Aaron’s Wedding
From James Donahue’s Journal
We received word one day; quite out of the blue that Aaron was going to get married. Doris, Jennifer and I began making plans to fly to San Francisco for the big event. As the story was told, Aaron met Gayle, a nurse, while working at one of the Bay Area hospitals. After a very brief courtship, he proposed and she accepted.
Strangeness connected with this wedding began occurring. Aaron attempted to discourage us from attending the wedding. He said it was going to be a very formal Masonic affair with everybody dressing up, the men wearing tuxedos, and he did not think we would be comfortable in that environment. He also argued that we should not bother spending the money to fly out where he was. We would not accept such arguments. For us it was an opportunity to visit San Francisco, see both Aaron and Susan whom we had not seen in a long time, and to have a great family get-together. We insisted on coming to the wedding.
The next thing that happened was that Doris received a strange telephone call from a Doctor Humphrey, someone we later learned had become Aaron’s Masonic mentor after Aaron helped care for him as a hospital patient. This man pleaded with Doris to try to persuade Aaron not to marry Gayle. He said he only saw a tragic outcome to such a wedding. He said he thought Aaron was on the brink of becoming an exceptional physician, that he was doing well in his courses in college and was advancing on his pre-med studies. He said he wanted to take Aaron on a trip to the Far East to learn the many other forms of medicine practiced outside the scope of conventional American medicine. He said he believed Aaron had the capability of becoming one of the foremost physicians in the world, but that this would not happen if Aaron married Gayle. Doris agonized over this call. In the end she decided not to interfere with love and did not try to talk Aaron out of the marriage.
So it was, when the big week arrived, the three of us drove the familiar route to Detroit Metro Airport, parked our car in the extended time parking lot, and booked a flight to San Francisco. It was the first commercial flight we had ever made. The aircraft was not the largest in the sky in those days, but it was comfortable. We sat in three-seat rows so could all be together. We were served a meal and drinks and even had the convenience of watching a film on a large television screen if we wished. The film that day was one we had already seen, about the life of Babe Ruth, so we didn’t plug in the airline headset.
I think we were in the sky at least four hours, but flying into the sun and against the clock, so we arrived in San Francisco only a few hours after we left Detroit. It was still mid-day. I recall having a window seat and watching the aircraft drop down close to the water as we were coming in for a landing. I began wondering if we were going to ditch in the water. Then to my relief, land appeared and there was a runway under the wheels as the aircraft touched down.
As we got off the plane we were met by Aaron, Susan and her boyfriend, Dave, at the terminal. I think Gayle may have been there too but I don’t remember just when it was that we met her. To our surprise, we were given the keys to a compact Cadillac that belonged to Gayle’s father and told that car would be at our disposal for the week. First, however, they took us off the airport grounds and into the city for dinner at one of the many fancy restaurants to be enjoyed in San Francisco.
We learned that Aaron and Gayle were already cohabitating in a small rental house in El Cerrito. Susan and Dave were living together in an apartment in Berkley. There was not much room for us at either place. Susan put Jennifer up for the first night and Aaron said Doris and I could stay at his place. When we got to the house, however, there was only one bed in the house. There was a second bedroom but it was unfurnished, except for a number of boxes and a desk. Aaron and I went off somewhere in the city where he rented a roll-away bed. He tied it to the top of his car for the trip back. It was small and uncomfortable, but it was a place for us to sleep.
We found that Aaron’s lifestyle had changed dramatically since leaving Michigan. There were bottles of liquor in the house and Aaron proudly showed us a new handgun that he had just purchased. Gayle was a tall, somewhat attractive blonde woman. She did not express herself as a warm and friendly person. The only time I had to speak privately with her was the following morning when she drove me to a shop somewhere in the city to pick up my rented tuxedo. She had little to say but made it clear that her father was paying the cost of the tuxedo. She acted annoyed to have to drive me to get it. By the time that ride was over I understood what Dr. Humphrey had been trying to tell us.
We learned that Gayle’s mother had recently married into wealth and that she and her mother were among the newly rich . . . the type of people that had not yet learned how to live with and handle wealth. Consequently, they perceived themselves as “upper-class” and above the common working people such as us. This apparently had a lot to do with Aaron’s reluctance to have us come to the wedding. Gayle’s father, on the other hand, was a warm and much warmer person. We met him that evening when he took us all out to a fine restaurant for a nice meal. He owned a chain of Ace Hardware stores in the Bay Area.
