Wedding Bell Blues

Tip O’Neill’s reminder that all politics are local came home to me on my bike ride this evening, of all places.

I had turned on to JFK Beach Drive in North Wildwood, headed for a quiet sunset ride on the Boardwalk and then on the bike path to the Wildwood Crest lifeguard headquarters and some valued time on a bench there watching the endless surf.

I had gone a few blocks when I saw there was a wedding taking place in the small pavilion ahead, and I slowed down to have a look.

The bride in a full tulle gown and the groom in a dark suit – new, I’m sure – were standing in front of a minister, waiting to take their vows. The blond bride was suitably radiant and the groom a handsome, strapping young man with a fresh crew cut. I was about to go on when I saw my friend Michelle sitting on a bench off to the side. She gestured for me to join her.

I sat down and Michelle said, “My date” to the bride and they smiled at each other. 

“She’s a Boardwalk girl,” Michelle whispered to me, and then told me the bride, Kate, had worked in Michelle’s three Boardwalk stores and for my friend Tattoo Dave over the past five years. The groom, Dave, she said, managed the big new sit-down Domino’s on New Jersey Avenue in Wildwood.  Jersey Shore bona fides like all get-out for them both.

The ceremony was blessedly brief, and the small crowd gave the couple a big hand. Before that, Michelle had told me that Kate was Russian and that her parents weren’t able to attend her wedding from Russia  because of Trump’s immigration policies even though her father had a valid visa.

Talk about a bittersweet occasion. The most important day in their daughter’s life and her parents missed it because the president of her adopted country is a soulless swine bent on making America Great Again by destroying the basic values that in fact have made us great long before the advent of Donald Trump and his chaotic, evil regime. And will keep us great long after he has been consigned to the dustbin of history – and the ninth circle of hell.

Michelle went up to offer congratulations, and I continued my ride. On the bike path in Wildwood Crest, a Mexican family was enjoying the playground there, the little kids scooting and hooting and the parents joining them on the swings and sliding boards, a tableau of family life at its best and happiest.

And the thought came to me how vulnerable families like this are to the ruthless, still unbridled power of a government led by a true sociopath and his attorney general – the supposed protector of all the populace – who is a rabid racist every day of his stunted, evil life.

And I thought back to the day earlier this year when an ICE swat team had pulled up in their black SUVs at the home of my Mexican neighbors, hard-working, law-abiding legal aliens, and rousted them like common criminals until they were shown proof that these docile, totally frightened people were legitimate. ICE was acting on an anonymous tip, baseless and hateful, and act they did, rude and unapologetic even as they peeled away in their black trucks, leaving my neighbors in stunned shock.

Was this America?