The Naked City

Vacation 2015 is over and guess where we went: New York City.

For the past three vacations, we've gone to New York City, which is a city so nice they named it twice. It takes two or three times to go to New York to really appreciate it.

This was a significant vacation because we ran into so many famous people.

For example, at the Atlanta airport we walked past Al Sharpton. I'm not quite sure what Al Sharpton does or even why he is important. But, he is on TV a lot and that's what counts.

We landed at LaGuardia and found a taxi which proceeded to drive 500 mph to our hotel which was on West 40th Street. The important thing to remember about  West 40th Street is that the Port Authority Bus Terminal is at the corner 8th Avenue and 40th Street.  If you want to know where they got the idea for all of the creatures in The Star Wars cantina scene, just go the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

So while the hotel was very nice, you had to navigate going past the Bus Terminal which had every weirdo ever created on God's green earth coming out of it, if you wanted go to Times Square.

We saw another important person at Time Square: The Naked Cowboy. The Naked Cowboy is a franchise of guys who wear whitey-tighty underwear, boots, a cowboy hat and a guitar. That is all.

The Naked Cowboy sings songs about being: A) a cowboy and B) being naked. He makes his money by posing for pictures with female tourists. It is Capitalism at its best.  There was a market for women having their pictures taken with a man wearing whitey-tighty underwear and boots and The Naked Cowboy meets that need.

However, The Naked Cowboy is overdressed when compared to The Painted Breast Girls of Times Square.

We met our old pal, Stephanie Harkins on Times Square who informed us in very clinical terms (Stephanie is a nurse) about the girls who walk around Times Square with "painted boobies".

Actually, Stephanie said they wore pasties around the most interesting part (my term-not Stephanie's), but still, you don't expect to see someone walking around like that even around The Port Authority Bus Terminal.

We did see The Painted Breast Girls of Times Square. Them ain't pasties, y'all.

I know because I was able to make a couple of scientific observations before I ran into a light pole.

You know who else we saw? K.C. and The Sunshine Band.  K.C.'s contribution to music is mainly encouraging us to shake, shake, shake our booties. He also had us do a little dance, make a little love and  get down. In the 70's, all we did was shake our booties, dance, make love and get down. It was before the smart phone.

K.C. still tours and he sort of/kind of dances around the stage if your definition of "dance" is elastic. His main move is to do a figure eight around his backup singers.

We also saw Judge Andrew Napolitano who despite a brilliant legal career, is now mainly known for his hair going from gray to jet black overnight. I think he's figured out which box of Just For Men to use because his hair looks a little more natural.

Before Just For Men

After Just For Men

My wife and I were walking in 30 Rockefeller Center when she grabbed me by the arm and said, "Don't turn around!".  Ladies, a little bit of marriage advice: Never tell your husband "not to turn around". It is like telling him, "Don't stare at those girls who have painted breasts". Of course, I turned and around and saw Lester Holt. Here is my report on Lester Holt:  Lester Holt is about  7' 8" and might weigh 100 pounds.

We were at 30 Rock to watch a taping of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon".

I have always had mixed feeling about "The Tonight Show" since Johnny Carson retired. I enjoy it but it is still not the same. I was a little bit wary of when Jimmy Fallon was named the host because Jimmy Fallon cannot do a monologue.

But, he's come along and it is a fairly enjoyable show. Luke Bryan was the singing guest. He's a graduate of Georgia Southern University and sings sexy country songs. The song he sang, "Strip It Down" had lyrics like "Throw you bra in the air, like you don't care" and it made all of the women swoon. [Note: that is not an actual lyric. But it should be.]

Life is not a permanent vacation. We had to come home and on the tarmac we saw our last celebrity: Donald Trump's plane.  It is a huge, classy plane, probably better than all of the other planes at the airport, if you want to know the truth about it.

Giving A Hoot About College Football

In case you didn't know, our favorite professional sport, College Football, is ready to start.

The mighty, mighty, mighty Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets which beat not One but TWO different SEC Bulldog teams, will open the 2015 campaign by playing Alcorn State, which is a college in the state of Alcorn, on September 3rd. The effervescent coach of  Georgia Tech, Paul Johnson, promises another year of looking like he wants to ask you about your whole life policy.