Because they were going to be newlyweds and we felt as if we were imposing, Doris and I made arrangements to pack in with Susan, Dave and Jennifer in their Berkeley apartment for the remainder of our visit. Susan graciously gave up her bed. We had a problem with this because she kept cats that slept in her bed with her, and I had an allergy to the cat hairs. But we made do. She and Dave made us feel welcome. Dave was a bass player in a local rock band, and we found Susan actively involved in promoting Dave’s band, as well as other rock bands in the area. She was driving around in a small compact car and seemed to know not only the best places to go, but knew a lot of people she met on the street.
She took us to various fine restaurants, and introduced us to the Homemade Café, a popular breakfast spot near the UC Berkley campus. It was a small nook and people were always lined up at the door to get in. They had a row of benches on the street for people to sit on. Once we got in we understood why it was popular. They served fantastic waffles, pancakes and oatmeal with raisins and real cream. The coffee was the best we ever had. People were so packed in the place that it was common to share booths and tables with total strangers.
The wedding was held in a large facility in Tilden Park, near a well-known golf course high on the hills over Berkeley. We all got in our tuxedos. I felt awkward in such an outfit. It was tight and uncomfortable, probably a bad fit. But I wore the thing. I had the little black bow tie at the neck put on upside down and someone came up to me and corrected it. It was obvious that I was out of my league in formal occasions such as that.
Doris bought a new automatic wind, 35-millimeter camera for the occasion and took it with her into the wedding. Gayle saw the camera and notified us that there were to be absolutely “NO” pictures taken during the ceremony. They placed us in the front row, with other direct relatives. We were surprised when a woman minister appeared to officiate during the ceremony. Aaron looked very nice but strange. He had his head shaved completely bald, was in a formal tuxedo, and was wearing antique steel rimmed glasses that gave him a distinguished appearance. It was odd because Aaron never wore glasses in those days. They were apparently just for appearance.
At the moment when the minister announced that Aaron and Gayle were man and wife, and it was time for them to kiss and be introduced to the crowd, Doris and Jennifer could not resist a photograph. The camera came out and there was some whispering about who was going to dare to shoot the picture. The job was handed to me. I aimed the little camera and shot. There was a quick flash as the camera fired, and then, to our horror, we realized that it was the last picture on the roll. The camera began to unload the roll automatically. It made a lot of noise as the film roll rewound. Doris grabbed the camera and tried to hide it in her purse . . . anything to get it to stop grinding. We interrupted the service. Finally it stopped and we sat there, the focus of attention, as the wedding service went to its conclusion.
Later, during a reception as everybody was standing around, enjoying a few drinks, some person came up to Doris and asked what kind of camera she had. When she answered, the person said he or she wanted to make sure they never bought one like it. That is how the high class folks snub.
We were socially and almost physically separated from that strange group. Aaron and Gayle had little to do with us. When it came time for the dinner, we were placed at a table in one corner of the room, away from Gayle’s family and friends. Doris, Jennifer, Susan, Dave and I sat together with a few other “outcasts.” That was where we met James “Randy” Edmonds. In fact, Susan was so insistent that Randy attend the wedding, we drove for miles to pick him up. It seems that Aaron and Randy were good friends before Aaron fell in with Gayle. Randy was so unconventional he came to the wedding in regular clothes and a large leather western hat that made him really stand out in the crowd. He had a great sense of humor and helped us make the best of our situation.
After eating a fine catered dinner, something strange happened. Aaron and Gayle, and members of the immediate family got up and left the facility. We were not told what was going on. The waiters began cleaning the tables and it was obvious that we were all expected to just leave and go home. We found out later that the service we had seen was not the real wedding ceremony. It was a mock ceremony held just for our benefit. The real wedding, a secret Masonic ceremony, was conducted somewhere else and we had not been invited.
