The rate of attrition for single men is very high, as TLW
(The Little Woman) got my suit back from the taxidermist (She’s pre-paying my
funeral) and told me I have to wear it today for another wedding. I actually
like to go to weddings, I find them amusing, and usually the food is good to
great, I get to dance with my favorite gal and see family and or friends.
Many years ago weddings were a little different, especially
if you were Italian and poor. I know you have all heard of Italian Football
Weddings, and I remember only one but it was interesting.
A Gombah (friend from my grandmother’s home town) from Hull
Street, Brooklyn had a daughter who married this fellow and I was chosen as
their flower boy. This meant they got me a white tuxedo and made me go down the
aisle with a flower girl. This was un-nerving since I was mistakenly led to
believe it was my wedding, and although the flower girl was pretty, I didn’t
know her name, and thought for sure my mother was looking to get rid of me at 5
years of age.
The bride was absolutely beautiful, and a sweet woman who
always greeted me kindly. It was a particularly nice family, with her 2
brothers and great parents. The groom scared me, since he was the first person
I ever saw with a moustache!
I remember the wedding band, a rather elaborate large
grouping of about 10 men, all dressed up like me and their trumpets blaring
with little hats to modulate the music being played. It got my interest up as I
stood in front of them and watched with fascination. Then the dancing started
and I first heard the Tarantello Napolitan as the bride in her long flowing
gown without the train danced across the floor, sparkling with her new husband.
But the best memory was of the stacks of sandwiches, all wrapped
in white paper, maybe 50 to 100 of them on two or three trays, and someone
tossing them to someone else. Don’t forget I was 5: so much of it is sketchy
now. I do remember that you had choices of sandwich but what the choices were I
don’t remember.
After the wedding, I would go to the mother and father’s
apartment, ringing the doorbell on a Sunday morning and announcing in half
English and half Italian that I was here for some parsley. They lived 2 flights
up, so I would ring the doorbell and they would answer from their open
apartment door, laugh at me and invite me up. Once in the kitchen, I had to eat
a meatball before I could go home with the parsley! But I would always go and
ask if I could see the wedding picture they had on their dresser in their
bedroom. They’d say sure and off I’d go, and staring at the picture of me with
that flower girl!
And so today, October 13th, I am off to a wedding
of one of my blogue readers Bow Tie Man and co-worker of TLW from the
Wanna-Be-Bank & Truss Co., and his bride Danielle as he walks the last mile
as a free man.
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