ EXCUSE! YOU TELL HIM YOU’RE GOING!”
“Looks like I’m going then, Alex,” I said accepting my fate. “What flight are you on? Can I catch a ride to the airport with you? Maybe spend the night before? That’d be great, yeah. We’ll make the arrangements...”
And so it began ...
Part 2: Thursday June 20
Ned & Vic’s Wedding
I’ve long experienced some anxiety before I fly, or sail--like, when Joe and I sailed the Gulf of Maine from Stonington to Hull in 2015, ( Joe’s idea) with another friend from Wannaska (our port) who built his own steel sailboat then sailed to Norway and back. Either one puts you in a precarious position where everything is beyond your control, much like marriage -- which I’m experienced in as well.
It wasn’t just Ned’s wedding. The bride had something to do with it, of course. It would have been kind of silly to just watch Ned go through the motions alone. Yet, knowing Ned, as so many of us do, you just know he could pull it off. He just has that savoir faire about him that makes you smile.
We could imagine Ned getting off Peter Mahoney’s lobster boat at the Yacht Club, all by himself, walking and talking to no one there beside him, smilin’ like he does from ear to ear, maybe throwin’ in a few of those ever so subtle, twinkly smiles he makes with his eyes, you know the ones.
He pauses at the foot of the Yacht Club stairs and waves--a cheer goes up. The photographers are rapidly snapping poignant shots; one guy lays on his back, for a special angled shot. The other photographer, ever moving, shooting 20-frames per sec, tourner, étendre, plier, and relevers his partner back up on his feet in a choreographed move, then is away, neither man taking their eyes and lenses off the prize. It’s Ned’s wedding, dammit.
Okay, okay I’m not going to omit Victoria. Afterall, she makes him smile too, and now after they’re officially married and all, well, let those smiles of his multiply a hundred-fold and all that.
I think I mentioned fairytales in Part One, June 13 ...
Obviously it wouldn’t have been the same without Vic. This day wouldn’t have been as glorious as it turned out, nor ever existed as their wedding day. The photographers would have been at some other wedding in Quincy or Hingham--and in a church, of all things-- and not under clear blue skies at the Hull Yacht Club where Ned’s paternal grandfather, Joe Sr.’s sail sheets hung suspended from the rafters as part of a grand tradition began at Molly’s wedding on Thompson’s Island, Boston Harbor, August 17, 2011.
All the guests including Alex and I, all the families, all the clothing shops and services, all the lobsters baited and caught--and consumed, the caterer, the DJ, all the work it was to set up the Hull Yacht Club, all the trips to the grocery and liquor stores, the decorations, virtually every single thing wouldn’t have existed or put into play if it wasn’t for Victoria, whom we should all thank for we had been holding our breath for about three years waiting for Ned to pop the question. It felt SOOO GREAT to exhale!
Hold onto your hats, but contrary to popular belief, Ned isn’t in a hurry to do everything in his life. He has his father’s penchant of savoring the present, which is all well and good, but his contemplative behavior aged his sweet mother who, for all those years, wanted so much to tell Ned to pop the question years before he did. “Geesus, Ned! Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned--just do it!”
But I digress.
By the time it was decided that I would go, Alex had made his airplane and hotel reservations. I had to quickly play catch up, hoping to get on the same flight, same airline he did, but seeing how much it was going to cost me on Delta at that point, with travel help from friend Sarah, down Dodge City, Kansas way, I opted for an less expensive fare on Sun Country to Boston, and a return flight on JetBlue from Boston. Alex and I wouldn’t be on the same plane, but we’d get there and back about the same time.
It all worked out. Joe picked up Ana, Alex and I at the same time. Ana had arrived a few minutes earlier, in the same terminal, so Joe, relatively unfamiliar with the route and totally unfamiliar with the new construction there was busy enough looping around to different gates where we each posted hoping to flag him down. Alex said later, that he doubted Joe knew his way around the airport and worried he may not be able to get us back to it, in time for our return flight, three days later.
The heavy traffic reminded me of the trip to Boston when Ned’s cousin Keegan had picked Joe and I from along a busy curb outside the airport, where we had to literally leap into her car because she couldn’t stop.
An excerpt from the 2016 RAVEN story:
“Landing at Logan Airport, Joe is contacted by his middle son, Joey, who has to opt out of his original plans to pick us up there but says his cousin Keegan, offered to pick Uncle Joe up instead. He said she’d pick us up outside South Station.
Refiguring our route, Joe and I rushed through crowds to catch the Silver Line Shuttle bus. We squeezed into one shuttle crammed tight with different language-speaking ‘foreigners’, then hurried outside South Station along Atlantic Avenue, just south of its intersection with Summer Street, to try and spot Joe’s niece Keegan’s car in all the heavy traffic.
Joe’s phone rang. “Uncle Joe! I see you, but I have to go around the block again to get in close to the curb! Get ready to jump in. You in front! Jim in the back! I’m driving a dark-colored Civic!”
“Jim?” I told Joe she called me, not immediately remembering Joe’s mother’s nickname she gave me in 2010, because of the other two Steve’s in the family, her son and her son-in-law.
“There she is! Go! Go! Go!” Joe yelled, running toward the street, her car turning into the curb-side lane about a block away. We ran toward her car with our duffle bags, like two sailors going AWOL.
As Keegan drove along the curb, Joe ran around behind her car, opened the rear door and threw his bag in the backseat, then leaped in the front seat. I opened the drivers side rear door, threw my bag in ahead of me and jumped into the backseat with mine. Whew! We made it!”
So it was Alex and I just had to get up to speed after two and a half languid hours aboard an airplane. Riding through unfamiliar city traffic creates stress for some people just coming off ‘a high’ and we hadn’t really started our adventure weekend yet. At any rate I wasn’t worried, for I heard we were going to The Snug, which could only mean Guinness. http://www.snugpub.com/
Alex was intimidated thinking about meeting all the wedding party over the next three days. Each guest is a multifaceted character as he would come to learn, so it would naturally fit that each is unique in Ned’s life if but for other reasons than I had to offer. Alex wouldn’t know Ned’s version, but only that mine would lend perhaps an interesting perspective, if but twisted, to an ageless story of love and family tradition. So let us move through this vast crowd of relatives and friends, chronologically, from youngest to oldest. Please bear with me.
