Redneck Bookends

We all travel in many circles in our life.  I travel in several myself, and dip my toe in a few others.  I’m golfer which is one circle.  I’m a programmer which is a work or geek circle.  I’ll let you choose.  I travel in the middle class circle, but I am probably just a few missed paychecks from not being there.  I’m an Okie.  I’m a male.  My girlfriend is Jewish.  One of the best friends I have ever had is black.  I count gay and lesbian folks among my friends.  I know folks up and down the economic scale.  I could name many more circles, but you get the idea. All of these are circles with their own set of rules and culture.

I’ve been to weddings that were sit down affairs with a full dinner, open bar and everyone dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns.  I’ve been to weddings in pastures where you had to be careful where you stepped to avoid the meadow muffins.

My daughter-in-law wanted me to attend the wedding of her brother.  The main reason was because her parents had never met any of her husband’s family.  I thought it a small kindness I could easily do with pleasure.  Besides, I was afraid her parents might be thinking my son was an alien from the planet Xagobah.  Or that he was possibly a mass murderer on the run from the CIA.  I wanted to do what I could to dispel their fears. Of course, I am wondering if after meeting me they are leaning towards the Xagobahian theory.

So towards that end, last Saturday I went to a wedding in Batesville Arkansas.  This particular wedding easily slipped into the redneck category.   A bunch of the guys spent most of time outside smoking cigarettes, drinking Miller Lite, and barbequing by their pick-em-up trucks.    The kids were running around in flip flops or crocs, and there was the occasional NASCAR t-shirt.

There were a lot of positives though.  It was very obvious that the bride and groom were very much in love with each other, and that both bride and groom had many friends and family to support them.  The highlight of the ceremony for me was the pouring of the colored sand.  It was something I had not seen before.  It was to be a blended family.  The groom had two children and the bride one.  After they said their vows, they called the kids up front.  There was an empty, clear urn.  There were two containers of sand.  One with sand colored red and one with sand colored yellow.  The kids took turns pouring the sand together in the empty urn to create a new, multicolored entity.  I found it quite touching.

The day for me, however will always be framed in two bookends.  An event that happened on the way there and one that happened on the way back.  To get to Batesville from Memphis you travel west on US 64 and at Bald Knob, AR you turn north on US 167.  Bald Knob is a farming town that has the distinct pleasure of having both a McDonalds and a Wal-Mart, neither of which I had seen since I left Marion, AR off of I-55.

Needing to go to the bathroom I pulled into the McDonalds.  It was about lunch time on a Saturday and it was very busy.  As I pulled into a parking spot I noticed a sight that made me do a double take.  There was a gentleman on a large riding lawnmower in the drive thru line.  There were cars in front of him and cars behind.  My first impulse after I parked was to grab my camera.  I wanted to document this, but before I could our gentleman pulled out of line and grabbed a parking spot.  I ran into him coming out of the bathroom.  He was about 5’ 5” tall and at least 100 pounds overweight.  I can only imagine that he must have been eating at McDonalds way too often.  He had the appearance that he had been a former student of my girlfriend who is a Special Ed teacher.  I definitely rue that I could not get parked quick enough to snap the picture.

On the way back I decided to stop in the Wal-Mart at Bald Knob.  I needed a few non-perishable items, and it would be just as easy to pick them up there rather than wait until I was back in Memphis.  As I strolled towards the back of the store looking for a bathroom (this seems be a more common reoccurring theme in my life as of late) I encountered a black lady pushing a shopping cart.  This woman was not very tall, and again she was grossly overweight.  As she cruised Wal-Mart, she was leaning on the cart as if for support.  What is etched in my mind is that due to her height and weight as she leaned on that cart her bosom filled up what is normally the child’s seat.  I did so want to take a picture of her with my phone camera for the People of Wal-Mart web site.  Sometimes I feel like folks deserve to be on that web site, and other times I feel it is somewhat disrespectful.  My feeling then was to err on the side of respecting her humanness.   But I did have to at least share the image in words.

Bookends.