Our Life Together, part 4

by Sylvia French Waack

Sister Garvin, our pastor’s wife, wanted me to have a full church wedding as it would be the first one in their new church building, Faith Tabernacle, at 13th and Trenton.  But I could not see that would be appropriate for a minister to have such a fancy wedding.  We settled on just coming in the front door following Brother Garvin’s Sunday morning message on “The Bride Hath Made Herself Ready.”

As he finished his message, Sister Garvin began playing the Wedding March on the organ.  Brother Garvin, Chester and my brother, Otto, came out of the side prayer room door, and little, seven-year-old Mary Alice started down the center aisle scattering her flowers as she went.  Then my chum and bridesmaid, Rheba Zinnamon, came next with me following.

After the ceremony, we went back down the aisle together and out to our car parked across the street in front of the new apartments being constructed there.  All at once we heard the screech of car brakes and looked over to see my sister had followed us out of the church and into the street.  The car managed to get stopped just before hitting her.  It nearly scared me to death to think we had come so near causing her death.  In all of our planning the wedding, we had never told her what to do after the ceremony.  Oh, how I thanked the Lord that He had spared us that tragedy.

Mother had planned the reception to be on Monday night.  She made fancy red organdy aprons for the four girls, who had wanted to be bridesmaids, to wear in welcoming and serving the guests.  Mother had hung Japanese lanterns all over the vacant lot West of the house.  Chester and Glidden had gone to the church and brought over a piano and folding chairs and had them all in place.  Oh, the excitement.  Mother had all our wedding gifts all displayed in the dining room and all the guests were free to move around and look at them.

Glidden was the director of the church orchestra.  He had them all set up on the front lawn.  As we stepped out the front door to begin greeting the guests, the orchestra struck up, “The Fight is On.”  Oh, what a time he had that night! Chester said, “Let him have his fun.  I am the one you married.”  Everyone had a lot of fun.

We stayed on in Tulsa the rest of the week and then drove to Rock Island to unload our things.  Since the Christ’s Ambassador Convention was to be held in Chicago the following week, we decided to go there for our honeymoon and attend the convention.

Chester was quite familiar with Chicago as he had worked there during his teen years for his uncle who owned a drug store.  But I had never been there and was scared to be out on the streets.

One day Chester decided to take me down to Maxwell Street where he used to go shopping for clothing bargains.  Just as we entered that section of town, there were all the merchants out on the street with their wares.  Since it was a hot August day, we had the windows of the car rolled down.  The traffic was very slow because the merchants came right out into the street.  The first thing I knew, a foreign-looking fellow stuck some plucked squabs into my face, yelling, “squabs, lady?”  I screamed and pulled back and yelled to Chester, “Get me out of this place.”  It was very funny to him that I reacted that way, but it wasn’t funny to me.  I rolled up my window and never rolled it down again until we were at the church for service.

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