Children come into their own early in their life, each born with their own personality, unique, yet similar to each their parents; we as elders often see in them something of their father or mother, or grandparents, and beginning with the youngest of this saga, Nash is, to me, the spitting image of his father, Joey, though tow-headed (blonde); when, as I recall meeting Joey close to the same age, he was a ginger, (red-haired) little boy and very nearly as energetic and precocious, always on the move, talkative, and always interested in things before and around him.
Then there is Nash’s sister, Isla, who, is about four years older--and blondish, is just as energetic, and precocious, but in her special own way, utterly defines the two words. Not being an immediately verbal child, when Isla was very young she used wonderful facial expressions to project her curiosity or distain, quickly picking up on what to do to get what she thought she needed. Now, at almost five, going on fifteen, she’s quite the talker and authoritatively announced to me, as we played in a boat in Peter’s yard, she was the ship’s Captain and Nash was First Mate. Nash and I busily caught fish over the side of the boat, using an anchor rope.
Now, a teenager, Luke knows a thing about boats and ship captains. Well, he’s learning. He works for his grandfather on his lobster boat during the summer, building his confidence and muscles. He’s grown so fast since I seen him last, that it’s simply amazing. Some kids do that, seeming grow taller overnight, more handsome, more three-dimensional; their interests, like Luke’s participation in school theater, seems sure to succeed, like that boy on Joe’s school bus in Wannaska, Garrett Hedlund. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1330560/
Sam is Luke’s two year older brother, a little taller and broader shouldered, who’ll, in a few days of his introduction to Alex, became a high school freshman. I plainly can see his mother and her parents in him, with all their traits of hospitality and kindness. An athlete, like his parents, Sam plays hockey, and is genetically predisposed to do well in it, being Ned’s mother was born in Roseau County, Minnesota--whose high school state hockey championship teams are legend. (It’s in the water.)
https://www.roseauhockey.com/page/show/2283175-rams-hockey-history
Owen has grown a good eighteen inches since the last time I saw him four years ago. He’s Sunny and Mary Jo’s second youngest son a couple years out of high school, Peter being the youngest and who just graduated. Well over six feet, Owen showed Alex and I his two bee boxes out in the backyard that he had recently received from a neighbor who is into bee keeping; and provided us a wealth of bee keeping information, about queen bees and such, that we didn’t know and as a consequence found very interesting..
Tall and lean Michael, one of Owen’s older brothers, here is twenty-three. He greets us warmly with a big friendly smile as we sat down to eat at The Snug in Hingham, the day of our arrival. He reminds me of the time when he and his folks came to our home in Minnesota when he was much younger, "And shot BB guns.” Michael flew to Minnesota the year he graduated from high school, and he and his godfather, Joe, rented a car and drove back to Scituate, MA. Among a host of other stops, they visited: https://www.spam.com/ & https://www.rockhall.com/
Joey is a First Mate on a tug; having passed the terribly complex exam to one day become a captain of a vessel. Hardworking, handsome and an excellent father, he’s attentive to his family of two, the two weeks he is home; thinking of them for all of the two weeks he’s away, following in the footsteps and routines of his father’s brothers and grandfather, and generations of family folk who have taken their livings from the water.
Alex, this is Ana. She lives in Milwaukee (so we have to cut her some slack) with her husband and their three daughters, the oldest starting the seventh grade in the fall. Ana was a Roseau County law clerk at the county courthouse, about twenty years ago, when Teresa was the court administrator. Ana became a close friend of the family, and on occasion, watched Joey and Ned, when they were but boys and their folks were away; something she and the boys made great fun, in the experience. One time she accompanied Matt (a college-aged man by that time) and Joey, down the Roseau River, all the way to Wannaska, portaging around river bends where they couldn’t cut through with saws and machetes. She survived mosquitoes, ticks, and army tent caterpillars hanging down from the trees. Now she’s a lawyer, awaiting an empty nest.
Matt is Joe and Teresa’s oldest son, Ned’s oldest brother. Broad-shouldered and terrifically handsome--he didn’t get his looks from his father. (Just sayin’.) But he did inherit Joe’s love of books and sincere interests in a multitude of people of all ages. This guy is a real gem as a father and a brother--a friend whose enduring relationship with his college friends is regularly replenished, as such was the case of when he employed them to enlarge his father-in-law’s woodshop. Knowing Matt, he treated his friends as family and made their efforts well worth their time and energy.
When Matt was home from college (as I recall) on spring break maybe, he drove my tractor as I sat in the tree planter, and helped me replant a few hundred white spruce trees along the west ‘40’ on our farm, a couple miles west of his folks. He reminded me of that one year when he and his family came over to visit. The spruce are now over 25-feet tall in three rows, each almost a mile long.
Heather, Matt’s wife, a dynamic individual, bestows confidence in her two sons by modeling healthy behaviors, assertiveness and athleticism including marathons and triathlons. She also travels the world as part of her outside employment. They still have close ties to friends near Lindstrom, Minnesota, where she and Matt and the boys lived for a few years; the boys honing their hockey and fresh water fishing skills.
Ned’s family are a very traditional bunch when they get together like this, hence the sail sheets suspended from the rafters the night of the wedding, that came from Ned’s late grandfather, Joe Senior’s sailboat, that the family had rebuilt. One story I remember was about one of the cousins, one of the girls, who was in college at the time, when someone asked her what she was going to do that weekend, and she had replied she had to go to a family reunion, to which the other person made an anguished face and asked if she couldn’t just make up an excuse why she couldn’t go. She replied that she really wanted to go, and was looking forward to going; that in effect, her family reunions were something not to miss. Being a really a rare reaction to most anyone’s notion of a family gathering of any kind, it gives a newcomer an idea that this family is a special family.
