Ali's Wedding

“This guy isn’t going to cry.” These were words I had spoken the night before with thumbs pointed back at myself for added effect. I’m not sure if I was trying to be confident, be funny, or be macho; but apparently I was just being stupid. Cue Saturday afternoon, cue Canon in D, cue beautiful little sister walking the aisle, and cue me standing in front of a whole bunch of people in my military uniform with tears streaming down my face. I knew it was coming and I just didn’t care. I haven’t cried like that in a long time and it felt pretty good. When I finally gained my composure my dad had just handed Alison to Mike and they both turned and faced the pastor. “Time for the devotion” I think. Only the pastor doesn’t say anything; in fact no one says anything. Awkward silence. Like everyone else in the building I’m thinking, “someone needs to be doing something; someone forgot their job, someone is dropping the ball.” It came to me in a progressive revelation. “Isn’t someone supposed to be reading scripture? Wasn’t there something I was supposed to do” Light Bulb! “Oh crap I’m supposed to be reading scripture.” No one said anything to me afterward so I guess the pause wasn’t as long as I had thought; when it’s your head on the chopping block seconds turn into hours. I wonder what the physics behind this look like. It’s kind of like an e=mc squared type formula; number of people who will witness your failure times how many people will talk about your screw up after the incident, factor in the actual elapsed time and the number of shades of red you turn, and that should equal your perception of how much time elapsed, which is exponentially higher than the actual time.




So my little sister got married and it was a joyous occasion. It was hard to believe it was happening at first (my little sister, married?!) Sure enough. Fortunately her husband (my brother in law) is a really good guy, worthy of the Chally name. I suggested to him that he should take our name; I told him there was no shame in that. They stuck with Heinold. I really enjoy weddings, especially when I’m in them. You don’t have to wait in a seat until everyone enters, you don’t have to wait for everyone to leave, you don’t have to wait for the wedding party at the reception, and you’re the first ones to eat (yes!). But I think the thing I love most about weddings is the bachelor party. I enjoy bachelor parties so much sometimes I even show up when I’m not in the wedding.

Mike’s bachelor party sort of began on Friday morning; you could kind of call it a pre-game. Mike, Joe, Aaron and I all woke up at the crack of dawn and drove out to the El Paso golf club for an early morning round of 18. The air was cool and the sky was blue as we walked out to the first tee. There was quite a disparity in level of play between the four of us. Joe played golf in college and once finished second in an NAIA national tournament. Aaron played in high school and was one of the better players on the team. I duffed the ball around a lot in high school and somehow managed to secure the last spot on the varsity team my junior and senior year. Mike, well he had once gone out to a golf course and tried to hit some balls. The course was in great shape, the greens were spectacular. Mike and myself were clearly out of our league. We played three holes of excellent golf before I pulled out my secret weapon; a Macanudo Gold Label. I lit it up and immediately felt the aura of Fuzzy Zoeller descend upon me. I played just as poorly as I had done before, but I enjoyed it more. (Thank you Fuzzy!) On the 14th hole Mike’s tee shot failed to pass the ladies tees which were a considerable 10 feet in front of the men’s.



Aaron spoke up first “when your ball doesn’t go past the ladies tee you have to hit your next shot with your pants around your ankles.”
Joe concurred “This situation demands we uphold the sacred tradition.”
I also offered my blessing.
Mike grabbed his ball, re-teed, dropped his shorts to his ankles and hit another poor shot.
The final scores for the morning: Joe 76, Aaron 87, James 99, Mike Other.

The actual bachelor party kicked off immediately following the rehearsal dinner. It is not a simple thing to be allowed into the Chally clan; there must be a trial by fire. My brothers and I were prepared; so was Mike. We arrived at our house and Mike made a profound and intelligent statement.
“I’m ready to take this like a man.”
I knew then that he was worthy to enter the brotherhood.
“Alright Mike you will be given a series of tasks to perform tonight” I told him “failure to accomplish any of these tasks will result in consequences. Your first mission is to go into the bathroom and come out wearing only what we give you. I handed him a pair of combat boots and a paper bag. Five minutes later he emerged wearing the boots, daisy dukes that were too tight to zip or button in the front, a fish net midriff shirt and one of those trucker hats with Barbie hair taped in the back to look like a dirty mullet.