Like a good neighbor, Paul Johnson is there

I kid, I kid.  It was a sad day in my house last November when Tech beat Georgia on a last second field goal which caused one of my millennial friends to tweet, "I hope he (the kicker) gets (sex) tonight".  I always hate it when Tech beats Georgia. It is like they become physically and morally superior to you on top of being smarter. That's a bad combination.

To be honest with you, I had some really big plans for this College Football season because this is the first year of the Kennesaw State Owls football program. Pardon me while I hoot.

Still Undefeated

I had this grand scheme. I was going to contact the Sports Information Director at Kennesaw State and see if I could get a press pass to the first home game. I was going to use this angle: 1) I am an alumni that has generously given tens of dollars to the University and 2) I am a famous blogger (which I'm not, but almost a thousand people have read my blog on The Eagles documentary and that ain't chicken feed.)

Then I was approached about publishing some books. Well, I had to finish writing a book that I started in 2003. Hey, if Harper Lee can take her time on a book, I can too. Additionally, I started writing another book.  I think my son got married somewhere in there. In any event, I looked up and it was way too late to contact anyone about a press pass.

I looked into buying season tickets but something bad happened.

Our air conditioner died on us in July. The one rule about air conditioners at Manis Manor is that they will break in July. Right on schedule, it broke, and it couldn't be fixed. Fortunately, I still had a kidney or two I could sell on the black market and we were able to buy a new air conditioner.  It is worth every kidney.

So, unless the Lord stirs the heart of MY FRIENDS TO GIVE ME A TICKET TO THE HISTORIC FIRST KSU GAME, it looks like I won't be there to sing our fight song, whatever it is, as The Owls take the field for the first time against Edward Waters, who I assume is bringing a team with him.

Meanwhile, back in Big Time College Football, did you see who Nick Saban, the head coach of  Alabama, admit who he would commit adultery with?  Hillary Clinton.

First of all, I cannot imagine Nick Saban having a Non-Football related thought. I'm not sure he does non-football related things although I did see a YouTube clip of him doing The Electric Slide.

Secondly, no matter what your political persuasion, Hillary Clinton has long left the "doable" category that we guys keep in the smutty Rolodex of our brains.

I confess to being one of those Republicans who sees Clinton as a combination She-Wolf and She-Devil. But, in the interest of bipartisanship, 1993 Hillary wasn't that bad. She washed her hair back then and was sort of built in a Midwestern kind of way. But now, I can't think of anyone who'd say "Hillary Clinton: Yeah, I'd hit that".  I know Bill hasn't said that in decades.

 Not Too Shabby

Saban's reasoning was not that he finds Hillary Clinton attractive. She doesn't block well, she is slow as Christmas, she can't throw and really isn't that much a team player. His reason: You don't want to sleep with someone who has less to lose than you do. Therefore, the only woman he can think of that has more to lose than he does is Hillary Clinton.

For argument's sake, let's say Nick and Hillary hook up. It would really damage Nick Saban's reputation, mainly because she wasn't a 5 star recruit. However, it would do wonders for Hillary Clinton. Clinton being Saban's gal pal would  probably enable her to carry the state of Alabama in 2016.

"The Coach & HRC" sounds like a title of a book I could write. At this rate, I'll never go to a Kennesaw State game.


  

Who Will Not Become President: Donald Trump (Reprise)

Back in 2011, I wrote a couple of blog posts under the theme "Who will not become President". I did it as a public service, because, let's face it, someone needs to tell these people there is no way they will ever become President and that's okay. We've only had 44, 43 if you don't count Grover Cleveland twice.

One person I wrote about was Donald Trump. You can read it here:http://manisville.blogspot.com/2011/04/who-will-not-become-president-donald.html.

I'm not bragging, but it was almost prophetic. So much so that you might want to take me along when you buy a lottery ticket.

But here we are again, four years later, and Trump is actually running for President. He is leading the GOP field.

He is real popular with a certain type of Conservative GOP voter. The Conservative GOP voter that hates all other Republicans and would love to kick Mitch McConnell in the gonads. The type of voter that thinks Rush Limbaugh is a RINO.

I've heard it time and again that Trump is a conservative. What, pray tell, is conservative about Donald Trump?

He is not conservative in demeanor. He is not conservative in his morals. He is not conservative in his political thought.

This is a man who is: pro-abortion, pro-government health care (like Canada's) and he has proposed punitive taxation on the wealthy. He has given campaign contributions to Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton.

Even a blind pig can find an acorn and Trump has found his acorn: Illegal immigration.

