Road Trip: The Sonic Bride

When, in the course of human events, one gets invited to Huntsville to deliver a couple of lectures, one and one's newly retired spouse decide--Road Trip! Why not?
The Giant Blue Chicken awaits, a mere bagatelle of driving about six more hours to Oxford, Mississippi, and of course--we are called to the open road.

It's about three on this very hot Saturday afternoon at the Sonic Drive-In at some nameless crossroads on Highway 78 in northern Mississippi and we are ordering our coffee and a lime chiller. A young girl gets out of her car, incongruously dressed in a long black formal, trimmed in cranberry red. Two more come giggling from another car, and, curious, I asked them who they were--a choral group? "We're bridesmaids!"

I turned around and there she was--the bride--standing on the curb, hiking her white lace dress up around her knees. She said, "I'm getting married in about thirty minutes, and we just got hungry!" As they piled back into the cars with their sacks of cheeseburgers, I admonished her not to let the groom see her--"Oh--no one knows we're gone".

The Sonic Bride, a vision of young love, on the open road. We can only hope--for their future together, for no ketchup stains on the white lace, for better coffee down the road.