Webster Art

 

It’s not every day you marry off a son. The following thoughts are in no logical order, just things that popped into my head.

The wedding party had hiked 2 miles up to a fire lookout. We wore  normal hiking clothes carrying flowers and assorted bags and boxes of food, guitars, ukuleles  and clothing. It was 1000 feet of elevation over 2 miles. The last quarter mile was over several feet of snow.

The lookout was still locked up for the winter with no one around. Clint had been up there the day before checking out the conditions for the wedding.

Clint and Jamie put up a temporary wooden Arbor for flowers, with an Afghan rug underneath.

When Clint came walking up the ridge wearing a suit and tie I was shocked. Like his dad, he never, ever wears monkey suits.

“Who are you and what have you done with my son?”

“I’m right here dad, I haven’t gone anywhere”, he said as he gave me a warm hug.

Dave the  PA  mountain biker told me a story of following Clint down a series of big jumps. Clint had told him that he could handle them no problem. But as Dave approached the ramp he saw they were much bigger than he was expecting. But Clint had already cleared the jump and was launching into the next one. Dave was already at full speed and couldn’t stop, so he pulled up and launched, flying over the gap easily. Later Clint  was sitting beside Dave and told me that Dave was one of the top 4 mountain bikers in the state, as measured by an app they all use on their phones. Dave said that Clint was usually right behind him.

I told him the old story about Clint and Craig digging a hole in the back 40 the size of a volkswagen. They sculpted the excavated dirt into launching and landing ramps 5 feet high. Watching the small herd of neighborhood boys build that ramp was amazing. By the second day they were ready to try jumping it and several parents came over for the event. Clint was the first one to try it. After several false starts where he would pedal up and stop at the last moment he finally committed to the jump. He flew high up in the air, landed cleanly and rolled down the ramp, loosing his balance at the bottom just enough to stick a foot out but staying upright.

Sue and I played “It’s a wonderful world” as they ‘walked down the aisle’.

Later Rory asked if he could play my guitar. He was a natural player, easily singing Blackbird from memory. I taught him part of a blues progression…and we jammed a bit of the blues, me on the harp. That guitar didn’t stay in the case very much at all. It seemed the crowd liked live music.