That might have been a disastrous night for us had it not been for Randy. He brushed off the silliness of all the Masonic formality and took us out on the town that night for what turned out to be a memorable night. We went to the Berkeley Rose Garden, a haunted place where most folks never go after hours. We walked around in the gardens in the darkness enjoying the strangeness of the place, knowing that the ghosts were probably watching. Nothing happened.
We went back up to what I think may have been Tilden Park where Randy brought us to the crest of a mountain looking down over all of the lights of Berkeley and San Francisco, stretching out for miles. It was a magnificent sight. There was a large set of chimes mounted on a concrete or wooden frame that sounded in the wind.
Randy remained with us that night and the next day he and Susie took us into San Francisco where we visited Chinatown, then the infamous Haight Street, the birthplace of the Grateful Dead and so many other famous rock bands. We rode the famous trolleys down the steep hills to the coast and soaked up all of the great things that city had to offer.
Dave was with us for one final visit to Fisherman’s Wharf where we saw the Navy ships, visited the many shops and sampled the rich ice cream covered with Ghirardelli Chocolate. There were many tourist places, wax museums and fine restaurants. We could look out over the bay and see the infamous Alcatraz Island. We had a marvelous time in San Francisco.
What I did not like about that city was driving in the traffic, especially while handling a loaned Cadillac. I was not used to driving in traffic like that and was afraid of getting in a wreck with that car. Crossing the bridge between San Francisco and Berkeley was the worst. We got stuck in dead-stop traffic at times, and sometimes were caught in jams like that on the bridge. The old bridge linking the two cities is a double decked affair, with traffic going into Berkeley moving on the lower deck. I thought about all of the earthquakes that occur in that area and wondered why they would build a bridge like that. I could just imagine the upper part of that bridge collapsing on all the cars on the lower deck and was always glad when we got off that bridge.
It was not more than a few months after our visit that I received a telephone call from Susan one night, while working late in the Sandusky office. The first thing she said was “Dad, I’m all right.” I asked what she was talking about and she told me they had just had a serious earthquake. The quake jolted them around in their apartment, smashed furniture and cracked windows, but the building stayed intact. She said the double deck bridges, and one of the very bridges that I pictured as collapsing on cars below, did exactly that. A lot of people died on those bridges in that quake.
From James Donahue’s Journal
We received word one day; quite out of the blue that Aaron was going to get married. Doris, Jennifer and I began making plans to fly to San Francisco for the big event. As the story was told, Aaron met Gayle, a nurse, while working at one of the Bay Area hospitals. After a very brief courtship, he proposed and she accepted.
Strangeness connected with this wedding began occurring. Aaron attempted to discourage us from attending the wedding. He said it was going to be a very formal Masonic affair with everybody dressing up, the men wearing tuxedos, and he did not think we would be comfortable in that environment. He also argued that we should not bother spending the money to fly out where he was. We would not accept such arguments. For us it was an opportunity to visit San Francisco, see both Aaron and Susan whom we had not seen in a long time, and to have a great family get-together. We insisted on coming to the wedding.
The next thing that happened was that Doris received a strange telephone call from a Doctor Humphrey, someone we later learned had become Aaron’s Masonic mentor after Aaron helped care for him as a hospital patient. This man pleaded with Doris to try to persuade Aaron not to marry Gayle. He said he only saw a tragic outcome to such a wedding. He said he thought Aaron was on the brink of becoming an exceptional physician, that he was doing well in his courses in college and was advancing on his pre-med studies. He said he wanted to take Aaron on a trip to the Far East to learn the many other forms of medicine practiced outside the scope of conventional American medicine. He said he believed Aaron had the capability of becoming one of the foremost physicians in the world, but that this would not happen if Aaron married Gayle. Doris agonized over this call. In the end she decided not to interfere with love and did not try to talk Aaron out of the marriage.
So it was, when the big week arrived, the three of us drove the familiar route to Detroit Metro Airport, parked our car in the extended time parking lot, and booked a flight to San Francisco. It was the first commercial flight we had ever made. The aircraft was not the largest in the sky in those days, but it was comfortable. We sat in three-seat rows so could all be together. We were served a meal and drinks and even had the convenience of watching a film on a large television screen if we wished. The film that day was one we had already seen, about the life of Babe Ruth, so we didn’t plug in the airline headset.
