<TITLE>09. Par 88-103</TITLE>L-88 Doc said, "Well, my brother is a preacher, and--and he--he may marry you." He said, "He never charges people for things like that."
He said, "Will you ask him if he'll marry me?"

L-89   Well, that night my brother asked me. I said, "If he's never been married before, either one of them, and their everything is all right." He said, "Well, yeah, I'll ask him." And I said, "If it is, tell him, come on down."

L-90 So, when Saturday come along and the boy came down. Been a great thing for me, to always look back upon this. I'd... Rainy afternoon, and an old Chevrolet car, with the headlights wired on with a baling wire, that drove up, out front. Just a while after I had lost my wife, and I was bach'ing, two little rooms. And--and Doc was up there with me, waiting for them.

L-91 And--and a boy got out of the car, and he certainly didn't look like a groom, to me, or would to anybody, I guess. Yeah. I could bare... buy a pretty good pair of shoes, for a dollar and a half. And he had on a pair, was run over. And his trousers was real baggy. And he had on one of these old moleskin jackets. I don't guess some of you older people would remember. It looked like it had run through a washing machine without being rinsed, and it was streaked, tied up like this, and the corner up.

L-92   And a--a little lady got out on the side, with a little, oh, some of them little checkered-look dress.

L-93 I don't know. I made a mistake on calling that kind of goods, one time. Gingham, I believed it's called. And so it was a... I said it wrong again. I--I'm always doing it. And I said...

L-94 She got out of the car, and they come up the steps. And--and when they walked in, the poor little thing, she... I guess, she, just about all she had on was a skirt. And she didn't have no shoes, hardly, on. She had hitchhiked from Indianapolis, down. Had a little hair hanging down, back, in long, kind of a plaits down her back. Looked very young.
And I said to her, "Are you old enough to get married?"

L-95 She said, "Yes, sir." And she said, "I have my written permission from my father and mother." She said, "I had to show it to--to the court here, to get my license."

L-96 I said, "All right." I said, "I'd like to talk to you a little bit before we perform this wedding." They set down. The boy kept looking around the room; needed a haircut real bad. And he kept looking around the room. He wasn't listening to me. I said, "Son, I want you to listen to what I'm saying."
Said, "Yes, sir."
And I said, "You love this girl?"
He said, "Yes, sir. I do."
I said, "You love him?"
"Yes, sir. I do."

L-97 I said, "Now, have you got a place to take her after you marry?"
Said, "Yes, sir."

L-98 I said, "All right. Now," I said, "I want to ask you something. I understand, you're working up here on this P.W.A."
And he said, "Yes, sir." That's about twelve dollars a week.
I said, "You think you can make a living for her?"
He said, "I'll do all I can do."

L-99 And I said, "Well, that's all right." And I said, "Now, what if he gets out of... What if he loses this job, sister? What are you going to do, going to run back up home, to mama, papa?"
She said, "No, sir. I'm going to stay with him."

L-100 And I said, "What, sir, if you have three or four children, nothing to feed them, and you haven't got any work. What are you going to do, send her away?"

L-101 Said, "No, sir. I'll struggle right on. We'll make it, some way."

L-102 I felt little. And I seen that he really loved her, and they loved one another. I married them.

L-103   Then I wondered where he taken her. A few days, I asked my brother, Doc, where it is. He said, "Go down to New Albany," a little city below us.


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