And with that, I get to introduce Liz to Alex. Liz is Aunt Mary’s daughter--I’ll get to Aunt Mary in a paragraph or two, hold on. Liz lives in Chicago, with Ralph. Joe often stops in Chicago on his road trips to and from Boston because Liz, Ralph--and Aunt Mary are good fun company and a wonderful break from the road, being about mid-way between Hull and home. Many years ago, I don’t recall the exact parameters about the story, Liz found a song that she thought exemplified the significance of their family’s gatherings, and is often sung slightly off key, depending on the singer’s sobriety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9ms1BMXIqk
Here’s a Health to the Company
The Chieftains
Kind friends and companions, come join me in rhyme
Come lift up your voices in chorus with mine
Come lift up your voices, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
So here's a health to the company and one to my lass
Let's drink and be merry all out of one glass
Let's drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
Here's a health to the wee lass that I love so well
For style and for beauty there's none can excel
There's a smile on her countenance as she sits upon my knee
There is no man in this wide world as happy as me
So here's a health to the company and one to my lass
Let's drink and be merry all out of one glass
Let's drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
Our ship lies at anchor, she is ready to dock
I wish her safe landing without any shock
And if ever I should meet you by land or by sea
I will always remember your kindness to me
So here's a health to the company and one to my lass
Let's drink and be merry all out of one glass
Let's drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
Aye, it’s been sung at many a family gathering since then, and mine as well, Alex.
This lovely woman is Mary Jo, none other than Ned’s favorite aunt on his father’s side, and Joe’s favorite sister, as she is Bill’s, Steve’s, and Mark’s. Mary Jo is named after her folks, ‘Mary and Joseph’. Would I kid you? Yes, that was their real names! I am not joking! Hey, ask anybody in this whole place! They’ll tell you the same. Mary and Joseph ... She and Joe are 12-years apart in age and as a result almost inseparable. They're like identical twins. They talk everyday, maybe a couple times. He’s the eldest in the family and she’s the youngest--did I mention she’s his favorite sister? I think she’s funner than Joe now, but then he’s taught her about ‘fun’ since she was born, so she’s had a while to perfect it.
“And that guy,” I point out.”That tall, slender, smiley guy is Mary Jo’s husband, Steve-- or, ’Sunny’, short for his last name: “It’s SWEDISH, DAMN IT!”“ Really. I’ll explain that one later one too if I think of it. Except to say, that Sunny here, always a deep-thinker, asked why was it, that whenever I come to visit out here, someone had to go to the hospital, referring to Joe and I having to take Joe’s mother to the hospital when she was having a heart attack--while I was driving one year; and the next time, Sunny and Mary Jo’s youngest son, Owen, had to be taken to the hospital for abdominal pains soon upon our arrival. Bum luck, is all I can say, bum luck. Hope everyone lasts for the duration of this event. Don’t jinx it now, Alex.
Matt and Heather live with Heather’s parents Peter and Diane, having remodeled the home to accommodate themselves and their two teenage sons, Sam and Luke. Peter employs his grandsons on his lobster boat in the summertime. A former high school industrial arts teacher, Peter and Matt share a nicely equipped woodshop on the property, where Matt can hone his skills when he’s not on a tug pushing barges downriver or in the shipping channels outside of New York City.
Diane, a mother of two adult sons and an independent-minded daughter, will take Sam and Luke underwing at the wedding party, patiently teaching them, one by one, to slow dance, and ensuring their success as social butterflies at such functions like proms and other appropriate venues. Likely, as their Hull grandma, she plays other roles in their upbringing from which they greatly benefit. (She may even feed them ...)
Alex, this is Carol; Carol, Alex. Carol and her husband, who was a judge in Roseau County, and has since passed away, their two sons, now both grown and living elsewhere, used to live in Roseau. An often loud, wildly excitable person, her energies I can see now, (after I’ve matured in her eyes), were always meant in good fun. As close friends of Ned’s parents, Carol was often seen at the community social and arts events, her loud laughter singling her out in a crowd. Carol has traveled the world, so I’ll bet she’ll want to talk your ears off about it, seein’ as you’ve done the same in your youth. I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. Bye! I hear a Guinness Extra Stout calling me!
Uncle Pete here, Ned's favorite blood uncle on his mother's side, lives right beside Fargo, Nort’ Dakota. You saw that movie, didn’t you? Fargo? Those Nort’ Dakotans talk yust like dat, doncha know. It vas right on, dem dere vords dey say. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-juxQ5Sj4.
The conversation continued after we left the Yacht Club bar to stand on the deck there, looking into the sunset: “Yah, Peter iss Ned’s mudder’s favorite brudder, eh.”
Okay, I’ll drop the phony accent.
No, he’s her only brother.
Well, that’s what makes him her favorite.
He’d probably have stiff competition for the role in that case.
I didn’t say he was the perfect brother.
He’s a lawyer. Yep, even has a wife and daughter.
The daughter is grown and married.
Pete’s wife, Kathy, didn’t come to the wedding because she hurt her ankle and didn’t want him using her as an excuse to stay home either. Heaven knew she could use the rest from him always fawning over her like an old mother hen; staying home from the office, dashing about for her every need, picking up and cleaning house. Cooking. Just like what you do for Nancy, Alex, if but only occasionally I’ll bet. It takes all kinds, Alex. He’s still her brother,
Alex, this is Mark, Ned’s youngest uncle on his dad's side, Joe’s youngest brother ... and his lovely wife, Doreen--’Doe’, for short,-- they live down the street from 276. Mark works on tug boats too, but is soon to retire. Remember, we walked up to their big old house they sold on Sunset Point, the day of the wedding; then, we rode past their new little house with its excavation out back for a wood storage shop addition, in its basement? That’s the guy. Doe is wildly happy she doesn’t have to clean a mansion-sized house anymore.
https://www.coldwellbanker.com/property/276-Nantasket-Rd-Hull-MA-02045/M-72520193-MLSPIN/detail?src=list
Steve, Ned’s next oldest uncle, a retiree, lives over on B Street, and goes to the A Street Liquor Store, where they got all kinds of beverages from A-Z, he’s told me. Yeah, Steve’s the guy with all those bees in his shed and bats in his belfry. Yep, that’s the guy. Good memory there, Alex. Steve’s lovely wife is Jean, yes, the woman who handcrafted all those paper flowers that looked so real. Yessiree, you have a good eye. You writing all this down? You’ll be quizzed on it later, my man.