Granted, both political parties truly suck big time when it comes to illegal immigration. They are so out of line with the thinking of the average American, it is really pathetic. Americans do not have a problem with immigrants. Americans have a problem with illegal immigration. Republicans tell us to just shut up while Democrats call us a bigot and tell us to shut up.

Even though Trump has not put forward a plan for stopping the flood of illegal immigration, he has found his market. In the words of  Kevin Williamson of The National Review, "(Trump) makes authoritative grunting sounds in the general direction of the southern border, which apparently is sufficient for one in five Republican voters." 

Trump, a man that got four student deferments and one medical deferment ( for a bone spur in a foot and he's forgotten which foot), doesn't think much of John McCain because McCain was a POW in the Vietnam War. (“He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, I hate to tell you.”.) This didn't even make sense when Chris Rock said it.

 

Conservatives, at least  I thought, honor all servicemen and recognize the bravery of those that were tortured so you could learn how to build a casino with your name on it.

 

In an interview with Frank Luntz at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, you could practically hear the gears grinding in his brain as he was talking about religion. His spiritual mentor: Norman Vincent Peale (Inner Trump dialogue: "Surly these hayseeds have heard of him"). When asked if he ever asked for forgiveness, he said, “I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so.” (Inner Trump: "I've never done anything wrong in my life, but I better at least try to be humble").

He went on to say, “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”(Inner Trump: "What did Norman say? I'm drawing blanks") He finished this great theological treatise with a flourish: “When I drink my little wine—which is about the only wine I drink—and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed.” (Inner Trump: "That ought to satisfy these clodhoppers")

There is no way Trump can win the Republican nomination, but he can run as a third party and guarantee the election of Hillary Clinton.  If that happens, he might want to ask for forgiveness.

 

 

Pop

First of all, let my acknowledge what a privilege it is speak about one of the most unique individuals I have ever met, Wayne Clancy. Pop.

Like a lot of you, I met Pop at the ball field, Oregon Park. There was a little boy there that had a word on back of his jersey. That word was “Knieriem” and I grew up with some Knieriems  in Beverly Hills (the subdivision in East Cobb- not California- I just like saying that to sound pretentious). Sure enough, the little boy was the son of our old pal, Butch Knieriem. I remember seeing this older man at all of the baseball games. He never missed. It was Wayne Clancy. Pop.  He was there rooting for his grandson, Kyle. But the thing about Pop is that he rooted for the other kids as well. You also learned that Pop never met a stranger.

Soon we were in the Kennesaw Mountain High School Football program and that’s where I really became friends with Wayne. From 2003 to 2008.We would sit around watching the practices together.  Pop and I would  chew the fat, gossip and solve the world’s problems. I learned he used to work for a bank and he graduated from The University of Louisville. He loved history and was delighted to learn that I graduated with a degree in history from Kennesaw State.

By the way, I know there are many denominations and faith traditions represented here today and you may not be comfortable doing this, but hey, I’m a Baptist and that’s how we roll.  Raise your hand if Pop Clancy ever told you that you were his hero.  He said to me, “Alan, you’re my hero!" I said, "Thanks, Pop, why is that?"  He said,  "Because you’re the only history major I know that has a job.”

It was at the practices that I learned Pop was a man of faith. He wanted to find a “church home” and decided to come  here to Roswell Street, where he joined the same Sunday School class as my in-laws. Who then in turn invited Pop to our various family functions.  The one meal I will always remember was the one in which my mother in law and Pop started discussing the pleasure of  smoking “rabbit” tobacco. I don't quite know what "rabbit" tobacco is except that it is a good smoke.

I always say the only thing I have going for me is my punctuality, but Pop had me beat. One time, the Mustangs were playing Woodstock  in Woodstock. My wife, Lori, had a company meeting she had to attend and would have to meet me at the game.  I said, “No problem, I’ll just drive my car up there”. Lori then explained to me that if I drove my car to the game, we would have two vehicles at the game. And that would be wrong.

She suggested that I contact Mark Rudder and catch a ride with him because his wife was going to be out of town. I really didn’t want to-I didn’t want to impose and plus, Mark has a different view of time than I do. It is okay with him to arrive at an event ten minutes before the start, unlike an hour before the start like I do.

