A Putnam Wedding

This is the third Putnam wedding I've been to, and I think my 8th or 9th visit to Putnam, but not many make the voyage there, so this will fill you in on the county that is Putnam.

I finally arrive at the Horstman estate, farm, whatever you want to call it about quarter to 7 Friday night. The drive is pleasant, although 25 minutes into it I remember I forgot my dress shoes, but it's ok, it gives me an excuse to stop at Walmart in Fremont, OH, home of the Chuck Woodson, Aberfoyle, Little Giant Football, and Kyle Kusmer. I also begin my video, which will be available for copying later in the week, once edited down to one tape.

Back to Pat's house, Pat and Kyle have already left for the rehearsal dinner (Pat being in the wedding party, Kyle reading at the wedding). So I sit and watch What's My Line with Mary Jane (Pat's mother) and Rob and Dave roll in from Dayton. They tell us that it will be a miracle if the other carload of people from Dayton get here (Kristin, Colleen, Mark, Ryan, Regina), because Pat was too busy trying to be a smartass in his directions.

Sure enough, as we're all watching Greed together, the Riviera calls, they're lost, and Mary Jane gives them directions to the house. Rob decides to go up and get some cold ones out of the fridge, and it doesn’t surprise me that he brings back the official beer of Putnam County, Busch Light.

Pat and Kyle get back from the rehearsal, and soon after the Riv shows up. After exchanging pleasantries and enjoying, er, drinking another Busch Light, we head out to Theresa's because she's having a gathering at her house after the rehearsal. I think, isn't it odd that the bride is having people at her house on the eve of the wedding, I then remember, Putnam.

Well things die down there, and it's time to go out to a Putnam bar I've never visited before, the Out Post. It just so happens that Pat's older sister is bartending…trouble. A few locals are enjoying their evening until we get there (Jim and Laura jump on, so now our posse now totaling 12, including 3 minors, one of which being Hartzell wearing a leather cowboy hat) and they quickly leave, leaving the whole Out Post to us. One of the first things I see is a Jeff Gordon plaque, so I know this place is official. The jukebox was an oldschool one that only had singles in it, not the whole CD, but fortunately it had 2 Brittany Spears singles, bad country (which was good for them), 3 Backstreet singles, and Pour Some Sugar on Me. Did I mention yet that the pitchers were $3? That was bad news.

We are up to our usual antics during the night, some of the key moments: Tim coming out of the closet and admitting he's a Backstreet Boys fan, a roundtable discussion on Jennifer Capriati, Hartzell and Colleen performing for Backstreet songs, Rob doing EVERYONE in by getting a double shot of Jack Daniels for everyone towards the very end of the night, Hartzell and Mark re-enacting a bar fight and nearly tipping over a table, and while I was doing my impersonation of Def Leppard's one-armed drummer during 'Pour Some Sugar on Me,' Rob ripping open 5 sugar packs and dumping them over my head. That about ends that night.

Everyone is awoken to Mr. Horstman singing "Love Shack" upstairs in the kitchen. Apparently he hadn't ever heard the song until a few weeks ago, and has fallen in love with it, so all we're hearing all morning is "love shack, it's a love shack. Love shack, it's a love shack." Luckily, while he's butchering this B52's classic, he's also whipping up a boatload of eggs and making everyone breakfast. The Horstmans were very generous for letting us crash there and feeding and putting up with us.

Everyone gets their eat on, and one-by-one, reluctantly take showers. Why is everyone delaying the shower as long as possible? Because the water smells like POOP! Example, you step into the bathroom, and even if it hadn't' been used all day, it smelled like someone just dropped the kids off at the pond. I mean, if someone did drop a mean deuce, it would smell better than the normal smell of the bathroom. So one by one we take showers in the poop water, which also does not come of because it's soft or hard, whatever one that doesn’t make the soap come completely off, so you're left with a filmy feeling on you. I don’t even want to talk about what an effort it was to get the nerve to brush my teeth was.

We all get rolling and take off for the wedding. We get in some pews fairly close to the front and for some reason act like we own the place, being all giddy and such, until we get several stares. The wedding starts up, at several points Hartzell and I get giddy for some reason, and act like little schoolboys. Mark fell asleep several times during the ceremony, and Regina had to wake him up for the important stuff like exchange of the vows, etc. It was a nice ceremony; the priest was out there though. Probably the best thing he did was in the middle of the homily, where he's talking about marriage and the commitment and how Theresa and Ben love each other so much, he stops and says something like "some of you may have been here early and noticed that I had the bells rung at noon today. Today marks a sad day, it is the 27th anniversary of the 'abortion thing.'" He talks about it for a little, then says 'well, that's not what we're here for today'.

The ceremony comes to an end; the couple and wedding party are getting pictures taken in front of the church. We all sit in the back of the church and to find people that just got there today, a bearded Brian Marinik and the 10 Lawnview girls. Well, off to the reception, right? Nope, this is Putnam, remember? Time to go bar hopping BEFORE the reception. So everyone heads to the Bomb Shelter down the road. It is at this point that Mark and Ryan change into their reception outfits, Mark, a corduroy sport jacket to match his corduroy pants, Ryan a pink sportjacket, both of which Mark found while digging through my dad's old clothes.

Bomb Shelter is another good Putnam bar. Same style jukebox, again, containing Brittany, Pour Some Sugar on Me, Backstreet, some George Jones for Rob and the Macarena. I timed it perfectly that the wedding party all strolled in as the Mararena was getting started, which started everyone doing it. Stop and think about that, a bar full of country folk, everyone all gussied up, some in tuxedos, one in a wedding dress, all doing the Macarena. Well, after a while time to 'hop' over to Splinters, which is back across the street from the Church.