Alex, that exotic looking, white-haired, ruddy complexioned gentleman who just now danced his way onto the Yacht Club dance floor wearing a makeshift turban with sleeves of some kind hanging down, is none other than Bill, Ned’s oldest uncle on his father’s side. They cut him some slack too because he and his lovely wife, Wendy, live in Stonington, Maine, making their living upon tides and teeth, respectively. A master carpenter and lobsterboat builder, Bill, has plied his trades there nigh onto forty years; Wendy, a Doctor of Dentistry there on Deer Isle, has practiced almost as long. You wanna talk lobsters, put the grab on that guy.
But, if Bill asks you to dance--I’d defer to somebody a whole lot younger than yourself, although you’re Greek and all, for Joe (a Michael Flatley imitator) and his brothers, Bill, Steve and Mark (an amateur Riverdance ensemble) will jig the night away and right out the door, and don’t you think I’m kidding. Their wives, not to be outdone, juggle flaming torches and wear high-heeled sequin shoes with sparks shooting from the soles.
That covey of tall and lanky red-haired be-suited young men there, all at the same table are Sunny and Mary Jo’s five sons (maybe four, plus another brother by a different mother and father), all of whom are likely to make your acquaintance before the end of the night.
I made a comment to Teresa, when we were at The Local, about all the family men of Mary and Joseph’s--(Don’t give me that look, now Alex)--are demonstratively warm, loving and attentive caregivers of even the youngest of children, something Teresa said their father, Sunny, in this case, modeled for each of them. It’s a wonderful thing to see among men of any age who take responsibility of their children without complaint. Alas, Alex, it isn’t commonplace.
“Yeah, you may be right, Alex, it must be in the water. Wanna ‘nother drink? I know this is a lot to take in. Toilet break, maybe?
Okay, this tall begrizzled sort of bearded guy with the Acme elastic wrist wrap here, and this lovely woman in the multifloral dress are old friends of Joe’s, dating back probably ten years before he met you at Dunwoody. This is, Jim, and this is Ginny. Jim went to Boston College with Joe ‘back in the day’, when Joe had great expectations of becoming a lawyer, the way I heard tell. Yeah, I’d ask Joe about that.
I can’t say if Ginny was a classmate or not. The Grahams have the distinction of maintaining sixty-eight gift subscriptions to our now-defunct rurally published magazine, THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota’s Original Art, History & Humor Journal, and received the highly coveted, RAVEN ADVOCATE AWARD Commemorative for their accomplishment, which, Jim is quick to point out that the plaque is still on their wall, and lighted even. Hooyah! At one time, living in Falls Church, VA, they always said that THE RAVEN was read within view of The White House; which white house, I don’t know, and why that’s significant is equally confusing. But hey, they mean well. They’re just good people.
Ralph is Liz’s man. He and Liz live in Chicago. He has about six or eight Minnesota white spruce trees from Palmville growing in their yard there. They’re huge, he says. The neighbors can’t see into their yard because of the spruce, which was his intention all along. You should try that Alex; you’d be, like, ninety, before they’d get that big now, but Ralph knows his tree stuff. Go ahead ask him anything. Yeah, maybe he knows something about Bonsai. He knows it all. Yes, ask him ...
“Aunt Mary” is Ned’s oldest great aunt, his late grandfather Joe’s only sister. She’s 93. As I remember, (And my memory ain’t the best nowadays, I’ll have you know) Mary used to teach physical education at Simeon High School, a inner-city Chicago school, one tough lady. In 2009, she rode a lawn chair in the open stern of Bill’s lobster boat, as it cut the waves going to an island house where Bill was the caretaker, the brim of her so’wester hat plastered against her forehead, waves high all around, cold water splashing in. No sissy girl, this one.
Well, there you go Alex--you’ve met almost all of the family. I didn’t get around to talking to all of them, but we’ve likely said hi or waved at one another in the crowd.
Busy as I was taking pictures--and I may add them to this text before long--I didn’t dance much, but did see Alex out there shaking his ol’ bum to the music. My camera batteries went dead just as all the men (including Alex), laced shoulders in a large undulating circle on the dance floor for a bit of festive Greek dancing with a lot of whooping and laughing.
Alex danced until he got tired, warmed by exertion, fueled by the passion of a loving family all around him. It had been a good night.
Have a happy life, Ned and Victoria!
The world awaits!
I spent the weekend of June 7-10 in Hull, Massachusetts, as a guest of Ned & Victoria’s wedding on June 8th. I’ve known the groom, his parents Joe and Teresa, and Joe’s family for over 30 years; and had met the bride previously too, as the young couple had been a couple for seven years and were finally making it official.
Needing more senior-aged people to round out the Cultural & Age Diversity Guest Listing in their wedding registry, the wedding couple invited Alex (72) and his wife Nancy (69) from Apple Valley, and my wife Jackie (75), and I (67) from Wannaska, Ned’s parents’ friends, supplanting the Cultural requirement with the ‘Farthest Distance Traveled’ alternative.
Joe and Alex were Dunwoody Tech grads about a hundred years ago; they, and their wives, remained close friends ever since. Joe and Teresa would go to Alex and Nancy’s to take advantage of their free parking and chauffeured rides to the airport, when they lived so close to it. When Teresa couldn’t go on trips with Joe, I was sometimes asked to accompany him, so it was on these three occasions Alex and I became acquainted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwoody_College_of_Technology
Honestly, I wasn’t excited about going. I could envision this wedding extravaganza as just another huge dawn to dusk beach party blowout with several gigantic bonfires, an endless supply of keg and bottled beer, dozens of wild scantily clad young women and men gamboling about playing volleyball and corn-hole tournaments under nightly fireworks; pop bottle rocket wars; triathlon events between the groom’s family and the bride’s--all in which my wife (Yes, my wife) would happily participate, even if she became the last standing victor, again--as she has been on more than one raucous occasion in the past seven decades, and thus, a few years ago, had coined the globally popular phrase: “This ain’t my first rodeo, baby.” (Who knew?)
I just don’t have the stamina nor endurance for such festivals and maybe I never did, although once in a while, a location can occupy my time in some interesting manner even if it’s just sipping beers for a few hours, taking photographs, writing notes and collecting mental pictures for writing creative non-fiction stories such as this.
