Blase sports fan that she is, Siobhan has nonetheless picked up a few terms that she seems to like. ”Hat Trick” is one of them we hockey fans learn early, credited to a skater or soccer player who achieves three goals in a single game. It has its origins, however, in English cricket in 1858 when a bowler retired three batsmen with three consecutive balls. Flabbergasted at the miracle, the crowd took up a collection for the fellow in the stands and the money was used to buy the bowler a new hat, ergo the Hat Trick. Now when anything presents itself in threes, she asks me, “Is that a hat trick?” I guess we’ll need some rules.
Having been married three times, do I get credit for a hat trick? I don’t see why not, although some might argue that a failed goal doesn’t count. Still, a marriage is a marriage if the license is legit, the minister asks the questions and the loving couple answer in the affirmative, even if the prelate is a ship’s captain, an Elvis impersonator or an ordained representative of the Universal Life Church. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
My first marriage was to the brilliant Marilyn Todd of Austin, Texas at age 22, a very hasty and informal affair stimulated by her father’s unending efforts to bring her back home, legally or not. I asked her if she would be more comfortable if we got married and she nodded in the affirmative. We only had enough money for one bus ticket, so I hitched from Gainesville to Folkston, Georgia and she left the driving to Greyhound. We arrived in the early evening, thinking they had round-the-clock weddings there, but their advertising was in error. The local firemen let us sleep in the front seat of their giant engine and we got married next day at what served for City Hall.
My second marriage, at age 30, was to Harolyn Locklair, a Miami model, in 1970 in a homey field near the Gainesville airport. Harolyn had a five-year-old son almost ready to enter school, so marrying seemed the right thing to do. It was a hippie extravaganza, with liberated doves, clouds of marijuana and ULC minister Daniel Levine presiding. Much of the crowd retired to our house next to the Subterranean Circus for alcoholic refreshments, several falling unconscious on the front steps til the next morning. Calendars are marked from such events.
Both wives were lovely people who had a hand in the success of either my Charlatan magazine or the Circus. Suffice to say they had an imperfect husband unready to be married. After going 0 for 2, I thought I’d pass on future nuptials and meander through life with temporary partners. Every day, there were tempting candidates walking through the door of the store, plums just ready to be picked. People criticized musicians for their abundant stage-door Johnnies, but I got it.
Enter The Salty Vet
Siobhan Ellison was born in Ipswich, England in 1952 and moved to the U.S.A. five years later, a member of a military family which made temporary stops all over the country before settling down in Rockledge, Florida. She was an animal lover whose family took in dogs and cats and monkeys and the occasional horse. From age 7, Siobhan knew she wanted to be a veterinarian and she was not deterred in this pursuit. She eventually earned four degrees from the University of Florida in the hippie era, avoided all drugs and was barely aware the Subterranean Circus existed. Shortly, she built a house and barn in Marion County and went to work for an Ocala veterinary partnership. One of the partners was Ted Specht, my vet, who brought her with him on a visit to my Orange Lake farm in 1984. It was not love at first sight.
At the time, I had a mare named Fast Janice, who was three-legged-lame after running through a paddock fence as a two-year-old and getting a sliver in her knee joint. Janice had one baby on the ground and was pregnant with a second. She moved around well for her condition but was taxed when near foaling. Siobhan looked at me and gave an unsolicited opinion: “You should put this mare down after her next foal, she’s really struggling.”
Who asked you? Ted and I knew her limitations, but Janice got on well enough. Her first foal, a two-year-old, was blazing fast and she seemed to enjoy being a mother. “Who does she think she is?” I asked Ted of his new mentee. He assured me Ms. Ellison was unusually competent and knowledgeable for a rookie, but that was the last time he brought her to my place. Some people!
Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
Eventually, Ted Specht returned to school with the intention of becoming an equine surgeon. One of the other members of his practice was assigned to us, a thoroughly unsatisfactory character who was always late. Being in northernmost Marion County at Orange Lake, we were always among the last to get attention, typically very late in the day when none of us were at our sharpest. I called Ted and begged for succor. “Well, we could get you Siobhan Ellison,” he said. “What she lacks in experience she makes up for in competence and dependability.” Groan. Not her, I thought, the grouch of thoroughbred country.