Well, my wife and I discussed it and we came to a compromise: I would do exactly what she told me to do.  I contacted Mark Rudder to see if I could catch a ride with him to the game.  Mark graciously agreed to take me and as a concession to my obsessive-compulsive disorder, we went up to the game early.  We got to the Woodstock High stadium about 15 minutes before they opened the ticket booth at 6:30.  Because of this, the stadium was locked.

We waited around and finally they opened the ticket booth and the gate. When we got in, we saw one person in the visitor’s stands: Pop. “How long have you been here, Pop?” I asked him.  He said, “I’ve been here since 3:30. They locked the gate on me!”

 In the Baptist Church you will hear that “someone has a heart for young people”. Truth be told most of the time that means the person likes the  “cool kids at the cool lunch table”.   The Varsity.  The King and Queen of the Prom.

I can honestly say to every young person here that Wayne loved you. He loved the Varsity and The Junior Varsity. He didn’t care if you were first string or last string. He didn’t care if you hit a home run or if you struck out. He didn’t care if you scored a touchdown or if you fumbled. He didn’t care if you were pretty. He didn’t care if you were ugly. He didn’t care if you were rich. He didn’t care if you were poor. He didn’t care if your Dad graduated Summa Cum Laude or like me, “Praise Laude”.  He just loved you because you were here and that was a good enough reason for Pop.

You will hear a lot of people talk about Pop and prayer. I have never met a person who prayed as much as Pop. I never met a person who prayed more for young people than Pop.  Pop took prayer very seriously and it would upset him when a kid would do something and make a mistake. I’ve heard him say, more than once “Maybe I wasn’t praying hard enough”. That is hard to believe.

For those of you that don’t know, Pop has 2780 (and counting) Facebook Friends. I can guarantee you that he has prayed for all 2780 friends.  One time I saw “the list” of all of the young people he prayed for.  When I saw it, I think he had about 2500-3000- kids on it. My understanding is that the list grew to include the names of six thousand kids. Off the top of my head, I can name of several kids who had no idea Pop was praying for them and I can see how God has worked through their lives.

I know he prayed for Benjamin William Manis when Ben went to Georgia Southern University, which is the capital of Hedonism in state of Georgia. He prayed Ben through Finance, Accounting, Business Statistics,etc.  (and he wasn’t the only one!) . Ben graduated from Georgia Southern. He has a job, a wife, and is out of the house. If that’s not an answer to prayer, I don’t know what is.

Pop really loved Facebook. He would post devotionals and would make comments on various other posts. One time I posted a verse from my favorite Bob Dylan song, “Every Grain of Sand”. Pop liked this particular post. The verse says:

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
    And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

If there is anyone who knew that every hair is numbered like every grain of sand it was my friend, Wayne Clancy. 

Blame Me

I am a white Southern male. It is all my fault.

What caused this epiphany?

An opinion piece by Michael Lind titled "How The South Skews America" in Politco. The subtitle says, "We'd be less violent, more mobile and in general more normal if not for Dixie".

I wish I could say the article gets better, but it doesn't. Think of all of the non-cool things about America and add a quarter cup of ick and you have The American South.

Mr. Lind says, "The United States would be much less exceptional in general, and in particular more like other English-speaking democracies such as Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were it not for the effects on U.S. politics and culture of the American South."  Yup, if it wasn't for Bubba, we would be just like New Zealand. Yay!

In the next paragraph he sniffs, "I don’t mean this in a good way. A lot of the traits that make the United States exceptional these days are undesirable, like higher violence and less social mobility. Many of these differences can be attributed largely to the South." Like the higher violence that can be found in the iconic Southern city of Chicago, Illinois.

He continues, "As we learned after the slaughter last month in Charleston, S.C., some deluded Southerners still pine for secession from the Union."  And some deluded writers seek to tag an entire region of the country for the act of one sociopath.

Oh, that's not all, not by a long shot. Lind says, "Minus the South, the rest of the U.S. probably would be more like Canada or Australia or Britain or New Zealand—more secular, more socially liberal, more moderate in the tone of its politics and somewhat more generous in social policy. And it would not be as centralized as France or as social democratic as Sweden."   Note the word probably. This just a wild guess that we would be like that blessed Canada.  He really does not know but it is just a hunch since nobody in any another region of the country acts as goofy as a Southerner.

But don't think Lind is Bubba-phobic. He adds this sentence to give him objective credibility: "As a fifth-generation Texan, and a descendant of Southerners back to the 1600s, I don’t want to encourage lurid stereotypes of a monolithic South."  Of course not. Why would we ever doubt you?