As it happened, Jackie was unable to go because of an unfortunate illness, which allowed me to opt out gracefully, because, presumably, I would have to stay home and take care of her in her frail state. And Nancy, Alex’s wife, had to sit the wedding out too, because of due care for their three aged cats, none of whom they wished to leave at an unfamiliar pet boarding facility, so Alex was off the hook too. That is, until, Nancy insisted Alex go, because Joe was such a dear close friend whose feelings would be hurt, if he did not attend the wedding of his youngest child, Ned, the last of three sons.
“Alex called and wanted to talk to you,“ my wife told me. “I told him you were outside doing, Lord knows what, and he seemed to know what that meant for some reason. He said to call him at your earliest opportunity.”
“Hmmm, I hope everything is okay,” I may have said, thinking back to the last phone call I got from Alex--was, like, never.
The last time I even saw Alex was 2017, when Joe and I drove to Alex and Nancy’s house to bring a container ship worth of tools and equipment home with us, including a very well maintained riding mower, a practically-new snowblower, two almost-new ladders, a two-tier Snap On tool cabinet and a tugboat full of other small tools and such, because of their on-going move from Burnsville, close to the airport, into a condominium in Apple Valley, farther away, and wouldn’t need any of it. So, dialing his phone number, I called Alex.
“Oh yes, Steve ...,” Alex said, adding somewhat tersely, “I heard you aren’t going to Ned’s wedding. Why aren’t you going? If you don’t go, I won’t know anybody there. I think you should go.”
“Alex, Alex, Alex,” I probably said, lightheartedly, trying to rally his spirit. “You’ve been in Ned’s family conversations for over forty years--everybody knows you! I can almost guarantee your every need and concern will be addressed immediately by any one member --maybe two--of the clan. They’re very warm and friendly folk.
“You should go. I know you, you know me,“ Alex repeated in monotone. “Nancy thinks you should go. You can share my room.”
“YOU OWE ALEX BIG TIME!” Jackie hissed from the dining room. “YOU’RE GOING! I DON’T NEED YOU TO STAY HERE TO TAKE CARE OF ME, SO DON’T BE USIN’ ME FOR NO STINKIN’ EXCUSE! YOU TELL HIM YOU’RE GOING!”
“Looks like I’m going then, Alex,” I said accepting my fate. “What flight are you on? Can I catch a ride to the airport with you? Maybe spend the night before? That’d be great, yeah. We’ll make the arrangements...”
And so it began ...
Part 2: Thursday June 20
Ned & Vic’s Wedding
I’ve long experienced some anxiety before I fly, or sail--like, when Joe and I sailed the Gulf of Maine from Stonington to Hull in 2015, ( Joe’s idea) with another friend from Wannaska (our port) who built his own steel sailboat then sailed to Norway and back. Either one puts you in a precarious position where everything is beyond your control, much like marriage -- which I’m experienced in as well.
It wasn’t just Ned’s wedding. The bride had something to do with it, of course. It would have been kind of silly to just watch Ned go through the motions alone. Yet, knowing Ned, as so many of us do, you just know he could pull it off. He just has that savoir faire about him that makes you smile.
We could imagine Ned getting off Peter Mahoney’s lobster boat at the Yacht Club, all by himself, walking and talking to no one there beside him, smilin’ like he does from ear to ear, maybe throwin’ in a few of those ever so subtle, twinkly smiles he makes with his eyes, you know the ones.
He pauses at the foot of the Yacht Club stairs and waves--a cheer goes up. The photographers are rapidly snapping poignant shots; one guy lays on his back, for a special angled shot. The other photographer, ever moving, shooting 20-frames per sec, tourner, étendre, plier, and relevers his partner back up on his feet in a choreographed move, then is away, neither man taking their eyes and lenses off the prize. It’s Ned’s wedding, dammit.
Okay, okay I’m not going to omit Victoria. Afterall, she makes him smile too, and now after they’re officially married and all, well, let those smiles of his multiply a hundred-fold and all that.
I think I mentioned fairytales in Part One, June 13 ...
Obviously it wouldn’t have been the same without Vic. This day wouldn’t have been as glorious as it turned out, nor ever existed as their wedding day. The photographers would have been at some other wedding in Quincy or Hingham--and in a church, of all things-- and not under clear blue skies at the Hull Yacht Club where Ned’s paternal grandfather, Joe Sr.’s sail sheets hung suspended from the rafters as part of a grand tradition began at Molly’s wedding on Thompson’s Island, Boston Harbor, August 17, 2011.
All the guests including Alex and I, all the families, all the clothing shops and services, all the lobsters baited and caught--and consumed, the caterer, the DJ, all the work it was to set up the Hull Yacht Club, all the trips to the grocery and liquor stores, the decorations, virtually every single thing wouldn’t have existed or put into play if it wasn’t for Victoria, whom we should all thank for we had been holding our breath for about three years waiting for Ned to pop the question. It felt SOOO GREAT to exhale!
Hold onto your hats, but contrary to popular belief, Ned isn’t in a hurry to do everything in his life. He has his father’s penchant of savoring the present, which is all well and good, but his contemplative behavior aged his sweet mother who, for all those years, wanted so much to tell Ned to pop the question years before he did. “Geesus, Ned! Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned--just do it!”
But I digress.
By the time it was decided that I would go, Alex had made his airplane and hotel reservations. I had to quickly play catch up, hoping to get on the same flight, same airline he did, but seeing how much it was going to cost me on Delta at that point, with travel help from friend Sarah, down Dodge City, Kansas way, I opted for an less expensive fare on Sun Country to Boston, and a return flight on JetBlue from Boston. Alex and I wouldn’t be on the same plane, but we’d get there and back about the same time.
It all worked out. Joe picked up Ana, Alex and I at the same time. Ana had arrived a few minutes earlier, in the same terminal, so Joe, relatively unfamiliar with the route and totally unfamiliar with the new construction there was busy enough looping around to different gates where we each posted hoping to flag him down. Alex said later, that he doubted Joe knew his way around the airport and worried he may not be able to get us back to it, in time for our return flight, three days later.
The heavy traffic reminded me of the trip to Boston when Ned’s cousin Keegan had picked Joe and I from along a busy curb outside the airport, where we had to literally leap into her car because she couldn’t stop.