So we arrive at the Knights of Columbus hall, get settled and start getting going. It isn't long though before 615 came around, and Rob, Dave and I have to get behind the bar. When first hearing that I had to bartend I was a little nervous, I cant make more than 2 or 3 drinks. But then I remembered from previous Putnam wedding experience, all that is served is beer and the 'mix'. The beer on tap was good ol Busch Light, and Old Milwaukee, both regular and light. The 'mix' is straight whiskey and sprite. It isn't' even that difficult to do because they had a big tub with a spicket on it, so we'd have to fill it up with 1 bottle of whiskey and 4 pitchers of sprite and mix it up.

Bartending was slow at first, then the slide show started so we had no customers, but then we got swamped once the slide show ended and it didn’t slow up until we closed down the open bar at 830.

Square dancing. A whole K of C hall square dancing, think about it. Pat's dad was one of the ringleaders and got mad when people didn’t want to dance with him.

The bouquet and garter belt - this wouldn’t have been a big deal, except for the fact that my brother got the garter belt on the pure fact that he was the tallest person out there, with the longest reach, so all he had to do was stick out his arm. Upon winning, Mark was called up by the DJ, and was told he had to put the garter belt on Theresa's cousin I think. Mark had it at her knee then stopped…of course the DJ made him go higher and higher, until Mark was even more red than she was. I'm sure Regina was delighted with this.

The 'infamous' "hog trough dance" - a Putnam county wedding ritual, if the bride gets married before an older sibling, which was the case, as Theresa was married before her older brother, a hog trough dance is in order. The older sibling has to dance in, around, and all over a 1 by 3-foot hog trough. Luckily it is cleaned up and everything, but it is one of the most ridiculous things you will ever see. Soon enough the whole wedding party was dancing in and around it, and the hoedown continued. Dave commented that is wasn’t an all-out hoedown though, because there weren't live fiddle players there, and I'd have to agree with him there.

Hang On Sloopy - When Hang On Sloopy is played, being the official 'rock song' of the state of Ohio (the truth), it gets things going with the hardcore Buckeye fans in Putnam. "Hang on sloopy, sloopy hang on, O-H-I-O," with appropriate arm movements to form the letters. I'm sure Putnam isn't the only place that does this at weddings, but I think they do it the best.

The Train Skit - The wedding party has to do a skit apparently at the wedding, so Pat got up to the DJ booth and said something that since Ben's an engineer now, they made a big train on a cart that Theresa had to pull him around on. They played 'come on ride the train', and Theresa started pulling Ben and a congo line stared. They cut the music and Theresa's friend got up and said this isn't how things go, Theresa, you're the nurse, time to give Ben a shot of reality, and they had a big shot for him, then Ben had to pull Theresa, they played some country train song, at which point I pushed Hartzell into the train so he could be the first one on the congo line (he was talking all day about how he wanted to start a congo line).

The Gator - I didn’t see this until I went to the videotape, but Bob Kusmer had a new dance during "Shout" ("you make me want to shout, put your hands up and shout"). When it got to the 'a little bit softer now' part, Pat, Kyle, Jim, Hartzell (I don’t know if Bob himself did it) crept down low, then got on their backs and when it was time to get 'a little bit louder now' they, still on their backs, throw their arms and legs up in the air and go nuts.

Love Shack - I didn’t see this until the video, but when love shack came on our entire posse surrounded Pat's dad because this is his song.

Mark and Ryan interviews - Mark and Ryan interviewed random Putnam kids. Many interviews started by them simply asking, "what do you think about Y2K?" and the rest taking off from there. My favorite interviews: M & R talking to the DJ's beforehand about Y2K and the future of the minidisc player, Mark and Regina talking to Toby, who couldn’t have been older than 2 or 3, Mark talking to the kids building houses out of playing cards, then getting them to smash them repeatedly, and Ryan outside talking to two junior high kids, and one of the first questions he asked was...

"So, do either of you live on a farm?"
"No, but I work on one."
"So what do you do, milk cows?" (jokingly)
"Yep"
(Ryan and I look at each other, I lose it, he runs with it)

Ryan then carries on a conversation about how he hates machines taking over jobs and how he can tell the difference between hand milked cows and machine milked cows. I was in tears.

At the end of the night Mark and Ryan were plotting how they were going to abduct Toby, and how they would lure him into the van in the parking lot that had no windows in and a Nintendo in the back.

We made it back safe and sound though, and since I didn’t drink because I was driving, some of us had a night cap and shot the shit with Pat's mom for a while before finally crashing sometime very late/early in the morning.

Well, apparently at some point during the night Mark and Rob both broke one of the two rules Mrs. Horstman gave us for the weekend, no puking and no sex. Take a guess which one they broke together?

We were all late risers, so by the time we got up it was closer to noon, and Mr. Horstman started making genuine Horstman burgers, from their own cows out in the barn in back. I don’t think anyone showered Sunday due to the poop water.

We watched football until Pat, Rob and Dave got back from Pat's grandma's, because they went there so Rob could plow the driveway with the Bobcat since every time he has been there he's wanted to ride the Bobcat but it's been covered in manure.

That's about it I think. This was going into 6 pages in MS Word, but I felt as if I could spare no details in revealing a Putnam County wedding to the outside world. Pictures will be developed soon, as well as the editing of the film, which will be most damaging. Yes, I do need to find a job...soon.