I think we were in the sky at least four hours, but flying into the sun and against the clock, so we arrived in San Francisco only a few hours after we left Detroit. It was still mid-day. I recall having a window seat and watching the aircraft drop down close to the water as we were coming in for a landing. I began wondering if we were going to ditch in the water. Then to my relief, land appeared and there was a runway under the wheels as the aircraft touched down.
As we got off the plane we were met by Aaron, Susan and her boyfriend, Dave, at the terminal. I think Gayle may have been there too but I don’t remember just when it was that we met her. To our surprise, we were given the keys to a compact Cadillac that belonged to Gayle’s father and told that car would be at our disposal for the week. First, however, they took us off the airport grounds and into the city for dinner at one of the many fancy restaurants to be enjoyed in San Francisco.
We learned that Aaron and Gayle were already cohabitating in a small rental house in El Cerrito. Susan and Dave were living together in an apartment in Berkley. There was not much room for us at either place. Susan put Jennifer up for the first night and Aaron said Doris and I could stay at his place. When we got to the house, however, there was only one bed in the house. There was a second bedroom but it was unfurnished, except for a number of boxes and a desk. Aaron and I went off somewhere in the city where he rented a roll-away bed. He tied it to the top of his car for the trip back. It was small and uncomfortable, but it was a place for us to sleep.
We found that Aaron’s lifestyle had changed dramatically since leaving Michigan. There were bottles of liquor in the house and Aaron proudly showed us a new handgun that he had just purchased. Gayle was a tall, somewhat attractive blonde woman. She did not express herself as a warm and friendly person. The only time I had to speak privately with her was the following morning when she drove me to a shop somewhere in the city to pick up my rented tuxedo. She had little to say but made it clear that her father was paying the cost of the tuxedo. She acted annoyed to have to drive me to get it. By the time that ride was over I understood what Dr. Humphrey had been trying to tell us.
We learned that Gayle’s mother had recently married into wealth and that she and her mother were among the newly rich . . . the type of people that had not yet learned how to live with and handle wealth. Consequently, they perceived themselves as “upper-class” and above the common working people such as us. This apparently had a lot to do with Aaron’s reluctance to have us come to the wedding. Gayle’s father, on the other hand, was a warm and much warmer person. We met him that evening when he took us all out to a fine restaurant for a nice meal. He owned a chain of Ace Hardware stores in the Bay Area.
Because they were going to be newlyweds and we felt as if we were imposing, Doris and I made arrangements to pack in with Susan, Dave and Jennifer in their Berkeley apartment for the remainder of our visit. Susan graciously gave up her bed. We had a problem with this because she kept cats that slept in her bed with her, and I had an allergy to the cat hairs. But we made do. She and Dave made us feel welcome. Dave was a bass player in a local rock band, and we found Susan actively involved in promoting Dave’s band, as well as other rock bands in the area. She was driving around in a small compact car and seemed to know not only the best places to go, but knew a lot of people she met on the street.
She took us to various fine restaurants, and introduced us to the Homemade Café, a popular breakfast spot near the UC Berkley campus. It was a small nook and people were always lined up at the door to get in. They had a row of benches on the street for people to sit on. Once we got in we understood why it was popular. They served fantastic waffles, pancakes and oatmeal with raisins and real cream. The coffee was the best we ever had. People were so packed in the place that it was common to share booths and tables with total strangers.
The wedding was held in a large facility in Tilden Park, near a well-known golf course high on the hills over Berkeley. We all got in our tuxedos. I felt awkward in such an outfit. It was tight and uncomfortable, probably a bad fit. But I wore the thing. I had the little black bow tie at the neck put on upside down and someone came up to me and corrected it. It was obvious that I was out of my league in formal occasions such as that.
Doris bought a new automatic wind, 35-millimeter camera for the occasion and took it with her into the wedding. Gayle saw the camera and notified us that there were to be absolutely “NO” pictures taken during the ceremony. They placed us in the front row, with other direct relatives. We were surprised when a woman minister appeared to officiate during the ceremony. Aaron looked very nice but strange. He had his head shaved completely bald, was in a formal tuxedo, and was wearing antique steel rimmed glasses that gave him a distinguished appearance. It was odd because Aaron never wore glasses in those days. They were apparently just for appearance.
