There are times when my brother Loyd can mess up a situation without even trying. This was one of those occasions, but as you will see, he could have fixed the problem by doing nothing at all and he couldn't even do that.
I mentioned earlier that I almost always had an issue with my birthday because it almost always fell on Labor Day weekend. My sophomore year of school, I was rather happy because we didn't going to go to the woods. Instead, it was the day my Aunt Cind had decided to have her wedding with Jid.
Cind asked me and Loyd to help provide the music for the wedding. She had selected Frank Mills' "The Poet & I" to march down the aisle, John Denver's "Annie's Song," and Chicago's "Colour My World" during the ceremony and Frank Mills' "Music Box Dancer" to return down the aisle with Jid. She did not choose any traditional songs. I played piano and Loyd played guitar. We rehearsed and got very good at performing the songs.
The rehearsal dinner was held the night before the wedding. A huge cake was purchased. It seemed like it was all the family there, all the same people who would be at the wedding the next day. My Mom purchased yet another cake for the rehearsal. It was a birthday cake for me. However, there was too much cake, and no one ate the one with my name on it. Maybe they should have cut back on the cake. Neither one was chocolate.
Mom had bought us shirts to wear for the wedding. They were white with thin black stripes. I got mad because she was making us wear identical shirts. At this point, I was fed up with Mom buying us stuff that would identify us as brothers. I wanted to scream, "WE ARE BROTHERS, NOT TWINS! QUIT BUYING US THE SAME OUTFITS!" The bad thing was that the wedding would not be the only day we would be wearing those shirts.
The wedding was held outdoors. There is a church by my Grandma Bend's house in Fort Sumner that has an outdoor garden. That was where the ceremony was held. The only problem was that it was next to the main highway. I was not looking forward to having to deal with the traffic.
Shortly before the wedding started, we rehearsed one final time. Everything went well, except that the person doing the singing got a little shock from the microphone and shouted "Holy F***!" which came out the PA system. Fortunately, no one else was around to hear it.
The wedding started. It was a very beautiful, sunny and warm day. The first thing I noticed was that there was no traffic. I found out later that Grandma Bend had the Sheriff's Department stop traffic on the highway during the ceremony. I couldn't believe it. My grandmother was a probate judge at the time, so she was able to pull some strings.
On the first song, I started playing the piano. Loyd would join in on the guitar after the first few measures. When he started, I immediately noticed that his guitar was OUT OF TUNE! I guess he had left it out in the sun and the strings expanded. He noticed the problem, but he continued playing. It sounded TERRIBLE! I wanted to shout at him to stop playing, but I hoped he would pick up the hint and stop on his own. He didn't. He didn't even bother to get up after the first song to try to re-tune the guitar. He just kept playing that out of tune instrument.
After the wedding, I asked Loyd why he didn't stop playing. "I didn't rehearse all that time to just not play my guitar."
Loyd ran off after the ceremony and did his own thing. I don't know where he went. However, when it was time for the family photo, he was nowhere to be found. He was not in that picture or very many of the other wedding photos, for that matter. History records that I was at that wedding, but not him. I felt vindicated. I just hope everyone else at that wedding forgot about the music being out of tune.
Cind and Jid remained married for 35 years before they divorced. They actually lasted longer than my parents.
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