The Honeymoon

I realize now that this should have been the first blog of all. I never plan ahead. I have been thinking for several weeks now that I have run out of blog subjects and wondering how can that be. Before I started all of this writing I thought I had years worth of tales to spin. So tonight as I am sitting with the dogs next door it dawned on me that I do have more. I will start with the Honeymoon. I might sometime want to go back and relive the wedding but that will take some long, hard thinking. That's a lot to share with strangers and some of it is ugly and most of them are dead.

I might as well use the husband's name rather than to continue and call him the husband. I don't think he can sue me. Well, not yet anyway. His name is Kreg.

My brother, whose name "was" Connie and who "was" married to Connie Sue, was a character. His name for Kreg was "Candy Ass". My brother was a "Smart Ass" and that runs in my family.

My brother and his wife had eloped in South Carolina, I think in 1961. So he was an old married man and quiet the expert on marriage by the time Kreg and I got married in December, 1962. Connie and Kreg had become friends and they both loved to hunt, fish and hang around together when there was time (when Connie had time -- remember Kreg watched lots of soap operas). Connie, at the time Kreg and I got married, was a Deputy Sheriff for the County.

As a Deputy Sheriff he traveled alot and met lots of people through his work. He was a gregarious person, knew lots of people and everyone liked him. Well, I guess those that he arrested or gave tickets to didn't care for him. Anyway, the point is that he new where to hunt, where to fish or where to eat....anything you needed to know, he could help.

So for our Honeymoon, we decided to rent a elegant lake front home 25 miles from our hometown. We had a December wedding and it was cold, so there would be no swimming or sunbathing and my idea and Kreg's idea of a honeymoon were a little different. I didn't learn that until we left our reception and headed for the lake front home.

Oh my God, we were both so excited (I think) and I must have had 2 cups of rice in my french twist hairdo. It was dark by the time we got to the Lake and found the keys and began our first night as newlyweds. We had plenty of booze, snacks and food for for a week. I remember the next morning we awoke to someone beating on the front door and it sounded more like someone was trying to break in.

Kreg got out of bed to peep out the windows to see if he could see who it was. As he got near the door, Connie yells "CANDYASS GET UP", Kreg ran barefoot to the door and made him get in before he woke up the neighbors. My brother came thru the house yelling "Lydia, Lydia you ok, you up"? I remember laughing and shaking my head and as I did, rice started falling all over the bed. I was up and dressed and went into the kitchen as they were both trying to figure out how to make coffee. I asked Connie what on earth he was doing at the Lake and on my Honeymoon? He explained that he and Kreg had plans to go duck hunting. Well that was news to me. That was not the way I thought you spent a Honeymoon, going separate ways.

After the guys got the coffee perking and Connie was fixing breakfast, Kreg dressed and got his hunting gear from the car. Hmmmm, he had a plan after all. Boy was I in the dark. I think I just smiled and went along with it -- glad that everyone was happy. There were magazines for me to read all over the house and besides I had to figure out what the hell to do with my hair, other than comb the rice out.

I think Connie and Kreg were gone about 3 hrs and when they returned freezing and bitching because they sat in a duck blind in sleet and were frost bitten. They wanted me to fix them soup and sandwiches to warm them up. Wait a minute, what on earth was wrong with me. I am sure I hurried and fixed them a hot lunch but then when I looked into the sink and saw the two dead ducks they left there I cried and cried. There was no need to kill those two little ducks. My God, we didn't need food, we weren't starving. Those assholes, they killed for fun. Then they made fun of me -- that's why you go duck hunting.

They ate and got warm and went back for more. Yes, I got dumber while they ate. I had decided that since the ducks were dead I would be a good wife. Jesus, I can hardly believe I am telling anyone this story. Not only was I dumb I was SICK! I remember as a child when my mother would fry chicken for lunch on Sundays. My grandfather raised chickens (and we lived in Town) and he would chop the head off of a chicken and throw the flapping headless chicken at me (probably the fear I have) and then later on my Mother would pull the feathers off the chicken and what she didn't pull off she would burn off with a newspaper. Do you have any idea where this is going? I bet not.