An excerpt from the 2016 RAVEN story:
“Landing at Logan Airport, Joe is contacted by his middle son, Joey, who has to opt out of his original plans to pick us up there but says his cousin Keegan, offered to pick Uncle Joe up instead. He said she’d pick us up outside South Station.
Refiguring our route, Joe and I rushed through crowds to catch the Silver Line Shuttle bus. We squeezed into one shuttle crammed tight with different language-speaking ‘foreigners’, then hurried outside South Station along Atlantic Avenue, just south of its intersection with Summer Street, to try and spot Joe’s niece Keegan’s car in all the heavy traffic.
Joe’s phone rang. “Uncle Joe! I see you, but I have to go around the block again to get in close to the curb! Get ready to jump in. You in front! Jim in the back! I’m driving a dark-colored Civic!”
“Jim?” I told Joe she called me, not immediately remembering Joe’s mother’s nickname she gave me in 2010, because of the other two Steve’s in the family, her son and her son-in-law.
“There she is! Go! Go! Go!” Joe yelled, running toward the street, her car turning into the curb-side lane about a block away. We ran toward her car with our duffle bags, like two sailors going AWOL.
As Keegan drove along the curb, Joe ran around behind her car, opened the rear door and threw his bag in the backseat, then leaped in the front seat. I opened the drivers side rear door, threw my bag in ahead of me and jumped into the backseat with mine. Whew! We made it!”
So it was Alex and I just had to get up to speed after two and a half languid hours aboard an airplane. Riding through unfamiliar city traffic creates stress for some people just coming off ‘a high’ and we hadn’t really started our adventure weekend yet. At any rate I wasn’t worried, for I heard we were going to The Snug, which could only mean Guinness. http://www.snugpub.com/
Alex was intimidated thinking about meeting all the wedding party over the next three days. Each guest is a multifaceted character as he would come to learn, so it would naturally fit that each is unique in Ned’s life if but for other reasons than I had to offer. Alex wouldn’t know Ned’s version, but only that mine would lend perhaps an interesting perspective, if but twisted, to an ageless story of love and family tradition. So let us move through this vast crowd of relatives and friends, chronologically, from youngest to oldest. Please bear with me.
Children come into their own early in their life, each born with their own personality, unique, yet similar to each their parents; we as elders often see in them something of their father or mother, or grandparents, and beginning with the youngest of this saga, Nash is, to me, the spitting image of his father, Joey, though tow-headed (blonde); when, as I recall meeting Joey close to the same age, he was a ginger, (red-haired) little boy and very nearly as energetic and precocious, always on the move, talkative, and always interested in things before and around him.
Then there is Nash’s sister, Isla, who, is about four years older--and blondish, is just as energetic, and precocious, but in her special own way, utterly defines the two words. Not being an immediately verbal child, when Isla was very young she used wonderful facial expressions to project her curiosity or distain, quickly picking up on what to do to get what she thought she needed. Now, at almost five, going on fifteen, she’s quite the talker and authoritatively announced to me, as we played in a boat in Peter’s yard, she was the ship’s Captain and Nash was First Mate. Nash and I busily caught fish over the side of the boat, using an anchor rope.
Now, a teenager, Luke knows a thing about boats and ship captains. Well, he’s learning. He works for his grandfather on his lobster boat during the summer, building his confidence and muscles. He’s grown so fast since I seen him last, that it’s simply amazing. Some kids do that, seeming grow taller overnight, more handsome, more three-dimensional; their interests, like Luke’s participation in school theater, seems sure to succeed, like that boy on Joe’s school bus in Wannaska, Garrett Hedlund. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1330560/
Sam is Luke’s two year older brother, a little taller and broader shouldered, who’ll, in a few days of his introduction to Alex, became a high school freshman. I plainly can see his mother and her parents in him, with all their traits of hospitality and kindness. An athlete, like his parents, Sam plays hockey, and is genetically predisposed to do well in it, being Ned’s mother was born in Roseau County, Minnesota--whose high school state hockey championship teams are legend. (It’s in the water.)
https://www.roseauhockey.com/page/show/2283175-rams-hockey-history
Owen has grown a good eighteen inches since the last time I saw him four years ago. He’s Sunny and Mary Jo’s second youngest son a couple years out of high school, Peter being the youngest and who just graduated. Well over six feet, Owen showed Alex and I his two bee boxes out in the backyard that he had recently received from a neighbor who is into bee keeping; and provided us a wealth of bee keeping information, about queen bees and such, that we didn’t know and as a consequence found very interesting..
Tall and lean Michael, one of Owen’s older brothers, here is twenty-three. He greets us warmly with a big friendly smile as we sat down to eat at The Snug in Hingham, the day of our arrival. He reminds me of the time when he and his folks came to our home in Minnesota when he was much younger, "And shot BB guns.” Michael flew to Minnesota the year he graduated from high school, and he and his godfather, Joe, rented a car and drove back to Scituate, MA. Among a host of other stops, they visited: https://www.spam.com/ & https://www.rockhall.com/
Joey is a First Mate on a tug; having passed the terribly complex exam to one day become a captain of a vessel. Hardworking, handsome and an excellent father, he’s attentive to his family of two, the two weeks he is home; thinking of them for all of the two weeks he’s away, following in the footsteps and routines of his father’s brothers and grandfather, and generations of family folk who have taken their livings from the water.
Alex, this is Ana. She lives in Milwaukee (so we have to cut her some slack) with her husband and their three daughters, the oldest starting the seventh grade in the fall. Ana was a Roseau County law clerk at the county courthouse, about twenty years ago, when Teresa was the court administrator. Ana became a close friend of the family, and on occasion, watched Joey and Ned, when they were but boys and their folks were away; something she and the boys made great fun, in the experience. One time she accompanied Matt (a college-aged man by that time) and Joey, down the Roseau River, all the way to Wannaska, portaging around river bends where they couldn’t cut through with saws and machetes. She survived mosquitoes, ticks, and army tent caterpillars hanging down from the trees. Now she’s a lawyer, awaiting an empty nest.
Matt is Joe and Teresa’s oldest son, Ned’s oldest brother. Broad-shouldered and terrifically handsome--he didn’t get his looks from his father. (Just sayin’.) But he did inherit Joe’s love of books and sincere interests in a multitude of people of all ages. This guy is a real gem as a father and a brother--a friend whose enduring relationship with his college friends is regularly replenished, as such was the case of when he employed them to enlarge his father-in-law’s woodshop. Knowing Matt, he treated his friends as family and made their efforts well worth their time and energy.
