Political correctness started with weddings

Leroy Nettles Sr. is the Perry Mason of the city without a lake. He and his wife, Beverly, have been married 55 years. Leroy says, “The longer I am married, the better it gets.” When I told him Peggy and I would celebrate our 49th wedding anniversary May 24, he congratulated me and sent Peggy his condolences.

When Leroy and I got married, the organ played “I Love You Truly.” Today they play, “Why Me Lord.” A marriage license doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee, but if marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws.

I’ve been under the same management since 1959. I have discovered marriage is nothing but trying to get used to what you didn’t expect.

May 1959 at the small wooden church at Sandy Bay, it was so hot the devil was selling snow cones, and he refused to accept checks from the Floyds and McKenzies.

We feathered our nest with a lot of down payments, and Peggy was determined to make one husband last a lifetime. The first time she baked a biscuit, Peggy said, “Try one, it’s full of vitamins.” They say love is blind; it is also dumb. I had the IQ of an egg roll, and Peggy didn’t realized brand X made husbands.

Why do brides wear white? Because all kitchen appliances are white! In 1959, that was funny. That was before feminism.

Today, remarks like that light up the switchboard at the newspaper.

If we practiced the Ten Commandments like we practice political correctness, lawyers would starve to death.

The average person doesn’t realize that political correctness started with weddings. It’s all about the bride. She carries a beautiful bouquet of flowers. The bride’s dress costs more than a used pickup. The organ plays, “Here Comes the Bride,” while the groom is out in the hall wearing a Hertz rent-a-tux he got from the funeral home. Every time the organ plays soft music, his arms cross.

Forty-nine years ago, the county record in Kingstree covered Peggy’s wedding. I was mentioned in the last paragraph as an itinerant disc jockey who comes from Columbia, where they put mustard on barbecue. It is alleged that the groom was involved in criminal activity in Hemingway, bootlegging boiled peanuts.

For a half-page, the newspaper gushed about her hair, her complexion, her dress, her family and the bridesmaids. On May 24, 1959, Sandy Bay was hotter than a $2 pistol. Peggy promised to let me control the television remote during football season, and I promised to love and obey. The preacher didn’t say a cotton-pickin’ thing about eating her biscuits.

After the ceremony, I asked preacher David McKenzie how much I owed him.

He replied, “Just pay me what you think it’s worth.”

McKenzies don’t get mad, they get even. To celebrate our wedding anniversary, I gave Peggy a battery-operated backscratcher and a pair of stretch pants.

Forty-nine years ago, Peggy found a perfect husband. She is still looking for that perfect pair of shoes. Loves is blind, but the seeing eye-dog leaves hair on the carpet.

— Charlie Walker is a local newspaper columnist. He can be reached at P.O. Box 441, Kingstree, SC 29556.