SAY CONGRATS! Brad and I got married 35 years ago today! Thirty five years ago, on March 24th, we eloped to the Everglades. We got married in Monroe County, Florida, at Monroe Station. We had seen and taken note of, a huge white marquee in the middle of nowhere, for a old gas station that read, “Swamp Marriages Performed Here.” We saw this on one of our previous trips to the Glades and laughed uproariously. But, . . . too late, we were already snared by the innocuous spell of Fakahatchee Strand and that deep solicitous swamp.
We were married with the Lord’s (honest, that is their name) "Sweet William" Lord, seen in far left of photo, was the owner of Monroe Station and Brad’s best man. Susie his wife, was my bride’s maid and our witness. Someone in the restaurant/bar, ran out and made me a beautiful bouquet composed of stray daises and wild flowers, plucked spontaneously from the back yard just for the event. They stuck my bouquet into the cut out circle of a white paper plate. We put a quarter in the jukebox and played, “We Got Married in a Fever.” And so we did, “we got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout....” After the 5 or 10 minute ceremony, we both wept. We were so moved. It didn’t matter that our JP was drunker than a skunk and actually bobbed precariously in front of us like a bobber on the water as he read the “I do’s“ from his musty bible.
It didn’t matter that Brad had picked up my wedding ring at a pawn shop in Immokelee the previous day for $15. bucks. It sparkled all the same deep into my heart. Earlier on that day we had gone fishing. Brad landed a huge Snook on his fly rod. After pulling it into our canoe, he remarked, “Today’s a good day to get married.”
We got a room at the Rod and Gun Club in Everglades City and headed for Monroe Station to be wed. Just as we arrived, the sky opened and a veil of soft rain plummeted down all around us. We started to get nervous! The hard rain spooked us like two juvenile snook seeking cover amid the long, swaying turtle grass in the more gentle shallows. Then I remembered It was Good Friday. I said to Brad, of course, it always rains at 3:00 on Good Friday. After we got married, we went back to the Rod and Gun Club. We dined elegantly at a candle lit table, white linens, fine white bone china, gleaming silver, and our own fresh caught snook. In fact there was so much snook (that’s how big it was, honest) that we told the chef to serve it to everybody in the restaurant. All the dinner guests turned, rose and tipped their glasses to us. It still gives me the ‘goose bumps” just recalling that moment.
Since it was still raining and I was already carrying a sacred passenger - our son to be, Matt McCourtney, Brad told me to stay on the huge veranda and wait. He leapt into the air, landed with a splash and sang at the top of his lungs, (and if you know Brad, this is very uncharacteristic behavior for him) “I’m Singing in the Rain.” As he sang he ran deftly up and down the the steps of the veranda arms open wide and a heart brimming with love. A better Jimmy Stewart? Show ‘em to me! He then tipped his hat (which I am wearing in the photo as my veil, ushered me into his arms and carried me to our little fish cabin on the premises. He ran pell mell and I remembering tumbling to the floor, wet, yet safe within his arms as he kicked open the door.
This is a true story. Here we are 35 years later living on Siesta Key, as we always have, with five kids - a ready combo of both step and natural children, seven grand babies, and another on the way. The photo? It too has its own saga. Years later Brad took Wilson and Matt on a fishing trip in the Glades. They canoed and camped out. On the way home, Brad stopped in at the Lord’s. After talking to the bartender and staff, he looked around and there pinned to their wall, along with hundreds of other photos, was this shot. All of you probably know, Brad and Matt and Wilson (our two sons) are professional photographers! Imagine Brad’s amazement upon laying eyes on this photo. We had not even realized at the time that someone in the bar area took a picture of us to commemorate our wedding day. All those years, probably ten or eleven years later, Brad discovered it. Time, he said to himself, to take this baby home. A couple of years later, we received a letter from the Lord’s. In a barely legible scratchy bit of script inked on to a child’s penmanship piece of paper with wide blue lines, they told us that they were selling the old place and were mighty proud to have participated in our swamp wedding!
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