When Matt was home from college (as I recall) on spring break maybe, he drove my tractor as I sat in the tree planter, and helped me replant a few hundred white spruce trees along the west ‘40’ on our farm, a couple miles west of his folks. He reminded me of that one year when he and his family came over to visit. The spruce are now over 25-feet tall in three rows, each almost a mile long.
Heather, Matt’s wife, a dynamic individual, bestows confidence in her two sons by modeling healthy behaviors, assertiveness and athleticism including marathons and triathlons. She also travels the world as part of her outside employment. They still have close ties to friends near Lindstrom, Minnesota, where she and Matt and the boys lived for a few years; the boys honing their hockey and fresh water fishing skills.
Ned’s family are a very traditional bunch when they get together like this, hence the sail sheets suspended from the rafters the night of the wedding, that came from Ned’s late grandfather, Joe Senior’s sailboat, that the family had rebuilt. One story I remember was about one of the cousins, one of the girls, who was in college at the time, when someone asked her what she was going to do that weekend, and she had replied she had to go to a family reunion, to which the other person made an anguished face and asked if she couldn’t just make up an excuse why she couldn’t go. She replied that she really wanted to go, and was looking forward to going; that in effect, her family reunions were something not to miss. Being a really a rare reaction to most anyone’s notion of a family gathering of any kind, it gives a newcomer an idea that this family is a special family.
And with that, I get to introduce Liz to Alex. Liz is Aunt Mary’s daughter--I’ll get to Aunt Mary in a paragraph or two, hold on. Liz lives in Chicago, with Ralph. Joe often stops in Chicago on his road trips to and from Boston because Liz, Ralph--and Aunt Mary are good fun company and a wonderful break from the road, being about mid-way between Hull and home. Many years ago, I don’t recall the exact parameters about the story, Liz found a song that she thought exemplified the significance of their family’s gatherings, and is often sung slightly off key, depending on the singer’s sobriety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9ms1BMXIqk
Here’s a Health to the Company
The Chieftains
Kind friends and companions, come join me in rhyme
Come lift up your voices in chorus with mine
Come lift up your voices, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
So here's a health to the company and one to my lass
Let's drink and be merry all out of one glass
Let's drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
Here's a health to the wee lass that I love so well
For style and for beauty there's none can excel
There's a smile on her countenance as she sits upon my knee
There is no man in this wide world as happy as me
So here's a health to the company and one to my lass
Let's drink and be merry all out of one glass
Let's drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
Our ship lies at anchor, she is ready to dock
I wish her safe landing without any shock
And if ever I should meet you by land or by sea
I will always remember your kindness to me
So here's a health to the company and one to my lass
Let's drink and be merry all out of one glass
Let's drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never all meet here again
Aye, it’s been sung at many a family gathering since then, and mine as well, Alex.
This lovely woman is Mary Jo, none other than Ned’s favorite aunt on his father’s side, and Joe’s favorite sister, as she is Bill’s, Steve’s, and Mark’s. Mary Jo is named after her folks, ‘Mary and Joseph’. Would I kid you? Yes, that was their real names! I am not joking! Hey, ask anybody in this whole place! They’ll tell you the same. Mary and Joseph ... She and Joe are 12-years apart in age and as a result almost inseparable. They're like identical twins. They talk everyday, maybe a couple times. He’s the eldest in the family and she’s the youngest--did I mention she’s his favorite sister? I think she’s funner than Joe now, but then he’s taught her about ‘fun’ since she was born, so she’s had a while to perfect it.
“And that guy,” I point out.”That tall, slender, smiley guy is Mary Jo’s husband, Steve-- or, ’Sunny’, short for his last name: “It’s SWEDISH, DAMN IT!”“ Really. I’ll explain that one later one too if I think of it. Except to say, that Sunny here, always a deep-thinker, asked why was it, that whenever I come to visit out here, someone had to go to the hospital, referring to Joe and I having to take Joe’s mother to the hospital when she was having a heart attack--while I was driving one year; and the next time, Sunny and Mary Jo’s youngest son, Owen, had to be taken to the hospital for abdominal pains soon upon our arrival. Bum luck, is all I can say, bum luck. Hope everyone lasts for the duration of this event. Don’t jinx it now, Alex.
Matt and Heather live with Heather’s parents Peter and Diane, having remodeled the home to accommodate themselves and their two teenage sons, Sam and Luke. Peter employs his grandsons on his lobster boat in the summertime. A former high school industrial arts teacher, Peter and Matt share a nicely equipped woodshop on the property, where Matt can hone his skills when he’s not on a tug pushing barges downriver or in the shipping channels outside of New York City.
Diane, a mother of two adult sons and an independent-minded daughter, will take Sam and Luke underwing at the wedding party, patiently teaching them, one by one, to slow dance, and ensuring their success as social butterflies at such functions like proms and other appropriate venues. Likely, as their Hull grandma, she plays other roles in their upbringing from which they greatly benefit. (She may even feed them ...)
Alex, this is Carol; Carol, Alex. Carol and her husband, who was a judge in Roseau County, and has since passed away, their two sons, now both grown and living elsewhere, used to live in Roseau. An often loud, wildly excitable person, her energies I can see now, (after I’ve matured in her eyes), were always meant in good fun. As close friends of Ned’s parents, Carol was often seen at the community social and arts events, her loud laughter singling her out in a crowd. Carol has traveled the world, so I’ll bet she’ll want to talk your ears off about it, seein’ as you’ve done the same in your youth. I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. Bye! I hear a Guinness Extra Stout calling me!
Uncle Pete here, Ned's favorite blood uncle on his mother's side, lives right beside Fargo, Nort’ Dakota. You saw that movie, didn’t you? Fargo? Those Nort’ Dakotans talk yust like dat, doncha know. It vas right on, dem dere vords dey say. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-juxQ5Sj4.
The conversation continued after we left the Yacht Club bar to stand on the deck there, looking into the sunset: “Yah, Peter iss Ned’s mudder’s favorite brudder, eh.”
