Pregled posta

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One day, when she was seventeen and he was twenty-nine, Grandma Mabel and Grandpa Fred went into town and got married. My cousins say that they intended to visit one of her sisters, (perhaps to spend the night?), but the sister wasn't at home. When they came back home to tell her parents her father locked her in her room for the night. I'm sure that all sorts of yelling went on. Her parents called their minister and they called a lawyer. Great Grandma Sarah told the lawyer to make Mabel get a divorce. The lawyer turned to Grandma and gently asked if she wanted a divorce, and she said "no". He smiled and turned to Sarah and said, "If she doesn't want a divorce I can't make her get one."
Her parents then held another wedding, thinking the one by the JP wasn't good enough. The marriage lasted 52 years.
You can see that this dress has been hemmed very badly, maybe even on a machine (a crime!), and there's something funny going on with the buttoned plaque near the bottom of the bouquet. That hem certainly has not been pressed. She may have borrowed the dress from a sister or a friend. I always thought she wore her graduation dress when she got married, which Dad still has, but maybe that's the one she wore when she eloped and this one was from the later wedding. There is a paper napkin that she saved from the reception, which has a date written on it that is about a week later than my cousins say she was married.

I love the ironic smile on her face. I wonder when grooms were eliminated from wedding photographs? Grandpa took this shot, no doubt, but I wish there was one of the two of them together dressed up for their wedding.

We checked in at a “Comfort Inn”, and after unloading our gear we went to a place called “Uno” down the street. There at the bar during happy hour we met Bruce a divorce lawyer and his wife an emergency room nurse. It was interesting talking to Bruce, and Bill had a good conversation with his wife on medical issues. They were from New York and lived on Long Island. They both liked to travel around the world and not make reservations, just go and see what life will bring them. He looked and talked like a gangster from the big city. Maybe he was, who knows. We had a good time and a great meal.