Karl and Florence Getting Married

She had kinda agreed to marry me and I thought I should do it right so I brought my mother over to her place and asked her mother if it was OK if we got married, Florence and me of course. She was a little reluctant I could tell, that's the reason I had my mother with me. I knew she couldn't kill me with a witness. She said it’s up to her dad, and he is out in the pasture watering. I dutifully went out to the pasture and asked him the same question and he asks, do you love her and want to give her a good life? Never having looked beyond tomorrow, I said yes sir, he said OK she is yours.

She was a minor and had to have as affidavit of some kind to get married. It had to be signed in front of a notary by the parents. Her mother signed, but she looked like she was seeing the printing on the form reading"I agree to let this old lecher to marry my sweet innocent baby." That hurdle was passed, now the date and the preacher. Every thing is all set, and I relaxed as much as possible thinking about the repercussions of all this. The morning of the wedding day we got a phone call from her or her mother (I don't know which) wanting to postpone everything for some reason I didn't understand known only to females. Martha took the phone call and tried to explain it all to me. I didn't want to understand, and this day was planned. At least part of it and I said no to postponement.

We went to the preacher's place, he was a farmer and had just come in from milking and had to clean up a little. When he was ready, he still smelled a little like cows but that was OK were ready. He got out the big book and took both our hands in his and began, "we are gathered here" the ones who were gathered were Martha, Florence's sister, Flo's mother, and mine. The preacher had palsy or something that gave him a firm uncontrollable shaking of his hands and lower arms. So as he held both our hands in his the shaking continued on into us. I wanted to do something to ease the situation so I decided to try to steady the shaking and make as unnoticeable as possible. He was a fair sized man and farmer strong so he out stronged me. We were all shaking a little, I was braced against a wooden chair and the chair was moving just enough to make little squeaking noises on the floor, I had better hearing then, it seemed overwhelmingly loud,

I stopped trying to stop the shaking and just go along with it. My hair fell down over my eyes, I looked sneakily around and her sister was trying to not bust out laughing and so was Martha. The mothers looked like, “just get this over with" I had heard nothing between"we are gathered here and you can kiss the bride. I read later about all this stuff I must have nodded my head to.

Seems so vivid now, hard to believe it was over 65 years ago