Okay, I’ll drop the phony accent.
No, he’s her only brother.
Well, that’s what makes him her favorite.
He’d probably have stiff competition for the role in that case.
I didn’t say he was the perfect brother.
He’s a lawyer. Yep, even has a wife and daughter.
The daughter is grown and married.
Pete’s wife, Kathy, didn’t come to the wedding because she hurt her ankle and didn’t want him using her as an excuse to stay home either. Heaven knew she could use the rest from him always fawning over her like an old mother hen; staying home from the office, dashing about for her every need, picking up and cleaning house. Cooking. Just like what you do for Nancy, Alex, if but only occasionally I’ll bet. It takes all kinds, Alex. He’s still her brother,
Alex, this is Mark, Ned’s youngest uncle on his dad's side, Joe’s youngest brother ... and his lovely wife, Doreen--’Doe’, for short,-- they live down the street from 276. Mark works on tug boats too, but is soon to retire. Remember, we walked up to their big old house they sold on Sunset Point, the day of the wedding; then, we rode past their new little house with its excavation out back for a wood storage shop addition, in its basement? That’s the guy. Doe is wildly happy she doesn’t have to clean a mansion-sized house anymore.
https://www.coldwellbanker.com/property/276-Nantasket-Rd-Hull-MA-02045/M-72520193-MLSPIN/detail?src=list
Steve, Ned’s next oldest uncle, a retiree, lives over on B Street, and goes to the A Street Liquor Store, where they got all kinds of beverages from A-Z, he’s told me. Yeah, Steve’s the guy with all those bees in his shed and bats in his belfry. Yep, that’s the guy. Good memory there, Alex. Steve’s lovely wife is Jean, yes, the woman who handcrafted all those paper flowers that looked so real. Yessiree, you have a good eye. You writing all this down? You’ll be quizzed on it later, my man.
Alex, that exotic looking, white-haired, ruddy complexioned gentleman who just now danced his way onto the Yacht Club dance floor wearing a makeshift turban with sleeves of some kind hanging down, is none other than Bill, Ned’s oldest uncle on his father’s side. They cut him some slack too because he and his lovely wife, Wendy, live in Stonington, Maine, making their living upon tides and teeth, respectively. A master carpenter and lobsterboat builder, Bill, has plied his trades there nigh onto forty years; Wendy, a Doctor of Dentistry there on Deer Isle, has practiced almost as long. You wanna talk lobsters, put the grab on that guy.
But, if Bill asks you to dance--I’d defer to somebody a whole lot younger than yourself, although you’re Greek and all, for Joe (a Michael Flatley imitator) and his brothers, Bill, Steve and Mark (an amateur Riverdance ensemble) will jig the night away and right out the door, and don’t you think I’m kidding. Their wives, not to be outdone, juggle flaming torches and wear high-heeled sequin shoes with sparks shooting from the soles.
That covey of tall and lanky red-haired be-suited young men there, all at the same table are Sunny and Mary Jo’s five sons (maybe four, plus another brother by a different mother and father), all of whom are likely to make your acquaintance before the end of the night.
I made a comment to Teresa, when we were at The Local, about all the family men of Mary and Joseph’s--(Don’t give me that look, now Alex)--are demonstratively warm, loving and attentive caregivers of even the youngest of children, something Teresa said their father, Sunny, in this case, modeled for each of them. It’s a wonderful thing to see among men of any age who take responsibility of their children without complaint. Alas, Alex, it isn’t commonplace.
“Yeah, you may be right, Alex, it must be in the water. Wanna ‘nother drink? I know this is a lot to take in. Toilet break, maybe?
Okay, this tall begrizzled sort of bearded guy with the Acme elastic wrist wrap here, and this lovely woman in the multifloral dress are old friends of Joe’s, dating back probably ten years before he met you at Dunwoody. This is, Jim, and this is Ginny. Jim went to Boston College with Joe ‘back in the day’, when Joe had great expectations of becoming a lawyer, the way I heard tell. Yeah, I’d ask Joe about that.
I can’t say if Ginny was a classmate or not. The Grahams have the distinction of maintaining sixty-eight gift subscriptions to our now-defunct rurally published magazine, THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota’s Original Art, History & Humor Journal, and received the highly coveted, RAVEN ADVOCATE AWARD Commemorative for their accomplishment, which, Jim is quick to point out that the plaque is still on their wall, and lighted even. Hooyah! At one time, living in Falls Church, VA, they always said that THE RAVEN was read within view of The White House; which white house, I don’t know, and why that’s significant is equally confusing. But hey, they mean well. They’re just good people.
Ralph is Liz’s man. He and Liz live in Chicago. He has about six or eight Minnesota white spruce trees from Palmville growing in their yard there. They’re huge, he says. The neighbors can’t see into their yard because of the spruce, which was his intention all along. You should try that Alex; you’d be, like, ninety, before they’d get that big now, but Ralph knows his tree stuff. Go ahead ask him anything. Yeah, maybe he knows something about Bonsai. He knows it all. Yes, ask him ...
“Aunt Mary” is Ned’s oldest great aunt, his late grandfather Joe’s only sister. She’s 93. As I remember, (And my memory ain’t the best nowadays, I’ll have you know) Mary used to teach physical education at Simeon High School, a inner-city Chicago school, one tough lady. In 2009, she rode a lawn chair in the open stern of Bill’s lobster boat, as it cut the waves going to an island house where Bill was the caretaker, the brim of her so’wester hat plastered against her forehead, waves high all around, cold water splashing in. No sissy girl, this one.
Well, there you go Alex--you’ve met almost all of the family. I didn’t get around to talking to all of them, but we’ve likely said hi or waved at one another in the crowd.
Busy as I was taking pictures--and I may add them to this text before long--I didn’t dance much, but did see Alex out there shaking his ol’ bum to the music. My camera batteries went dead just as all the men (including Alex), laced shoulders in a large undulating circle on the dance floor for a bit of festive Greek dancing with a lot of whooping and laughing.
Alex danced until he got tired, warmed by exertion, fueled by the passion of a loving family all around him. It had been a good night.
Have a happy life, Ned and Victoria!
The world awaits!
Thanks, Steve! You're writing is the next best thing to being there.
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