He says "The states of the former Confederacy include ethnic minorities like Louisiana Cajuns and Texas Germans, along with African Americans. And the dominant conservatives in the South have always been challenged from within the ranks of the white community by populists, liberals and radicals."  Yeah, we got some cool people like Broudreaux and all of them, but nothing like those Texas Germans.

Lind appears to be a self loathing Bubba.

The rest of the article is a hashing out of so-so to so-what statistics with conclusions that really don't necessarily mean what Lind says they mean. For example, he says, "White Southerners are more likely than white northerners to respond to insults with increased testosterone and aggression, according to social scientists" but doesn't bother to quote the "social scientists" or how the "social scientists" would know. His next sentence:  "According to the FBI in 2012, the South as a region, containing only a quarter of the population, accounted for 40.9 percent of U.S. violent crime."  It would be nice to know actually how much of this "violent" crime was due to insults that increased testosterone and aggression in Bubba and not, oh, just to pick something out of the sky, a drug deal gone bad.

His political history is a little spotty in my opinion. He says, "More recently, the country-club Republican supporters of Barry Goldwater and John Connally have been swamped in Southern Republican parties by a wave of working-class white Southerners who are heirs to paranoid and sullen Dixiecrat conservatism, not sunny and optimistic Goldwater-Reagan conservatism."  One: Barry Goldwater was never a country-club Republican. Two: when John Connally actually ran for something as a Republican, he got a grand total of one delegate to the 1980 Republican Convention. Three: it is hard to imagine a similar opinion piece written in 1964 referring to Goldwater as "sunny".

Basically, Lind believes that The South is one gigantic stick in the mud because of white Southerners. We white Southerners didn't support the transformational Barack Obama because we were clinging to our guns and Bibles. Not that we might have some legitimate disagreements. Are you kidding me? It is because all of us crackers are issued Klan cards at birth.

I wish Lewis Grizzard was around and could have read this article. I wonder what he would say?  "Sumbitch" is my guess.

Culture Chiggers

I have been putting together a compilation of what I consider to be the "best" of Humor Me, as if that isn't the ultimate in oxymorons.

This is all part of my attempt to become a famous writer, or at least a writer that makes some money off of what he writes.

As I was going over my posts, I realized that I wasn't as political or as active in taking a stand on the hot issues of the day. There is a reason for this:  I am tired.

Seriously, I have had a death, a wedding, and a book this spring, so I'm pretty bushed. But there are somethings that have bothered me and I haven't commented on because I really didn't want to go through the hassle of defending them.

Take for example Bruce Call Me Caitlyn Jenner.  This has become a Culture Wars  Rorschach.  If you call Jenner "Caitlyn", you are a fine human tolerant human being. If you call Jenner, "Bruce", you are Adolph Hitler.

Conservatives are always blasted about "settled science", especially in regards to "Climate Change". I'm not a scientist, but when the sperm fertilizes the egg, it brings a x or y chromosome. That's settled science. Those two chromosomes determine the gender of the person. That's settled science.

True, there are some anomalies. There are woman born with  male genitalia and men born with female genitalia. (I'm surprised there was never a band called "Genitalia".) However, there are never males born with male genitalia that are really women.  Particularly when they are sixty-five years old and have fathered 6 children. This makes the person a male. That is settled science.

Now, if he wants to spend his hard earned money and "become a woman", that's his business. Live and let live is always a good philosophy. Just don't expect me to throw him a parade.

But that's not enough in today's society. No, we MUST throw him a parade. In fact, you are not even allowed to ponder the notion that perhaps since he (at least for now) has kept his original equipment and this journey just happens to be part of a reality show that just maybe this is an elaborate charade.

No, The cool kids at the cool table have determine that WE ALL MUST celebrate Jenner's new life. One tweet on Twitter said, "If you mistakenly called Caitlyn 'he' - fix it! If not shut the F---up!". Ah, our tolerant of everybody's views millennials. At least the tweet  gave us the chance to correct our grievous error of calling a person with a wiener (settled scientific name) a "he" before the order from on high to shut up the F---. (Like it was ever opened in the first place.)

There was one message board that automatically turned the "he"s into "she"s  and the "Bruce"s into "Caitlyn"s. Really.

It is all so tiresome and so worthless. It reminds me of chiggers, which are little red bugs here in the South that can burrow under your skin and make you scratch. They won't kill you, but they are pain in the neck.

