We were asked, a number of years ago, to create a label to celebrate the wedding of my brother Ralph's adopted daughter Tracey and her fiancé Kevin. I think it was thought that it would be a cute idea to have a funny label on the wedding theme. The only problem was that Ralph and I weren't comfortable picking on anyone other than ourselves, as stated before, and we didn't want to offend anyone at so important an event. Make sense? We produced a more traditional wedding label for the wine we made for that event and which was served at the reception, and that was that.
But that didn't mean that the creative juices weren't flowing.
The story (or stories) were written actually around that same time, way back in 2003, but the words just sat around in a little file on my computer biding time, waiting to be set free. It wasn't until this past summer that I decided it was time to have a go at producing labels on the theme. The finished labels, by the way, have never actually graced bottles of wine, they're sort of, well, sitting in a file on my computer waiting to be sprung on an unsuspecting public. And here they are for your consideration.
A couple of notes or disclaimers or stuff you should know:
Fist of all, most of the labels we create are a mishmash of various things taken from the internet and other sources with a bit of additional photography thrown in, which usually means us added. They were never intended for any profit-making venture, only for the amusement of our friends and families.
Secondly, I owe a debt of gratitude to a friend of mine, by the name of Sid, who has helped in many ways with the stories, images, and with production of the brochures and booklets that have accompanied the wine and labels for the past several years. Thank you Sid.
I also wanted to mention that if you are interested in Sid's perspective on the history of science fiction, of which topic he is incredibly well read and knowledgeable, you might want to visit his blog as well at theinfiniterevolution,blogspot.com/.
And now I wish to direct your attention to: "The Wedding Wine Saga"
This is an unusual tale, particularly so since it involves the Campbell brothers. You see it actually has a happy ending. No shit. Many happy endings to be exact.
The ins and outs of this story (and excuse the expression but unfortunately it happens to be entirely relevant) begin when this certain fella and this certain Campbell girl meet and fall in love. They decide to get married and against their better judgment don't just run off and elope but decide to have the bride's dad, Ralph, and his younger brother Colin involved.
Thus begins the tale.
Hoedown
In the beginning:
For the first time in their collective history the brothers Campbell have, against all expectation, actually made a profit from their wineing, I mean distilling. They are so paranoid and so unnerved by this that they won’t even keep all the money in one place in case something goes wrong and they lose it all. And each brother won’t trust the other one with the bundle. I guess they haven’t heard about banks. Or maybe they have.
So Ralph has taken half of the money and stashed it in an old Jack Daniels tin that he has hidden away under the floorboards of the shed.
Now it happens that in this day and age there is a very happy event on the near horizon. Ralph’s daughter Tracy is getting married to this really nice fella who’s been a courtin’ her for considerable time. Ralph wants to send them off with a really big bash of the party kind. He tells his brother Colin that he wants a real hoedown for the party. They both agree this would be a great thing and Colin vows to do his best to help out.
Ralph takes out all the money he has stashed, sure that his brother won’t mind his using some of it for the festivities (after all Colin’s got a whole wack more) and starts spending it lavishly. He rents a barn and hires a hillbilly band, jugs and all, and a troupe of clog dancers for the entertainment; he even buys a new copper tub for the food preparation and for something else he has in mind. And then he starts planning the menu and gets down to cooking.
For his potentially lethal feast Ralph gathers all the finest ingredients and locks himself in the kitchen for two days, cooking and sampling. He claims it was only one day but we’re afraid the sampling got ahead of him and he spent the extra day comatose. Unconscious that is.
He prepares what he considers simple and nutritious dishes: chicken done in gin, vodka potatoes, boef aux vin, scotch broth with real scotch, stewed tomatoes, catchers mitt in the rye (later on he wondered why he couldn’t find the damn thing), tequila mockingbirds, with rum balls and brandy apple pie for dessert. There were also some greens around somewhere.
The barn he decorated with ribbons and banners and streamers and sturdy tables for the quantity of food. Ralph stints at nothing to create a real country atmosphere. He even finds a place to put the new copper tub for apple bobbing as part of the entertainment.
He sets out a huge bowl filled with his own special concoction of punch. Naturally it is spiked, heavily.
Lastly he puts several bottles of the Campbell Brothers Wedding Wine onto the tables for the guests.
He's a bit pissed at his brother who had promised to help and then disappeared when there was all the work to do and hasn't been seen now for a couple of days.
When the day of the blissful event arrives, at the ceremony the two brothers don't have an opportunity to talk to each other. Colin, looking a bit worn, stands at the back of the church swaying slightly. Ralph, proud as can be, sits near the front with the rest of his family.
The wedding itself was a small, quiet and tasteful thing. All that would change at the reception.
The Barn:
The band arrives, starts tuning strings and jugs (which involves much drinking) and begins to play soft waltzes and melodic country tunes.
The clogging troupe arrives. Their leader, Paulski, checks out the place, and as he passes the punch bowl he pauses, looks around him, and then spikes the punch. His wife, Karen, a little short sighted, spikes the copper apple bobbing tub instead.
Soon heaps of dead flies surround the punch bowl, and the bobbing tub.
The Campbell clan arrives first, out in numbers for all the free food and drink. Everyone fills their faces, bends their elbows, and jockeys for position, phamily pheromones phlying, eying up cousins, aunts, uncles, even grandparents as prospective dates and mates. Tension mounts as the groom’s family and relations start to arrive. Fresh fodder.
