Isn't This Romantic ? . . .

. . . A Tale From The Colony

It seems to me that here are two people who were being very frugal when it came time to join each other in marriage, foregoing the very expensive wedding gown and bridesmaids get-ups, blooms from a florist shop and an expensive catered banquet.

Here's another newspaper days story and conincidently one also tied to Randy the photographer, whom I wrote about inthe blog about the sewage field. Before I get into this yarn, a little bit about the wonderful relationship Randy and I had as a team for most of our seventeen years together.

As a team we covered hundreds of events, fires, murders and horrible accidents, he calling me in the middle of night oftentimes with news tips and vice versa. Our phone conversations were always brief:

His voice: Fatal, Curran Highway and Hodges Crossroad. Murder, next to the hotel. Richmond Hotel, general alarm fire,

From my end: Randy, house fire, Savoy Road. Gasoline tanker overturned on Columbia Street. Explosion at the high school.

In a few minutes we'd be on the scene almost simultaneously. We did a lot feature stories together. He'd have an idea, get the city desk's approval and ask the city editor to have me go with him.

That all said, here's tonight's recollection:

Onr day he said to me "we're going to cover a wedding this afternoon, you'll like this one." Now, weddings usually fall into the baliwick of the society reporter but I didn't argue with him, I could do a wedding story as well as anybody.

Ww drove up Notch Road, a hilly, bumpy ride toward the top of Mount Greylock, tallest mountain in Massachusetts. "What are we doing up here, Randy? There's no church up here." No answer.

Presently he nosed the Jeep into the words and said abruptly "we'll probably have to take off all our clothes here."

I did a double take when I heard that and suddenly saw a rudely printed sign on a tree reading "nudist colony"realizing then that Randy was taking me to an "au natural" wedding. I had no idea there was such a place so close to my home just down the mountain. Randy had a knack of ferreting out secrets like that.

To say the least, this assignment was a revealing experience. The bride and groom exchanged their wedding vows amid hordes of guests in their birthday suits, exluding the minster, Randy and me. (Thought you wre going to read more about us, didn't you?)

While Randy had posted in his darkroom many Playboy and Penthouse photos and even a few of local gals in scanty to no attire, his front page photos of the wedding the next day's paper were discreet. A bush covered the law and the bride's bouquet of roses spread in the right places on her attractive chest.

Most of the guests earned dull to bright sunburns that afternoon and after the potluck banquet, but nobody was redder than me. Randy, if he was stilll alive today would no doubt be remeinding me of my color every year on that couple's anniversary.

Down the line a bit I''ll have a story about Dolly the darkroom assistant and sometimes aviator, a petite woman who soon followed Randy's unfortunate demise to cancer, herself becoming a cancer victim at an age when she was too young to die.

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