The Wedding Diaries - Day 3 - Sagebrush Booze, Pre-Wedding Blues and Grandmother I’d Like to $&@
The problem with going to bed at 3am hopped up on wine, nicotine and happiness is that morning arrives awfully fast and in this instance, painfully hard. As I struggled to open my eyes, I recalled in an instant that today was the day I was going to meet up with all my groomsmen, grab their tuxes and then hit up a Mexican restaurant called the Sagebrush, where the stories and beers would flow with equal velocity. I had been looking forward to this for months, and so I showered the stench off of the night before, threw on my shorts and flip flops, left my boys with Christina and her family and raced my mini-van back to the ginormous mall to meet up with my pals.
Not wanting to make the same parking mistake I made the day before, I recalled that the Mens Warehouse was right next door to something called "I
Toby Keith Bar and Grill". Now I don't know if this was his idea or his publicists idea or something he found sewn inside the seams of his "Bad Idea Jeans", but what kind of a narcissistic boob names a restaurant/bar after themselves like that? Knowing this exists makes me feel better about taking the Dixie Chicks side years ago when they got into with Toby over the war efforts and the job W was doing running our country. Now, having gotten that out of the way, I noticed while I was leaving my parked car that there were quite a few good looking girls heading into his establishment, so perhaps old Toby is on to something. Each girl I spotted walking in had long blonde hair, cutoff shorts, cowboy boots and tight black tank tops. I filed that into the back of my brain, and made my way into the mall.
The first of my friends to arrive was Fred, who took a red-eye flight from Portland and had just landed a few hours prior. Fred is what some might call a member of the "Lucky Sperm Club". Born into money, blessed with good looks, superb athlete, married the prettiest girl from our college who, like Fred, hails from a wealthy family...it doesn't suck to be Fred. Nor does it suck to be Fred's friend, which I have been since we met in college in Jackson, Miss so many years ago. Like me, he escaped the deep south as fast as possible and now lives just a few minutes away from me. He got his tux fitted, picked it up and we tossed it into his rental car. Since the rest of the guys were a little late in meeting us, I suggested we go see what was shaking at the "I
Toby Keith Bar".
Now I know I've been harping on how big this mall is, but this bar of Toby's is the biggest bar I've seen since I visited Billy Bob's in Ft. Worth, Tx. We walked in and were just blown away at the spaciousness. There was a full sized pick-up truck hanging from one of the walls. There's a green room for bands and just endless space. As it was 11am, we were the only guys in there, but bellied up to the bar all the same and were greeted by a beautiful gal, wearing the same gear I had spotted on my way into the mall earlier - tight jean shorts, tight tank top, cowboy boots and, oh yeah, an enormous rack. I ordered up a large Shiner Bock, which came in a mason jar and Fred ordered up a cranberry and vodka, which our bartender made fun of him for and correctly called his order what it was - a Cosmopolitan. Fred said he needed something other than beer, but I didn't know he grew a ###### on the airplane ride over.
As we were drinking our drinks, my other friends texted to say they were there, so I left Fred at the bar, ran over to the Mens Warehouse and said hello to Dean, Petty and Greg. Where was the best man, Peyton? Well, after waking up at 7am at my in-laws house, disoriented and confused as to where he was, Peyton went back to the hotel and slept for another 8 hours. He had his tux already, so that was fine, but a little bit of a bummer considering I was looking forward to all of us hitting the Sagebrush for beers later. I told the guys to try on their tuxes and then join us at the bar next door to finish our rounds and then head out. I came back to find Fred, who was still chatting our bartender up. I joined into the conversation and just a few seconds into our banter heard her drop the bombshell that she had a granddaughter. A what? Are you kidding me? This woman was 39 years old and had a little granddaughter. I was shocked. If she had told me she had cocaine based breast implants, I would have believed her more. She laughed at our amazement and calmly said she started early and so did her daughter. I guess so. I'm sure she really loved it when I told all my buddies who were trickling in that she was a grandmother, but I just couldn't get over it and neither could they. Grandmothers are supposed to have liver spots and wrinkles and drive Buicks and smell of mentholatum. This lady could win a wet t-shirt contest. Man...