9 guys piled into my parents freestyle and we drove out to super Wal-Mart which, much to my delight, was packed.
“Alright Mike” I handed him a crisp twenty, “your next mission is to enter Wal-Mart and purchase the following items: Jockstrap, Vaseline, lighter, and a box of condoms. While you are in the store you may not speak to us nor acknowledge our presence, this will result in failure of the mission.”
Watching Mike walk into Wal-Mart was one of the funniest things I had seen in a long time. He walked with a little hop in his step; he held himself with dignity, he maintained an air that said “what are you looking at.” I was very proud of him. We tailed him through the store; every where he went people were doing double takes. I saw several girls doubled over laughing out loud. He had to ask for help in finding the jock-strap, it turned out the guy knew him from somewhere. The best reaction we saw was the cashier who batted not an eye as Mike purchased in cash the items aforementioned.


Mike’s next stop was McDonalds where he had to purchase a filet o’ fish sandwich and consume the entire thing. He was greeted with similar reactions as in Wal-Mart, including a girl who curiously asked where we were from. Our final stop was the supermarket where he had to purchase hot dogs. After that we had him put the jockstrap on, this was more to scare him into thinking he would have to streak somewhere than anything else. We took him to the house my dad had rented for us for the night (which turned out to be a haunted house; more on that later) and told him he had done well. His final mission was to take two shots of homemade plum brandy; we toasted his marriage, I offered up a blessing on his quiver and officially welcomed him into the family. For me this was when he really became our brother.

The House

Back to the house. Earlier that day Aaron and I had stopped by the house to check it out and make sure we knew where it was. The house is the Eureka College presidential guest house, and my dad had described it as a beautiful old house with plenty of room. What he failed to mention was that it was the fabled Lida house. The story goes that back in the 1880’s the house burned down and this little girl named Lida died in the fire. They rebuilt the house and put this framed picture of her up over the fireplace. Many a brave man has sworn that her eyes followed them as they walked through the room. In the picture she’s pointing at the fireplace as if that was the cause of her death. Stories have been floating around for years of irons being unplugged and different strange things happening in the house.

So we pull up to the house and as soon as I stepped out of the car I got chills. I looked up at the attic windows and immediately had to look away. I knew that if I looked long enough I would see a little girl looking back at me. I walked up to the door with the key and the light flicked on “ah motion sensor I thought.” Then the light flicked off. More chills. It flicked on again after several seconds, then flicked off. All nine of us are standing there looking at each other. It’s 11:00 pm. Suddenly we see on the sidewalk a woman wearing a long black skirt and a little house and the prairie style blouse; she was speedwalking. Everyone is stunned. I opened the door and immediately had this feeling like I was walking into a cheap 80’s horror movie. It had all the key components. Bunch of guys having a bachelor party: check. 100 year old house: check. Old black and white picture of little girl who died in the house: check. Flickering lights: check. Strange woman speedwalking: check. Creepy basement and locked attic: check.

We entered the house and immediately took all the guys to the fireplace to introduce them to Lida and tell them her story. From then on nobody went anywhere by themselves. My brother Joe said what everyone was thinking but no one would admit.
“Look at my goosebumps” He had them bad. “I keep thinking I’m going to walk around a corner and see a little girl standing there with her finger to her lips.” We settled down into the kitchen and talked for a while. We were probably there for about an hour and half or so. It was during this time that we toasted Mike’s marriage, we also drank two bottles of wine; this of course did not promote rational thinking. We had been in the house long enough to start exploring so we started with the basement.

It was classic creepy old house basement. Dirty cement floor, windows that don’t lead outside, random dust covered junk built up over 100 years. We walked back through a couple rooms and ended up in what looked like an old woodworking shop. Someone gave out a startled gasp which of course promoted more goosebumps. To the right was another room. The room was bare, no cement floor, nothing in the room at all except for a single old chair set up in the middle. That was about all I could take, fortunately everyone else was of the same opinion. We went back upstairs and moved our stuff up to the second floor. The second floor had five rooms one of which was the Lida room. We all looked at each other then one of the guys unlocked the door with the key and pushed it open. Chills ran through me. Everything about the room was small. The room itself, the bed, there was a small nightstand next to it with a cage that had a little stuffed bear in it, and next to the nightstand an old baby stroller. Again I had that feeling like I was in a horror movie. We shut the door and locked it. There were five rooms upstairs; five guys piled into one room; Aaron, Joe, Mike and I piled into the other. We all crawled into the queen sized bed and snuggled together. Fortunately it was pretty late and we were all pretty tired. I woke at like four something incredibly uncomfortable and decided I would brave the floor.

It wasn’t till the morning that the absolute freakiest thing occurred which, had it happened that night I would have ran out of the house. One of the guys was watching TV by himself in one of the other rooms we didn’t sleep in; it was about 8:30. He got up turned the TV off and started walking out of the room. Just as he was about to walk out the door the TV flicked back on.