5. Papa’s Young Protégé

Papa officiated at many weddings. I cannot remember of any held at one of our country churches. Sometimes, but not often, the wedding would occur at the home of the bride. There would be many guests and a sumptuous dinner.

More often the young couple, perhaps accompanied by a few friends, would come to the parsonage. If they came alone, Mama and my sister Lou would serve as witnesses, though I was invited to see the rite performed.

Papa never used the conventional ceremony printed in the little black book. He had composed a brief, practical ceremony which made no allusion to the mating of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Nor did it inquire whether anyone in the audience wanted to put a stop to these proceedings. He felt that it was much too late to be asking such questions.

My mama was a good-looking woman, but especially beautiful, I thought, at a wedding; for on these occasions she crimped her hair and wore something soft, white and lacy at her throat; ruching, I think it was called. It made her look quite gay and youthful. I know Papa liked it too, and was quite proud of her.

Mama was always given the wedding fees which she saved for special purposes. I am not implying that she gave extra attention to wedding parties in hope of a generous fee, but it is a fact that she never crimped her hair on any other occasion.

Papa had his own formula for encouraging a decent reimbursement at a wedding. If the bridegroom handed him less than five dollars, which happened much too frequently, Papa gave them a plain, black and white certificate, bearing the vital statistics of the event. If they paid him five dollars, which was considered good, they were given a larger certificate, with a fancy border in color, and two oval apertures where photographs of the bride and groom could be inserted. If they gave him ten dollars, they got a beautiful certificate, with Angels and Cupids romping around the border, and three oval slots for pictures, the third one containing a photograph of Papa. These extra special certificates were usually framed and hung in the parlor of the new home; and were supposed to help business. I can’t remember of Papa’s receiving more than ten dollars for a wedding; but ten dollars was quite an impressive amount of money in the eighteen-eighties.

Funeral fees were not included in Mama’s perquisites. Papa said he didn’t want to take the risk of Mama’s being pleased when someone died. He said it playfully, of course; but it was a fact that Mama was gratified when she was given some money to save, no matter where it came from.

And now that we are momentarily thinking about money, perhaps this would be a suitable place to record some facts about the country minister’s income.

My papa’s salary, when we lived in Monroeville, was $600 annually, in cash, the free use of the parsonage, and donations. By cash I mean cash. He was never paid by check; nor did he ever draw a check himself. He had no banking connections. Our most impressive piece of furniture was a tall combination bookcase with glass doors, and desk which, when lowered on its hinges, disclosed a row of pigeonholes and two small drawers. Beneath the desk were three large drawers containing blankets and other bedclothes not in immediate use. Papa wrote his letters at this desk, a very inconvenient arrangement, for there was no place below it for the accommodation of one’s knees. I recall that even as a little boy I wondered how anybody in his right mind could have invented such an unhandy thing. I could much more easily understand why and how Papa could have bought it: he was probably in the middle of an amusing story he had been telling to the furniture dealer, and said yes he would take it, just like that, rather than have his attention diverted from the story.