There are a million and one culture chiggers these days.Each one demand an immediate opinion and if it is wrong, the order from the cool kids is to shut up. Like it and lump it. Celebrate it and mean it.

That's why a lot of us have kind of pulled back a little. It just gets tiring trying to explain the obvious, like a why a person that has fathered six children is a man.

We're not retreating, we're just regrouping, hoping you guys find something else to do.

Another Groom

As I have said before, I take pains in not being too personal in Humor Me.

I have written about subjects near and dear to my heart, but I generally don't write real personal stuff, mainly because I'm fairly sure not a lot of people would be interested.

However, we have just completed a weekend that my wife and I have been looking forward to since January 15, 1991: The day our son gets married and leaves the house.

Our son, Ben, married his long time girl friend on June 6 (D-Day!) in Fayetteville, Georgia.

When my son was growing up, I gave him some instructions on what to look for in a future wife. I told him to look for someone smart and for someone attractive because we have plenty of the other kind in the family. I also advised to him to try to marry someone with a little height.

Ever the compliant child, my son did just that--and then some! She is a former runway model and she graduated Cum Laude from Georgia Southern University. She is also tall. She's says she is 5'11", I think she might be 6"0'.

For those of you that are planning a family, I would advise you to try-no make that PRAY- that you have a son.  Tradition has the bride's family responsible for the expenses of the wedding. Years ago, this wasn't that bad.

However, now weddings can cost anywhere from 1 MILLION DOLLARS to 20 TRILLION DOLLARS, depending if there is an open bar. My advice: burn down your house and collect the insurance money. You might want to burn down your neighbor's house and collect their insurance money, too. It is your only hope.

I know of some weddings where the parents forked out a considerable amount of money for their daughters' weddings only to have the marriage not make it past the two year mark. In fact, I can think of two that barely lasted six months. There ought to be some sort of prenuptial agreement that if Mom and Dad are going to spend 5 Billion Dollars on a wedding which includes doves flying out of the bride's dress, the couple must spend a minimum of five years together.

I am happy to report that my daughter in law and her family were budget conscious and did not go overboard. The bride had three bridesmaids: her sisters.  Her mother made the bridesmaids' dresses and the mother of the bride dress. The bride wore her grandmother's wedding dress. It was all very, very beautiful.

The responsibilities of the Groom's side is this: The Rehearsal Dinner. Maybe we had to buy a flower or something in there somewhere. Basically my job as The Father of The Groom (TFOTG) ended when I created a boy child. My responsibility was to sit back and watch.

I am also happy to report that The Rehearsal Dinner went off without a hitch. I'm not quite sure what we spent on it, but, whatever it was, it was well worth it. We invited my best friend, Wakko Wade and his wife Daffi Di to it and we had a grand time. I got to sit with the Pastor that was marrying the Bride and Groom. He's a Southern Baptist Pastor from Wales, of all places, which gave the event a neat little United Kingdom flavor.

On the day of the wedding, my son was nervous, of course. We met in a holding room before it was time to start the proceedings. The groomsmen all prayed for my son and his new wife. The pastor also prayed for the new couple. When it was over, I left to go find my wife because I had to walk in behind her, which was my other duty. Half way up, I turned around and went back because I realized I didn't say goodbye to my son. I walked back and said these words to him, which I'm sure will stay with him for the rest of his life: "Um, I'm going to find your momma. See you up front."

I found my wife in the Bride's room. The Bride was nervous as well. Then her mom wanted to pray a blessing over the bride.  Let me tell you: it was a blessing of Biblical proportions. It was absolutely one of the sweetest prayers I have ever witnessed. It caused all three bridesmaids to burst into tears. I stood there thinking my blessing for the groom was "See you up front" .

The ceremony went off without a hitch. When they got engaged, I gave the happy couple this bit of wisdom: It will all work out.  It did.

The Father of The Bride arranged a little surprise for the happy couple to leave the church. He had someone drive the new Mr. and Mrs. Manis off in a classic 1936 Packard convertible. The old Mr. and Mrs. Manis followed in a 1937 Packard.  He and his wife followed in a motorcycle. He wore a vest that read:  And Then There Were Three.

Of all of the things my son has done: school, sports, music, etc, this wedding was the one thing I never worried about. I knew she was the one for him. The wedding ceremony just confirmed it.