So after looking at the pitiful ducks in the sink I picked one up. Oh it was awful, who feels my pain? Anyone? So I held the duck by it's little webbed feet and tried to pull the feathers out. That's not easy to do. My Mother made it look really easy. I got a newspaper and sat at the table in the kitchen and put the duck on the table in hopes it would be easier that way. I didn't dare call my Mother and tell her what I was doing on my Honeymoon (either way...ducks or no ducks). We would both have been horrified. Sitting at table was no better. Those damned feathers were not coming out. Maybe duck feathers and chicken feathers are different -- ducks stay in the water all the time. It was time to go to Plan B. I decided to look for scissors. Found a pair of them rather quickly. Added more paper to the table and the second duck. By that time I was over the ducks being dead. I just wanted to get the damned feathers off the ducks and prep them for cooking, like a good wife would do.

It took quite a while to get all those feathers cut off. The heads were flopping all around each time the bird was turned. Had to do the neck and the butt (not pretty) and the belly feathers. The neck and belly feathers were very short anyway. Now Plan C was going be relatively easy, or so I thought. How hard could be burning the rest of the feathers off? I'd seen it done many Sundays. Piece of cake. Search was on for matches, cigarette lighter and more newspaper. That's the way Mother did it. She would roll a newspaper up so that it would stay lit for a long time, long enough to burn all the feathers off. Well, I decided I would use one big paper roll per duck.

This was during a time when everyone smoked. There were no lighters or wood matches anywhere. I found a single book of matches. There were 3 paper matches in the book. Damn, that wouldn't work. I knew something would go wrong and I would be out of fire. So I opened every drawer in that house. No matches (can you imagine) but lots of candles. Off to the kitchen I went with candle and candle holder. Lit the candle and made sure it had a good wick and once I realized it was going to burn for awhile and I grabbed a duck. The candle sat firmly on the table and I held the first duck by its head and feet and rolled it over and over the candle flame, like a rotisserie. By God, it worked. It worked but..... the house was filling up with smoke and feathers and I was choking on both. What the hell. This never happened to my Mother but she never did it inside. So I propped all the doors open in the house and some of the smoke and feathers went out, but not alot.

The house smelled like someone had set my hair on fire. God it was awful. So I took the duck out on the screened-in porch and put it on a newspaper. The other duck was on it's own. If they wanted the ducks fixed then by God, they could fix them. I was really distraught. I had my hopes set on having the ducks all ready for them to cook and eat when they returned.

Well when they finally did return, it was dark outside, all the doors were propped open and the house still smelled like burnt hair and all this little fuzz (called down) was still flying around. Connie and Kreg both came in yelling and asking me what the hell happened and WHAT HAD I BURNED. I told them the story and I cried and cried. They laughed and they laughed. Then they drank bourbon from the bottle to warm up and they laughed some more. Connie explained to me that I was right about our Mother doing that. But what she was burning was the pin feathers. NOT THE FEATHERS. He said that what I had done was classic and that I had outdone myself. The worst part was that the ducks were wood ducks and not edible anyway.

Connie Sue came that night to spend the night (on our Honeymoon) and we all got drunk and we all laughed at my screw-up. We cleaned the house before we got drunk though. The next morning, after everyone had coffee and aspirin and decided we might live, we laughed again. Later in the morning Connie yelled, "Candy, Ducks on the Water, Ducks on the Water". Stupid us, we all ran to look. There were always ducks on the water, it was a lake. To this day, when I see ducks on the water I want to yell out "Candy, Ducks on the Water."

By weeks end the smell was gone and hopefully all the feathers. This month will be the 46th anniversary of that Honeymoon and I bet somewhere in that house you can still find duck down.