At the moment when the minister announced that Aaron and Gayle were man and wife, and it was time for them to kiss and be introduced to the crowd, Doris and Jennifer could not resist a photograph. The camera came out and there was some whispering about who was going to dare to shoot the picture. The job was handed to me. I aimed the little camera and shot. There was a quick flash as the camera fired, and then, to our horror, we realized that it was the last picture on the roll. The camera began to unload the roll automatically. It made a lot of noise as the film roll rewound. Doris grabbed the camera and tried to hide it in her purse . . . anything to get it to stop grinding. We interrupted the service. Finally it stopped and we sat there, the focus of attention, as the wedding service went to its conclusion.
Later, during a reception as everybody was standing around, enjoying a few drinks, some person came up to Doris and asked what kind of camera she had. When she answered, the person said he or she wanted to make sure they never bought one like it. That is how the high class folks snub.
We were socially and almost physically separated from that strange group. Aaron and Gayle had little to do with us. When it came time for the dinner, we were placed at a table in one corner of the room, away from Gayle’s family and friends. Doris, Jennifer, Susan, Dave and I sat together with a few other “outcasts.” That was where we met James “Randy” Edmonds. In fact, Susan was so insistent that Randy attend the wedding, we drove for miles to pick him up. It seems that Aaron and Randy were good friends before Aaron fell in with Gayle. Randy was so unconventional he came to the wedding in regular clothes and a large leather western hat that made him really stand out in the crowd. He had a great sense of humor and helped us make the best of our situation.
After eating a fine catered dinner, something strange happened. Aaron and Gayle, and members of the immediate family got up and left the facility. We were not told what was going on. The waiters began cleaning the tables and it was obvious that we were all expected to just leave and go home. We found out later that the service we had seen was not the real wedding ceremony. It was a mock ceremony held just for our benefit. The real wedding, a secret Masonic ceremony, was conducted somewhere else and we had not been invited.
That might have been a disastrous night for us had it not been for Randy. He brushed off the silliness of all the Masonic formality and took us out on the town that night for what turned out to be a memorable night. We went to the Berkeley Rose Garden, a haunted place where most folks never go after hours. We walked around in the gardens in the darkness enjoying the strangeness of the place, knowing that the ghosts were probably watching. Nothing happened.
We went back up to what I think may have been Tilden Park where Randy brought us to the crest of a mountain looking down over all of the lights of Berkeley and San Francisco, stretching out for miles. It was a magnificent sight. There was a large set of chimes mounted on a concrete or wooden frame that sounded in the wind.
Randy remained with us that night and the next day he and Susie took us into San Francisco where we visited Chinatown, then the infamous Haight Street, the birthplace of the Grateful Dead and so many other famous rock bands. We rode the famous trolleys down the steep hills to the coast and soaked up all of the great things that city had to offer.
Dave was with us for one final visit to Fisherman’s Wharf where we saw the Navy ships, visited the many shops and sampled the rich ice cream covered with Ghirardelli Chocolate. There were many tourist places, wax museums and fine restaurants. We could look out over the bay and see the infamous Alcatraz Island. We had a marvelous time in San Francisco.
What I did not like about that city was driving in the traffic, especially while handling a loaned Cadillac. I was not used to driving in traffic like that and was afraid of getting in a wreck with that car. Crossing the bridge between San Francisco and Berkeley was the worst. We got stuck in dead-stop traffic at times, and sometimes were caught in jams like that on the bridge. The old bridge linking the two cities is a double decked affair, with traffic going into Berkeley moving on the lower deck. I thought about all of the earthquakes that occur in that area and wondered why they would build a bridge like that. I could just imagine the upper part of that bridge collapsing on all the cars on the lower deck and was always glad when we got off that bridge.
It was not more than a few months after our visit that I received a telephone call from Susan one night, while working late in the Sandusky office. The first thing she said was “Dad, I’m all right.” I asked what she was talking about and she told me they had just had a serious earthquake. The quake jolted them around in their apartment, smashed furniture and cracked windows, but the building stayed intact. She said the double deck bridges, and one of the very bridges that I pictured as collapsing on cars below, did exactly that. A lot of people died on those bridges in that quake.