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My Sister's Wedding, Connie's Vacation, and The Return to Eugene


My Sister's Wedding, Connie's Vacation, and The Return to Eugene
Babs giving the bridesmaid who missed rehearsal some of those 85 instructions

1974 is famous for two events. The Patty Hearst kidnapping that February and Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9th. His resignation was followed about a week later by an important event for our family, my sister's wedding. I was getting set to return to Eugene. I was busy the last couple of weeks visiting and saying goodbye to my friends in the Albany area. I had to be down on Long Island on Saturday in time to make the wedding. Right after the wedding I was going to head back out to Oregon.

I stayed up late my last night in Watervliet and with just a few hours sleep drove down to Long Island early the next morning fully packed. Well it was early for me, but not as early as I had originally planned or had told my sister. When I arrived at the family home on Long Island my father and brother were both out front waiting to greet me. At least that's what I thought, but as soon as I stopped they immediately started unpacking my brand new truck putting everything on the front lawn. Then they removed the back shell. They explained as they were doing this that they needed to borrow the truck to pick up something for my sister. I gave them the keys and sat down on the front lawn with all my stuff spread all over the lawn. After a few minutes my Mom came out to greet me. I told her that I felt like I'd been mugged. She explained that they had been waiting for me for over an hour and they had very little time as they needed to get back in time to prepare for the wedding. So my Mom and I moved all my stuff off the lawn and into the den.

Once inside my sister got a hold of me. Ron, my sister's husband-to-be, was one of my best friends in high school and hence I was going to be a groomsman in the wedding. I had not been to the rehearsal so Babs had 85 instructions for me. I mean how hard could it be? I'd been to some weddings. All I had to do was follow the groomsman in front of me and keeping pace with the bridesmaid I was paired with. Stand next to the groomsmen at the altar and then walk out the same way at the end. What's to rehearse? In my sister's defense, the bridesmaid I was paired with missed the rehearsal as well. I knew she would get all the instructions too.

I decided to take a shower, as much to get away from all the instructions as to clean up. As I came out of the shower there was my sister telling me more stuff and then imploring me to get dressed and over to Ron's house to make sure he got to the church on time. Ron is notorious for being late to everything. Ron is a person who moves at his own speed never letting the outside world influence him. I was all too glad to escape the chaos that was at my parents' house. My truck was back so I put my tux on and left immediately. There were a couple hitches at the wedding. A storm blew in and the church lost power making the organ unusable, but one of the groomsman, I think his name was Rusty, played guitar so he ended up providing the music. This created another problem as there were now more bridesmaids then there were groomsmen. So being the last groomsman I extended an arm to each bridesmaid and we walked out as a threesome. I'm thinking they didn't practice that at the rehearsal. The marriage took place on scheduled and Babs and Ron recently celebrated their 44th anniversary.               

The next day I repacked my new little pickup truck and started my journey back to Eugene, Oregon. I had two friends who were going to ride with me. One was Larry, my friend form the Air Force, who was in New York visiting his parents. Larry grew up in the Bronx and his parents still lived there, but he lived in San Francisco and was returning home. My other passenger was Connie. Connie lived on Long Island. I became friends with her through Dottie as she had been Dottie's college roommate and she and Jane, also Dottie's college roommate used to visit us in Watervliet. I went to pick up Connie first. Connie was planning to move to Eugene. Connie's mother was of Italian descent and was quite controlling. What I didn't know was that Connie could not bring herself to tell her mother that she was moving. She told her she was going on a two week vacation to the west coast. In the Italian culture moving away generally meant moving to a different house in the same neighborhood, preferably on the same block. When I got to Connie's house her mother came to the door and took me into the dining room. She asked me a few questions about myself and why I was taking this trip. She then proceeded to ask me the itinerary for Connie's vacation requesting I give her the dates, names, and telephone numbers for all the places we would to staying at. We had no specific agenda. We were planning to take our time and visit various friends along the way. I didn't have to be back to Eugene for more than three weeks so I was in no hurry. Connie's mom handed me a pen and some paper which I took and promptly stared at trying to figure out how I was going to get out of this. I let out a sort of desperate called for Connie saying something to the effect that I needed her help on some of the information. Connie came to my rescue and went into the kitchen with her mom where they argued a bit. Net result was we did not leave our itinerary but Connie promised to call every night to inform her mom where we were staying. As we drove away I asked Connie at what point she was going to let her mom know she was actually moving. She said she didn't know but would figure it out along the way.


                                                                        Connie                                 

Next we picked up Larry. With my new pickup I had extra space so we made a little spot in the very back of the truck so one of us could lay down there. We could fit all three of us in the front but it was going to be a long trip and there would be times when one of us would need to get away from the other two. Our route went first to Indiana to visit my friends Bill and Maryann from Valparaiso. We stayed there for a few days visiting the Indiana Dunes Lake Shore beach on Lake Michigan. From there we headed down old Route 66 to visit Jane who had moved to Oklahoma with her new husband. He was attending law school there and Jane was training to be a court stenographer. A couple of days later we continued on 66 to Albuquerque to visit an old Air Force buddy and from there on to Los Angles to visit another Air Force buddy. We spent a couple of days in LA going to the beach. We nest headed to San Francisco and Larry's house. We stayed in San Francisco for almost a week before Connie and I continued on to Oregon. Connie had been calling home every night as promised. However, when we headed out for Eugene from Larry's we'd been gone for two weeks and Connie was supposed to be flying home and we hadn't even got to our final destination. Trouble was a'brewin' and I was afraid that it included me. When we got to Eugene and Connie called her mom she had a bit of explaining to do but she still could not bring herself to tell her mom that this was not just a vacation.

                                       Larry, Maryann, and me at the Indiana Dunes Shore Beach

When we got into town I called my friend Rich. He was living in a small house in Springfield. Springfield is the town across the river from Eugene, kind of like what West Sacramento is to Sacramento. He told us we could stay with him until we found a place to rent. The next day Connie and I started looking for rooms to rent. We both decided we preferred to rent a room in a house with others. Eugene has a huge health food community. We soon found that many of the houses we were looking at required that you be vegetarian at least when eating at the house. That was no problem for me as I had already given up meat for almost a year and Connie was already thinking about doing the same. We ended up both finding a room in the same house. The house was on Hillyard Street just a couple of blocks from the University. It had five rooms that could be used as bedrooms. We met the three who were living there, two of them were students. We were accepted as potential roommates but first we needed to pass a test. The test was we had to learn to juggle. All five of us sat in a circle. They gave Connie and me 3 balls each and instructions on how to do it. They sat with us in a circle as we attempted to master the juggling skill. We both eventually got it. It was a fun idea and a good way to get to know each other a bit. We all ended up having dinner together. The time had come for Connie to finally come clean and confess to her mother that she was staying in Eugene. It was a long messy call, and of course her mom wanted to speak with me too, but Connie kept me out of it. Connie stayed in Eugene and she ended up meeting her future husband Andy. He was one of our roommates. They married and ended up moving back to Long Island. I suppose it was just a long vacation after all.

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