Sanguine

One thing that comes inherently with the holiday season in my family is the celebration of Nana and Papa's wedding anniversary. Usually it's a subdued affair- a phone call and/or card from my mother. But this year was... a little different.

December 19th, 1959.
Judy Huff, a sixteen year old bride, and Jimmy Loucks, her twenty-three year old Navy beau, get married.

(You might notice Jimmy's goofy looking older brother George standing behind him. With ears like those, how can you miss the Loucks boys in a crowd?)

She loses her engagement ring in the snow and a panic-driven search ensues.
She finds it. All is well.

Fifty years later, their very small family schemes a dirty little plan to kidnap them from their cozy apartment in Schoharie Valley, New York and haul them down to New Paltz to wine and dine them at the wonderful Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz.












It was a long evening of ridiculously delicious food, strolling long corridors, tea and cookies and toasting ourselves by huge fireplaces, gleefully browsing the gift shop (and coming home with pine cone ornaments for each of the women,) and dancing at the end.