Father of the Bridesmaid

Mack Hall

Once upon a time two Aggie chicks shared an apartment almost in the shadow of blessed Kyle Field in the holy city of College Station.

One cold night the blonde one telephoned the sort-of-blonde one: "Sarah, I’m at the gas station; I’ve locked my keys in my car. What do I do?"

And Sarah said "Just call Something-a-Lock; they’ll come out and open it up for twenty dollars."

"Okay," said Jan, "but will you come and wait with me?"

So Sarah left her studies (probably) and her big orange cat, and motored in her cute little blue Volkswagen to the gas station where, upon seeing Jan’s car, the car in which the keys were imprisoned, she remembered something she had long known but had forgotten in the moment of her friend’s stress: Jan’s car was a cute little red Jeep. With a cloth top.

This is a true blonde / Aggie story, but probably does not connect in any way with A & M’s just-wait’ll-next-year football season.

Both Jan and Sarah gave up their cute cars after graduation. Sarah now owns a sedate Republican Ford appropriate for a graduate student, and Jan owns a husband.

The wedding vows were exchanged in Cedar Bayou’s beautiful First United Methodist Church, a congregation dating from 1844. One knew immediately it was not a Catholic church because the music included "Panis Angelicus" and "Ave Maria." In a Catholic church music is now pretty much all about whining Jesuits abusing three endlessly recycled guitar chords on a poor recording made in 1968.

One of the many blessings of the service was that the bride and groom did not sing to each other.

Another blessing was that the minister sternly forbade amateur photography, which meant that the procession was spared the now common cell-phone-camera-Hitler-salute thing.

And yet another blessing was that the whole service came in at twenty-five minutes.

And another: the beautiful Sarah was honored to stand as one of Jan’s bridesmaids, and didn’t have to drive through a cold night to unfasten a Jeep’s cloth top.

But the greatest blessing of all was Jan, Sarah’s blue-jeans-and-hamburgers gal-pal of college days, now all grown up in a long, elegant gown, the most beautiful bride ever, on the most wonderful day of her life.