“She’ll get your mares in foal,” said Ted. “Her track record is amazing for a new vet.” More grumbling. “Okay, send her out,” I finally agreed, less than thrilled. But he was right. The average number for in-foal mares was 65%. The first year, Siobhan got all of them. The second, 14 of 15. And she started bringing popsicles. Moreover, she had a nice face, long legs and a tiny waist. One day, going down the path to check mares, she let down her hair, which was always in a bun or a braid, It fell down her back to the bottom of her ass. I think I might have been smitten. I am a hopelessly shallow boy, I admit it.
Still, nobody falls in love with mere hair. So what is it that attracts one person to another? We’re talking everyone here, not merely Marion County horse farmers (they’re all in on blonde barrel-racers carrying big American flags). Physical attraction, of course starts the ball rolling. Not to infer looks are everything but if you look like Ratso Rizzo, Taylor Swift is not going to be your prom date. Second for many is Sexiness, which is ticklish to describe but you know it when you see it. Speaking just for myself, Competence is sexy…the ability to manage an undertaking smoothly and with aplomb as if it were second nature to you. Confidence is sexy, but not egotism. A modest breast size is sexy, especially when it comes on an athletic body that can throw a ball like Derek Jeter and run like Courtney Dauwalter. One day in front of the Circus a girl named Patty Bert ran over to a thrown ball, picked it up and tossed it back like a shortstop and I thought, “Well, lookee here…”
Different strokes for different folks. And yes, of course, honesty, loyalty, reliability, a spirit of cooperation…all are critical to a relationship, but we’re talking allure here, some mysterious magnetism that draws people in. Intelligence can be sexy. No, not Mary Martha McGonnigle and her recitation of the multiplication tables in third grade sexy, more like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in Alien, who never panicked and thought three steps ahead. Intelligence needs to be kept neatly folded in one’s pocket where it can be pulled out handily when needed. People who flaunt intelligence are not sexy. Nobody likes a showoff. My wife is sexy for many of the reasons above, though she’ll certainly dispute it with you. That said, she throws a ball like rapper 50 Cent, who once tossed an opening pitch at PNC Park so far to the right it nearly hit a pair of photographers on the third-base line. You get legendary status for stuff like that.
Playing It Safe---The 30-Year Tryout
After a conscientious man has had two failed marriages in the space of 15 years, he might consider himself to have 4F husband potential. This is not a problem for some habitual offenders like American minister Glynn “Scotty” Wolfe who holds the world’s record for monogamous marriages with an eye-popping 29, or 8-time experimenters Larry King and Mickey Rooney. I am not, alas, a play-the-field kind of guy, despite the opportunities. I once had two very nice girlfriends at the same time and it was a little…well…nervewracking with all the loud complaining and throwing of keys. I prefer picking one off the tree, bringing it home and settling down happily forever after. But as my good friend Martin brought up, “What if later you find another one you like better?”
In any case, Siobhan soon insisted on more togetherness, she ensconced in Marion County, I in Gainesville. Whereas I had what previous girlfriend Betsy Harper called “dark days” (racetrack palaver for any days at a given track that racing was not held) when I was busy at work or otherwise, Dr. Ellison advised that dark days did not work into her life plan, and she was more of a family girl. The Subterranean Circus was fading, suffering the weight of the local paraphernalia laws which put me on a year’s probation and threatened my thoroughbred owner’s racing license, so it was not a bad time to make a move. I emigrated to the lovely village of Fairfield, a rural patch equidistant from Gainesville and Ocala and motored the 25 minutes back and forth from Hogtown in an attempt to be a reasonable partner. Must have been a good idea. I am there still. And I can promise you the number of juicy female temptresses out here is reduced considerably, though I suspect that old Chris Powell may be giving me the occasional eye when I drive near the property line like a bold knight on my shiny Kubota. I think I’ll mind my own business, though, she has rattlesnakes over there.
Here Comes the Bride, Courtesy Of the Glam Squad
It was long a tradition of ours, or at least a habit, to truck on out to the Island Hotel in romantic Cedar Key for dinner on Valentine’s Day. By the year 2015, Siobhan had amassed 30 solid years of fealty and good companionship, so her tryout period was almost over. At dinner that night, I decided to dazzle her by popping the question. Obviously delirious with glee, she said “Sure.” There is no need for an exclamation point. The Big Day would take place in June of the following year in Las Vegas, which we knew well from vacation travels. A few months later, Siobhan had a conference there so I went with her to scout the raft of wedding arenas.
