A Wedding

 20 – Hawaii, California, New York, London, New Zealand, Washington D.C., Florida

Some of my long-term friends back on the Anastasis were graduating High School and invited me to attend. Samuel had arrived now but the wedding was rescheduled for the following month. My return ticket to Los Angeles was also going to expire if I didn’t use it. I had a little money from doing yards so I could buy another round-trip ticket to come back for the wedding. The ship was in San Francisco by this time so I flew back to L.A. and someone drove me up.

The graduation festivities were held on the ship while it was sailing up the coast to Oregon. The weather didn’t cooperate as the seas were a bit rough. The sail also posed a bit of a problem for me as my flight back to Hawaii was back out of San Francisco. Fortunately, the Stephens family was driving back to Sacramento where Don’s sister lived. I caught a ride with them, stayed with his sister and someone gave me a ride to San Francisco. Looking back, I’m amazed how the travel puzzle always seemed to work out. And there was a lot more puzzle to come.

Our whole family made it to the wedding. My parents came over from the mainland, Joy and Rob came from the Big Island. Someone let us use a house to all spend time together. My other brother from another mother, Ron Musch and his wife, Leslyn came too and one of our aunts and a cousin also came from New Zealand. 

There was a mild bit of controversy. Originally, Samuel didn’t think I was going to make it to his wedding so he asked Carol’s brother, Willie to be the best man. Now that I was there, Samuel felt that I should be the best man but he didn’t want to dis his soon-to-be brother-in-law. I was easy either way but Willie graciously bowed out and was still one of the groomsmen.

I actually sang at the wedding with my mom. There is a singer named Kemper Crabb who is also an Episcopal priest who had put out an album in 1982 called The Vigil. It is an interesting concept album, inspired by battle preparation rituals for knights during the Middle Ages. We sang a poignant wedding vow song off the album called Thigpen’s Wedding. I’m not sure how it all came about. It’s not that I’m a great singer. I just really liked the song and it seemed appropriate and I asked. I think maybe they just felt bad about saying no.

The wedding went well. The reception was held at Carol’s family’s house where we partied into the night. There was one iffy moment which came from my idiocy. As I now lived in England, I had taken on some sort of silly family code of honor. After the ceremony I said to Carol, 

“Welcome to the family. Never bring shame on us.” 

The truth was, there was already shame on the family because I was in it. Saying something like that to my new sister-in-law only proved it.

After the wedding, we went our separate ways. I flew back to Los Angeles. My parents flew to New York where they were going to be involved in a big YWAM outreach. They found out there was going to be a King’s Kids team for the outreach and they needed someone to run the sound. They asked me. I just had to get to New Jersey where they were having the Boot Camp. However, there were a couple of issues with tickets.

There had been a time limit to use the flight segments back to New York and since the wedding had been delayed, it had expired. Also, if I stayed for King’ Kids, my flight back to London would expire. I would just have to deal with that issue when it came. For the flight to New York, the ticket didn’t actually say that it had expired, so I decided to just reserve a flight, go to the airport and see if they would take it.

It was a red-eye so the flight left very late at night. One of my friends at the ship office in San Pedro drove me to the airport. I showed them my ticket at the airline counter which was printed on a rectangular piece of thin card stock in those days. They didn’t even know what kind of ticket it was. It was issued under some kind of older system that they didn’t even recognize even though I had had no problems with it just a few months before. But they figured something out because, after some anxious minutes, they finally let me on the flight!



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