2016 Nov 12^th

This is from “A Double Dozen and Six,” a collection of essays/memoirs I piblished to very minor acclaim some years ago. A more up to date political commentary will follow tomorrow.

The Second Marriage

I have been married twice. You probably deduced that from the title of this piece, but I wanted to be sure you knew that I knew what I was talking about.

Second marriages are fraught with danger. Many second marriages end in divorce. If your first marriage ended in divorce, a template for the end of your second marriage is available. This is one reason why second marriages are so parlous. If it didn’t work the first time, you learned it wasn’t the end of the world; if this one doesn’t work, you can deal with it. Your threshold for departure from your new marriage is now much lower than it was for your first marriage. That is a terrible attitude to bring to a marriage. And it may account for the failure of many second marriages.

My wife forced me into this marriage. That’s right, forced me into it. She didn’t use a gun; Oh no, she was much too clever for that, besides, a gun wouldn’t have worked. We had been going together for some time and I saw no reason whatever to change the status quo. I thought the arrangement was splendid. She did not. (It only takes one.) I told her that I was too young when I got married the first time and, now, even though I was sixty-one, I was not going to make the same mistake again. She agreed that I was immature, but she then presented me with some unassailable logic. She wanted to be married. She loved me, so I was the preferred candidate. However, if I turned down the job she would just have to move on to the next candidate.  I knew that there was no next candidate, but I also knew that she would have no trouble whatever pulling candidates by the fistfuls out of the bushes; besides, I was in love with her. I proposed; she accepted. Very smart move on my part.

As we’d each been married before, we saw no need for all the marriage bells and whistles. We each had one elderly parent living at some distance from us. They would feel obliged to attend. We each had two married children from our previous marriages and they, even with their busy schedules, would feel obliged to attend.  My fiancée had five busy siblings…well, you get the picture. We decided to elope. We told only our parents and our children, no one else. Now, the question was where to do the deed. We thought about Las Vegas. We’d take one set of good clothes for the necessary pictures, and go the Vegas route. I called the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce toll free number and got the magic voice of Tony Orlando, “This is Tony Orlando for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. If you want to get married, press one; if you want to get divorced, press two; if you want to know what shows are on press three; etc.” Honest, that’s verbatim.

I pressed one and found out that no blood test was needed. Fine, whatever we could have caught from each other we had already caught. We also found out that the license bureau was open twenty-four hours a day, Thursday through Sunday. My bride had brought along a bunch of wedding announcements to mail from Vegas to surprise our friends. (I had been single for thirteen years; she had been single for six months.) There would be a lot of surprised friends. Then we caught a typical Gamblers Package on a Friday morning, and off we went. We did not dwell on the fact that it was called a Gambler’s Package.

Neither of us had ever been to Vegas before. The hotel room was Spartan, not even a TV, surprise, surprise. I guess they expected us to participate in other entertainments. We were early risers. We usually got up at six and were ready for the day by seven. By seven-thirty, our time, we had finished breakfast and had emerged from our hotel to the sweltering heat and empty streets of Las Vegas.  It was five-thirty in Las Vegas. No matter, the license bureau was open according to Tony Orlando.  We hopped on a bus and got off ten minutes later at the bureau, only it wasn’t the license bureau; it was the wedding commissioner’s office. He told us to go across the street to the license bureau, get our license, and then come back and he could marry us…just like that. That’s scary. The license bureau was deserted except for five typists and us. They told us that it was early and that by noon there would be a line around the block. We filled out the forms and got our license. Now we had a choice. We were in blue jeans. Did we go all the way back to the hotel, change into something more formal, find a “wedding chapel,” pay much money, get married, yada, yada, yada, or did we simply go across the street and let the nice man there marry us for a mere thirty-five bucks. Guess what we did?

The commissioner was great. The little ceremony was great. Nothing was rushed, tawdry, or the least glitzy. I kissed the bride and then we went out to the waiting area while the commissioner made copies of the documents for us to take home.

While we waited, we saw the next couple, a stunning nineteen-year-old girl and a sixty-something weather-beaten old farmer, both dressed to the nines. We looked at each other, then at them and my new wife told them we hoped they’d be as happy as we expected to be. The bride blushed and the farmer laughed, “Hell honey, I ain’t the groom. Here’s the groom.”

And a handsome young six-footer stepped out of the men’s room to join his father and his bride. First lesson in our married life, “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

That was almost twenty years ago. Weddings don’t have to be fancy to be memorable.

Tomorrow Trump!!