There are approximately 50 wedding chapels in Sin City, big ones, small ones, some as big as your head. Cutesy standalone chapels, in-resort annexes, cheesy drive-thrus and oops, there’s another pop-up venue. You can get married at any hour of the day or night by anybody from Elvis Presley to a tired-looking Charles DeGaulle to the Marquis of Queensbury in any attire including nothing and you can even be drunk. Being a serious man with a deep respect for the sacrament, I chose the impeccable Little Chapel of the Flowers in Old Las Vegas. It has three chapels of varying sizes and each has one wedding every half hour on Saturdays, so you don’t want to be late. The Little Chapel would make your reception arrangements, bring the flowers, take the wedding photos, send the limo, starch your shirts and call in the venerable Glam Squad. You want the Glam Squad. When they finish with the bride, everyone at the wedding thinks there’s been some mistake because Cleopatra just entered the room. Oh, and one other thing. The Little Chapel can stream your ceremony to the universe so all the kids back home can watch. Who ya gonna call? Right!
At first, we were semi-eloping, no need for guests. I did ask my best friend from childhood Jack Gordon to motor over from Laguna Hills with his wife Barbara because it’s just not right to lack a Best Man. Siobhan called in her niece Ashleigh Ellison to be “Best Girl.” Apparently, nobody really wants to be called a “maid of honor” these days.
Then my sister Kathy found out and insisted on coming, which roused my other sister Alice into awareness. Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Florida, a plot was conceived by Siobhan’s brother Stuart and aviator Richard Helms (aka “Captain Noonan”) to fly in and out of Vegas on the wedding day, bringing with them Stuart’s wife Mary and a Fairfield friend, Greg Poe. This motley crew called themselves the Wedding Crashers, and they may have felt like they’d actually crashed by the time their endless extravaganza had wrapped up.
Last Dash Heroics
“Pull out the stopper! Let’s have a whopper! But get me to the church on time!”
The distance from the new Palazzo Hotel to the Little Chapel is a mere 2.3 miles, perhaps a mere 12 minute drive on the Las Vegas Strip with cooperative traffic signals. But as we all know, there are sleepy traffic lights on every corner, very slow ones, which makes a bored driver grateful for all the dependable roadside wackiness available day and night in these environs. Siobhan and Ashleigh had been taken to the wedding site by limo but I was bringing the rental car, the better to dash off to the Valley of Fire for wedding photos before the reception dinner. The valets are inevitably quick in Vegas, but we were at a new hotel and their crew was hopelessly befuddled. When the car finally came, I charged out onto the road and went the wrong way in my haste, making it virtually impossible to get me to the church on time. I called my bride-to-be and gave her the bad news, which I expect would bring out invectives galore from even the most reasonable of women. It was then I had no doubt I’d found the right girl to marry. Sounding unconcerned as could be, she merely said, Listen, you did your best…if you don’t make it we can just go to one of those drive-thru places.”
Once turned around, I set the land speed record for the distance on Las Vegas Boulevard, speeding like crazy, anticipating red lights far ahead so I would not have to stop, scattering would-be crosswalk creepers like stricken bowling balls. When I turned into the parking lot, Ashleigh’s husband-to-be Florian was waiting to park the car, which I handed off like a relay racer and ran to the chapel only two minutes late and three minutes before they cancelled the wedding. I mean, it was Saturday and there was another one scheduled in 30 minutes, right? I handed the frowning chapel personnel Elvis’ “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” CD and assumed my position.
The ceremony itself went off like clockwork. The music played, the wedding party marched in, the amiable minister pronounced, the loving couple kissed, the Wedding Crashers applauded and quickly hurried back to their plane for five more hours of fun flying. The rest of the day was a whirl of driving to and from the Valley of Fire, stomping around this steamy (104 degrees) paradise, zipping back for the reception dinner with the Gordons and my sisters at Canaletto’s restaurant in the Venetian Hotel.
At the cake-cutting, the headwaiter came up with a final surprise. Reading from aged parchment, he advised in a properly stuffy manner that “Having achieved the vaunted marital Hat Trick with at least one ceremony in Las Vegas, and having broken the longstanding speed limit for the Vegas Strip and having spent beaucoup dollars in the past three days, which includes our hefty tip, William Thomas Killeen is hereby officially installed in the Las Vegas Wedding Hall of Fame forevermore. You may stand and kiss the waiter,”
Everybody likes to be famous for something. Happy tenth, Siobhan! It’s been memorable.
That’s not all, folks….