The music picks up tempo. The cloggers limber up and dance some tunes to much hand clapping and applause. There is a little mixing now between the two families.
Ralph, sometime later, looks over the guests all enjoying themselves and wonders if somewhere in here there is maybe someone who Colin might meet and want to settle down with. Where was Colin anyway? He hadn’t seen him for quite a while now. Anyway, he is pleased that the apple bobbing tub is so popular, although he wonders why those who bobbed reported that their faces were numb for the better part of an hour.
Soon, spurred on by conspicuous consumption of alcohol, wild music, musk and, er, spurs really… everyone is dancing, laughing, petticoats flashing, clogs clogging, the barn is filled with the sounds and sights of celebration… and then a Greyhound bus arrives.
Ho Down
The saga continues:
Colin, naturally, misunderstands what Ralph is talking about completely. He thinks that what Ralph intends is for him to get the entertainment for a stag, so he says to himself, ‘Why just get one ho?’
He takes the money from the business he has stashed in the cat box, rents a Greyhound bus and driver, loads up the back of the bus with cases of alcohol (sure that his brother wouldn’t get enough booze for the party, and isn’t he going to be surprised) and goes to the city in quest of nightlife. He soon fills up the bus with ladies of negotiable affection, all decked out in their finest filigrees. They soon discover the cases of booze in the back of the bus and happy hour commences.
Some time and a few libations later they arrive at Campbell's Corners. It's just about dawn. They park the bus behind an abandoned farmhouse.
Everyone on the bus takes a bit of a nap while Colin goes to attend the wedding. After the ceremony he returns to the bus to wake up the ladies and the driver. After a couple of belts for himself, and a little recreation at the back, he feels fit enough to head out for the reception.
...and then a Greyhound bus arrives.
The door opens, the guests look on expectantly, craning for good vantages, and then they all see.
Silence, the dead kind, the type where you can hear the sound of a mouse taking a crap. And then Pandemonium broke loose. Panda – to her friends and clients – could seldom be forcibly constrained by a mere article of clothing. When she opened her arms she gave her all. Some minor cases of whiplash occurred.
And then the voice spoke, ‘Ain’t nobody gonna offer a lady a drink?’
One ankle was twisted and two fingers were broken in the stampede of the testosterone reception committee to welcome the new arrival.
Other startlingly dressed ladies started their climb down the stairs to a chorus of cat calls and whistles. They swirled into the crowd; they sparkled in the lantern light, their aroma assaulted, their presence offended and aroused. And every word uttered from those painted lips was distinctly heard by all present.
Wanda said to the parson, ‘Don’t just stand there with your mouth open honey, come fasten it on this.’ Guiltily, he did.
Louella purred, ‘You call that a jug.’
Rachel spotted some of the cloggers on the dance floor and said to one, ‘Let me try on some of those tap dancey shoes.’
Thalia giggled to herself and then said, ‘It’s like I’ve died and gone to Deliverance.’
Jasmine wandered over to the band and looked at one lanky youth and said, ‘You gonna just sit there or are you gonna blow that thing.’
They had to re-write a lot of the code of the hills that night, the one that said if you see a woman in her undergarments and she wasn’t a direct relation (and we mean really direct), you had to marry her. Well, so many undergarments were on display that men had to marry two, even three, women at a time, sometimes for hours at a go, while some women had to marry two or three men, sometimes at the same time.
A few even discovered that they could come out of the closet, even if it was only a stall and the clothes were only borrowed.
After the initial shock of things, every body found something to do with him or her self, reaffirming old relationships or initiating new ones.
New games were invented including the incredibly popular bobbing for nipples. New dances were also invented like break clogging. Condoms were used for decorations and other things. Several packages now floated in the punch bowl.
Wanda ‘sounds like wanna’ met and subdued herself a man of God. The parson, tied up with her silk stockings, in the buff, in a stall, tears streaming down his face, was heard to yell, “Oh please, just blow Gabriel’s horn.”
And what came of the bride and groom? They disappeared sometime around the sheep incident and took themselves off to be mainly quietly happy together.
The Aftermath:
The next day dawned bright and early, unfortunately. The rooster was throttled mid call. The barn was mainly quiet except for the slight drip, drip and sizzle of an overturned drink eating it’s way through a floor beam. The barn looked like a clothing shop disaster area.
Over the next three days the parson (who claimed to have found a new religion and had frequent and prolonged stall breaks with Wanda) performed several marriage ceremonies. A few of the former night recreation entrepreneurs tied the knots with people they met that night. Some of these new couples moved to the country, others took their new mates with them back to the city.
The mayor and Panda opened a little B & D in town, bed and discipline.
Wanda and Parse have developed their own lingerie line.
Of the two families involved, several of the relations moved to the city and got work in the sex industry.
The Village of Campbell Corners enjoyed somewhat of a population explosion nine months down the road (and there are a surprising number of new members who all happen to share the same astrological sign, Aries). It has become sort of a tourist attraction, with guided tours and everything. The barn has become a shrine, the tub an altar, and the stalls are charged by the hour. Miniature bales of hay are sold in a gift shop as fertility charms, along with a complete range of adult novelties.
The brothers are broke again, and once the bruises and cuts healed up from the fight they had that night, they found that they were surprisingly pleased with a job well undone.
The bus driver was never seen again but it is guessed he was now the operator of a mobile cathouse.
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