Page 22 - Demo

Fools%u2019 Journey16and we headed to her dad%u2019s lodge instead. When Lynn asked why, her mom snapped, %u201cyour father%u2019s paying for this, and they%u2019re having a special.%u201d During dinner I was grilled about my background (middle class all the way) and plans for the future (nothing noteworthy), then subjected to an hour-and-a-half of wearisome small talk. On the drive home, as we pulled up to a stop sign, a car bumped into us. A high-school kid and his girl friend had just tapped our rear bumper. We all got out and saw there wasn%u2019t any damage to his car, and probably only a couple of hundred dollars in damage to ours %u2014 a new Lincoln Continental. Yet, Lynn%u2019s dad exploded, calling the poor guy (who%u2019d lost any chance of impressing his girl friend) a god-damned-son-of-a-bitching lousy driver. He ranted for 10 minutes %u2014 over a minor fender-bender. After exchanging names, addresses, phone numbers, insurance companies, and license numbers, his tirade continued as we drove away. By the time we got home, I was on edge, and Lynn was quieter-than-normal. She said I%u2019d just experienced a microcosm of what growing up had been like for her %u2014 continual tension resulting from alternating periods of artificial calm and unpredictable explosions. No wonder it took her a few days to adjust after she got away from her family.%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022%u2022Although I was a non-practicing Catholic (I sometimes said I was a heathen), my family had a good friend who was a priest %u2014 Father Hardebeck. He had been an assistant pastor at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Fowler the year I was born, and he came to our house every so often just to visit. When I asked him to perform the ceremony, I could tell he felt honored. I knew that a Catholic (me, theoretically) marrying a non-Catholic (Lynn, who really wasn%u2019t anything) in a Methodist church, would require a certain amount of ecclesiastic and bureaucratic approval. The fact that Lynn and I lived in one diocese, the priest in another, and the wedding was to be held in a third, didn%u2019t help matters. First, we tracked down the appropriate priest in Pontiac to ask permission to bring in an outsider to perform the ceremony. A smiling Irishman, he had no objections, nor any document to sign. He just said OK and wished