The Wedding... A Story

It's hard to write a fictional story about the wedding. Everyone who would read it knows about the wedding. They were there. They know all the characters. If my story "changes history" at all, as one has to do with stories, they would say, "Naw, it didn't happen that way..." or their feelings would be hurt if they were not portrayed in a good light.

I would have to invent a whole new cast of characters. And I would have to draw from people other than my own family, or the Thomas family.

I've been to a number of weddings in my lifetime, including two in which I was the bride. I think the first wedding I remember is when Mama married Daddy Ballentine. They didn't have a "wedding" in a church. They just drove over to Greenville to the Justice of the Peace and got married. All the kids went along. There were five of us: Bonnie, 14, Jim, 11, me (Jean), 10, Ray, 8, and Richard, 4. Jim and I were Mama's kids, and Bonnie, Ray, and Richard were Daddy's. Also Eugene, 17, was Daddy's oldest, but he was already in the Navy in California. It was January 5, 1955.

Daddy came to Pine Bluff with his kids in a 1942 Ford. I remember one of the windows had been broken out of that car and a piece of card board "replaced" it. It was more than an hour drive to Greenville, Mississippi from Pine Bluff, Arkansas where we lived. Bonnie, Ray, Jim and I sat in the back (bench) seat, and little Richard sat in the front between our parents.

They went to a Justice of the Peace and did all the paper work, paid the fee, and then we five kids witnessed the ceremony, along with the Justice of the Peace's wife. As we filed out of that office, my new sister, Bonnie, said, "I bet that man thought it was about time you two were gettin' married, with all these kids..."

For me, that was the beginning of a new life. I had me a Daddy.

My natural father had abandoned us when I was six months old. He was never in my life, lived in another state, and didn't support us. Mama worked in a cotton mill as a weaver. Her "old maid" sister Berl stayed with her and helped to raise Jim and me. Born on Christmas Eve right before World War II ended (1944), I looked to Mama's brothers (there were seven of them, mostly farmers in the Mississippi Delta) as father figures. Sometimes Jim and I would stay at a farm in the summer with one or another of the uncles.

I never got to attend kindergarten, but went to first through fourth grade at Sixth Avenue Elementary School in Pine Bluff. It seemed to me that all my school mates had Daddy's. Once I asked Mama why we didn't have a Daddy. I will never forget the look on her face; it was almost as if I had slapped her.

So when she married Daddy Ballentine, I finally had me a Daddy, and I loved him. He was always good to me. He took care of us, provided for us, expanded our lives by moving us to California...

But that is another story.