It came out OK with the garage door. Sort of. I guess.

The repair guy showed up on time on Saturday a.m., and he knew what he was doing. Instead of employing arcane, specialized tools to get the door open, as I expected, he used a lever and brute force. Then he informed me that nothing was actually broken. The bolt on a pulley had worked loose, and everything had flown apart. He put it all together, added a locking nut, oiled the rollers, and tightened the bolts. It now hangs much higher when it’s opened (meaning I can put the antenna on Mrs. Hermanson up a little higher, enabling me to hear AM 1280 The Patriot for maybe five minutes longer when I’m driving out of town), and everything runs more smoothly. It cost me on the low side of what I feared it might cost.

He also warned me that it’s an old door, and when (not if) something does break someday, they may not be able to find replacement parts.

I feel like that most days, myself.

So I was able to head out to Montevideo (no, I’m not kidding you. There really is a town called Montevideo in Minnesota. It’s over on the west side. We pronounce the name wrong, though) shortly after lunch. My recently purchased car compass proved its value when I missed an exit and realized, at length, that I was on the wrong road. I knew, however, that I was going in the right direction, so it was no big deal.

If you don’t live in the American Midwest, you may not be aware that our roads are mostly laid out on a grid—north/south roads intersecting with east/west ones. So all I had to do was turn north (it involved a detour, but everything does in Minnesota this time of year) to get back to my original course.

It was a small town journey, traveling what William Not-So-Hot Moon calls “blue highways,” under a cloudy sky that spit on me occasionally. I was in a mood to drive the speed limit, since I’d seen a highway patrolman ticketing a driver early in the journey. This led, as is so often the case, to a number of cars piling up behind me. I solved that problem by turning into a lot in one of the towns, waiting for the parade to pass me, and then pulling in again at their rear.

I arrived just in time for the wedding, said hello to some of the relations, and got seated with them. I made it through the ceremony without making a spectacle of myself, which I like to think was a pretty good achievement.

It was, I think, the biggest wedding I’d ever seen. There were eight (8) bridesmaids and eight (8) groomsmen. Two (2) flower girls, and two (2) ring bearers. I was half expecting Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell to conduct the ceremony.

Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell appeared in musicals during the Depression, which provides an elegant transition to a description of my mood that day. Weddings are like a perfect depression cocktail for me—you’ve got your happy couple enjoying the long-awaited day that I’ve been awaiting a heck of a lot longer and have given up on now. You’ve got your attractive young women, who were unreachable for me even when I was young, and haven’t come any closer with the years. You’ve got your crowd of people with whom I am expected to interact pleasantly, when I just want to run away.

I do my best. I honestly do. If people knew the things I want to say, and the faces I want to pull, they’d know that my sullen, mumbled conversation and my stone-faced, eye-contact-avoiding aspect are actually the results of considerable effort, and a genuine act of brotherly kindness.

Not that that buys me anything.

But the relatives know there’s something wrong with me, so they put up with it. My uncle and aunt (grandparents of the groom) talked to me for a while in their nearby house, and sent me off loaded down with caramel rolls and Special K Bars, when I opted to skip the reception dinner.

What was really embarrassing was that the aunt from California, whom I came to see, wasn’t there, and hadn’t even planned to be there. I’d entirely misunderstood the information I’d been given.

Still, any social event attended by me which doesn’t end with the deployment of SWAT teams and hostage negotiators can’t be called a complete disaster.