By Bob Copperstone
Wedding in the Sand
I’ve had a chance to recover from my trip to California, and now I’ll share some reminiscences with my friends.
The trip was a destination double wedding of my nieces, Janie’s girls, Kathy and Tina Matschiner, who both live in Lincoln. Tina’s guy, John Robinson, and Kathy’s Russ Black are terrific people. I’m so happy for all of them.
The weddings were on the beach in Santa Barbara, and it was a wonderful experience. It certainly wasn’t your usual wedding experience.
It was a catered affair for about 25 people, with a big, white tent and several pergolas pitched in the sand. The girls had hired a band from LA to play on a portable bandstand, with a dance floor in front. A professional photographer was busy all night. Food was catered, with an open bar.
The grooms and groomsmen wore matching Tommy Bahama shirts, vests, linen pants and flip-flops. The bridesmaids wore long pastel dresses, and the girls were resplendent in full bridal gowns and jeweled sandals.
The lady pastor was barefoot below her white robes, and the guests were garbed in shorts and beach attire. It was, as I said, different.
The ceremony was quite beautiful and touching. I walked Kathy down the sandy “aisle” while Rochelle’s husband, Jack, gave away Tina. (Dang, I stumbled a bit in the sand when starting out on our march, but it turned out OK.)
The fully amplified band really rocked the beach well into the night. It was fun to watch surrounding beach-goers rockin’ to the borrowed music.
They lodged me in a sweet little cottage in nearby Montecito, near the Hobbit House lodge on Miramar Beach that the couples rented (google that – it’s terrific). I rented a car and had the run of Montecito and Santa Barbara, sightseeing, taking a tour of the Santa Barbara Mission and visiting Patricia and Gabriel.
Some of you may have seen the photos that others had taken of the wedding on my site on Facebook. I tried to copy them to email here, but don’t know how. Everyone and his sister were taking photos, so I didn’t take any myself.
The plane trip to California was a disaster, thanks to the Unfriendly Skies of United Airlines. Our flight was to depart at 5:55 a.m., but the check-in was a botched and delayed mess, and the security check was a cattle-herding pandemonium, with four long, creeping lines.
There were five of us in the wedding party on the flight, with lots of wedding dresses and luggage, and as the check-in dragged on, Kathy asked the clerk to call the gate and alert them that we were coming. They didn’t do that, apparently.
Sadly, we got to the gate four minutes after the last call to board was called, and they refused to let us on.
We were stunned, and the girls were naturally frantic, but nothing could be done. Our plane stood at the gate for at least 15 minutes while we chafed and cussed and stared at the closed gate.
No apologies, no sympathetic words or even a listening ear from United.
We five in the wedding party weren’t the only ones denied passage at the gate. We watched the airliner take off with 17 empty seats.
United said they could only book us on a flight the following day, but that would have been impossible. The wedding was Saturday, and the rest of Thursday and Friday had been booked with pastor interviews, rehearsals, rehearsal dinner, staging the wedding site, etc. They wouldn’t refund the tickets.
So Kathy and Russ frantically arranged other flights for that day, rescheduled the rental cars, and we flew into LAX, and drove in a rental van to straggle into Santa Barbara Airport just before midnight to claim our luggage. Our baggage had already been stowed on flight we couldn’t get on.
I’ve got to say, the girls and their guys took the whole thing quite well, and it didn’t hold back the joy but for a brief while.
We had been stranded at the frigid Eppley Airport for 12 hours. It wasn’t fun. My jacket was in my suitcase and I had to suffer in the super-air-conditioned terminal. I don’t know who that guy Eppley was, but I hate him now. I hope he freezes in his coffin.
My solo trip home was similarly gruesome, with United (again – I didn’t have a choice) booking me on a stopover at San Francisco which inexplicably shuffled me to Delta Airlines, whose gates were two terminals and at least a half-mile away, carrying my own luggage and just about missing my connection.
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After the wedding, I saw Patricia and Gabriel only briefly. I wanted to take them to dinner the next day, but I couldn’t get hold of Gabriel again by phone (sound familiar, Jerry?)
Patricia looked fine; a little more haggard possibly, but she has earned that. Her heart is strong, she said, and she is on regular medication. No more heart palpitations or whatever it was. I’m going to call her son and see if he can tell me more about her.
Sadly, Gabe is now making the same mistakes with his old hoarding habits, and the city of Santa Barbara is citing him for the clutter on his property. Just like at his properties in Wahoo, junk is piling up overhead all over the place in Santa Barbara.
To my dismay, even the house is cluttered with junk. He has no plans forward to sell what he’s got – all the stuff he trucked in there from Wahoo – and he’s still buying more junk from thrift stores. His health seems to be fair, as near as I can tell. I give up on him, though. I know I’ve said that before but, at last, there seems to be no happy end in sight.
The two are still living in the same house, but don’t seem to be close. I’m sad for them, but there’s nothing I can do.
The wedding trip was a fine experience. I’m happy I went. I was so proud to see the girls get married, but I’m glad to be home.
But when I go back to California, and if I have a choice between flying and catching a wagon train, it’s gonna be a tough call.
Kathy & Judy Collins
Kathy had told this story about meeting singer Judy Collins several times. I put it together and had her submit it to the New Yorker magazine’s Metropolitan Diary feature in 2022. They didn’t use it. I’m guessing it was too revealing about Alcoholics Anonymous and privacy
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Kathy: send ONLY the text below to NYT’s Metropolitan Diary (no title).Don’t hesitate to suggest other changes or additions before you submit.
Link to Metropolitan Diary to follow.
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I was pursuing a career in opera in the 1990s when I decided to return to my birthplace, New York City.
I had studied voice in Italy where, through my mentor, I met Luciano Pavarotti and others of Italy’s opera-scene movers and shakers.
But Milan was not New York City.
I craved better career connections, and New York contained the necessary celebrities, with their ready-to-rub elbows.
Growing increasingly bolder, I got myself invited to parties, cafes, bars, and other popular entertainment-world hangouts around New York.
I had some early successes meeting some of the glitterati, which strengthened my resolve to taste the glamour that I was positive the upper echelon forever enjoyed.
Then, one evening, I was in the Upper East Side, rehearsing some Donizetti’s scenes in a basement hall in the St. Jean Baptiste (sic) Church at 76th and Lexington.
The hall’s doorbell rang, and I was asked to answer it.
There stood a rather hard-looking woman bearing an anxious, slightly wide-eyed demeanor.
She crowded closer to me on her tiptoes, craning her neck over my shoulder to peek at the people inside.
“Is this the AA meeting?” she asked.
It was Judy Collins.