We closed out our tab, loaded up into my mini-van and drove to the Sagebrush Cantina, where we met up with Tiny and my wife's little brother Phil, who my buddies think looks just like a young Soprano. This was everything I had hoped for and more. My buddies took turns roasting me up and down, sharing every damn story where I made a donkey out of myself and giving Tiny and Phil all sorts of goods on the guy who was about to marry into their family. My belly hurt from laughing so hard at the end of lunch, but it was worth it. We threw back a few pitchers, grubbed on some fish tacos and just had a blast. However, back at the in-laws' house, the bride was growing impatient and began to text me this very sentiment. Seems as if my two sons were fighting all morning/afternoon over who got to play what on her parents' Wii. Add to it my parents and sister and her two kids were over there, all asking her a million questions about this that and the other while her man was out enjoying the afternoon with beers and Mexican food and the fellas and, well...She was ready for me to come home. So we settled up, I took my buddies back to their rental cars at the mall and I headed back to the house with my sister's husband Greg in the car with me. And then the phone rang. And it was her and she was just asking where we were and why it was taking so long to get back and I might have told her to get off my back and that I was heading home and at some point, I thought the phone cut out because my cell coverage in that area is spotty at best and, well....I tried to crack a joke to make Greg laugh, only this backfired. Hard. Thinking that the phone call had been lost, I kind of, sort of screamed into the phone "AND WE'RE GOING UP TO WINNIPEG TO BONE SOME HOOKERS!!!!"
Heh heh heh....you know where this is going. She was still on the phone. And while Greg and I were cracking up, I looked down and realized in horror that she was still holding the phone to her ear and was not so happy with me.
Well, I'm an idiot and if there's one thing in life I'm above average in, it's groveling and saying sorry. Which I did in a major way, as she was in tears when I got to her house. I tried to explain what happened with the phone and that I was just making a joke, that I didn't even have a passport to go into Winnipeg, but she wasn't very happy with me and I certainly understand why. At least when I do something stupid, I go all in.
Anyhow, we made peace, I showered up and we got the boys dressed up for the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. The rehearsal at Addison Oaks went fine if you forget the fact that my buddies were about 20 minutes late showing up, thanks to a third rate GPS system and a bottle of Jim Beam that I spotted in their car. Their tardiness didn't sit too well with the bride, but we got everything done that needed to be done and then we left for the rehearsal dinner at the Rochester Brewery. This turned out to be a lot of fun. Charv and JTC joined us for the festivities, which included several great beers on tap, plenty of wine and a seemingly endless supply of pizza. I gave a toast at one point and unlike my mother, who gave the most awkward toast in the history of toasts at our bridal shower, pulled it off pretty well. In fact, I think I got back into the good graces of the bride with my speech, which is all I wanted to do.
As the dinner wound down, I handed my boys and my keys off to my gal, gathered up all the fellas and handed out my groomsmen gifts. I gave each one $25 in cash plus a few great cigars, and from there, we left to go to Tiny's house for a Texas Hold'em bachelor party. I'd like to tell great tales of legendary stature, but this evening was very tame, which was good considering the wedding was the next day. Tiny turned his garage into the perfect poker room and since the weather was perfect, he had the garage door open to the outside world. At one point, we spotted a football. It didn't take long before we were putting money into a pot to see who could throw the football from the garage on top of the rental car across the street. Nothing like 15 drunk men trying to toss a football onto the roof of a rental car at midnight in a nice, quiet neighborhood. I busted out early from the poker, as did most of my friends. JTC didn't last too much longer, but thankfully he took over as dealer for the game's final players. The last two standing were Tiny and my cousin Blaine, who has been going to college most of his life and just now landed his first real job at age of 36. To his credit, he received his PhD in something hard, but he is also a raving lunatic at times. The raving lunatic came out as the game came down to the wire. Tiny offered to split the pot with him, but he wasn't biting on it. He also thought JTC was short stacking him at one point and kind of made a jerk of himself. In the end, Tiny took him down and walked away with close to $200, which was perfect considering he really went all out to host this thing for me.
As the night came to a close and all my friends and family left, Tiny and I stayed up talking in his kitchen until 2:30am. Finally, his wife came downstairs and told us it was time for bed. She said the next morning that after the 10th "I love you man", she couldn't take it anymore and spared us any further embarrassment. Had Cosjobs been able to come through with the Neil Young singing, ice cream cake bearing stripper, this story would have been one for the ages. As it stands, it was a perfect end to a great day and I wouldn't trade my lot of friends in for any other group in the world.