Ours was as low-budget and rudimentary a wedding as you could ever picture. The total cost was $800, including the price of Cheryl’s dress. We had no reception, just a simple ceremony followed by cake and nonalcoholic punch in the church’s courtyard. Cheryl and I hung around for twenty minutes to pose for pictures and cut the cake before a smaller group of friends and family migrated to my parents’ house in Toluca Lake, five minutes away. Mom had made champagne punch and put up some helium balloons. That was it.
Aunt Julia, now in a wheelchair, came all the way from Duncan, her hair as blue and tall as ever. Granddad Beckenholdt, my last surviving grandparent, did not make the trip, but he had given our union his blessing the previous Christmas. As a surprise to Dad, Clint and I had pooled some of our money to secretly fly Granddad out—his first and only trip to California, which he very reluctantly signed on for.
We built up the suspense to Dad like the actors we were. “Your Christmas present this year, Dad—you won’t believe it,” we kept saying. “It’s going to blow . . . your . . . mind.”
“What is it?” Dad asked.
“Oh, it’s big,” I said. “But it’ll fit. You’ll appreciate it.”
I was playing chess with Dad by the fireplace when Clint returned from the airport with our guest in tow. Granddad wore an old sport coat and a dress shirt buttoned to the collar—a farmer dressed for church. He walked in and silently shook Dad’s hand. It was the only time that I ever saw Dad stunned and at a loss for words.
As reticent as Granddad was, he was taken with our setup on Clybourn Avenue. About half an hour into his visit, having had a look around at the four bedrooms, the living room, the dining room, the den, and the spacious yard, he said, “Well, Harold, it looks like the show bidness has been pretty good to you after all.” It was the biggest affirmation that Dad ever got from his father.
Of equal importance to me, Granddad was really impressed by Cheryl. Before he flew back to Kansas, he took me aside and said, “Seems to me a feller like you’d probably oughta go ’head and wind up marryin’ a girl like that.”
MY GROOMSMEN WERE three of my Cordova Street buddies, Noel, John, and Bob, plus Anson, Donny, and Charlie Martin Smith. Our matching rented tuxedos were the apotheosis of mid-1970s men’s fashion: wide-lapeled and powder blue, with ruffled tux shirts in the same color. All us guys sincerely thought that we looked incredibly cool. At least Cheryl looked timelessly beautiful in her traditional white wedding dress with a flowing train.
The only reason Henry wasn’t officially in the wedding party was because he was away on location, filming a TV movie. He implored the production to let him hop on a plane to attend the ceremony. He arrived early, with a George Harrison mustache and hair down to his collar, and we put him to work as an additional usher. The network’s machinations and favoritism had done nothing to strain our friendship.
Andy Griffith and Don Knotts also came, which moved me no end. I no longer saw much of them, but, like the de facto family that they were, they showed up when it mattered. So, too, did People magazine, which dispatched a reporter and a photographer to the church. They must have been baffled by our completely unglamorous affair, but to their credit, they were respectful.
The getaway car was driven by my best man, sixteen-year-old Clint. He was charged with driving the very grown-up new vehicle that Cheryl and I had bought together, a boxy maroon Volvo 240 station wagon. My groomsmen decked it out with the traditional accoutrements: streamers, tin cans dragging from the back, and a JUST MARRIED placard.
I was a little worried about being driven by Clint that day—he couldn’t stop giggling and burned rubber the whole way. Fortunately, it was a short drive and we all got there fine. But I suspect he was high.
CLINT
Yes, I was high. I took a couple of pipe-loads before the festivities kicked off, and as far as I was concerned, I was going to be perfectly fine behind the wheel. By age sixteen, I had fully integrated marijuana into my life. I was smoking weed morning, noon, and night. It was so damned accessible through my classmates who were dealers—one played on the Burroughs football team and another was the most popular guy in auto shop. I could score a four-finger bag of Colombian for thirty or forty bucks, and that would hold me for a couple of weeks.