I’m a big NPR fan: This American Life, Fresh Air, Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me, Radio Lab, Seventh Avenue Project, The Splendid Table, and The Diane Rehm Show: All superb shows.
I also enjoy listening to The Story with Dick Gordon. He has a terrific personality and knows what and how to ask questions.
While Ira Glass gets David Sedaris, Diane Rehm gets A.O. Wilson, Terry Gross gets Burt Bacharach and Hal David and Peter Sagal gets Tony Hawk on their shows, Dick Gordon gets the American woman whose sister-in-law made her drive around Ireland picking up sections of a wedding cake—on the day of the wedding. Ordinary people spinning yarns about life.
The wedding cake story killed me. Poor Nancy. That’s the name of the woman who told her tale to Dick.
Nancy and her husband (the bride’s brother) were assigned the duty of cake retrieval/decorating/delivery. It might not have been such a bonehead idea in the first place IF the time frame to complete the task wasn’t right before the start of the wedding AND involve driving to seven different locations in a FOREIGN COUNTRY in a foreign car. Yeesh. What was the bride thinking?
She was thinking she wanted to MAKE HER OWN wedding cake. Oh brother. Are there not bakeries in Ireland? Are there not enough wedding chores to do as it is?
There were three sections to the cake. Each cake was housed in a separate freezer in a different location. The morning of the wedding Nancy, her hubby, and the bag of icing set out to fetch the first section. After driving awhile, it became apparent that the directions they were given included the wrong starting point.
Lost in Ireland they went…further and further behind schedule…as they trailed slowpoke drivers on scenic winding roads to nowhere. They finally retrieved all three sections and had to find a fourth location: the house to assemble the cake.
By this time the icing had turned into a vat of goo. Nancy and her husband had to ransack the kitchen of this house—the owners of which were strangers—and luckily not there—as they totally trashed the kitchen trying to decorate the cake.
The bride had also lovingly made icing flowers and petals to be lovingly placed on the cake. Nancy threw them on by the handfuls willy-nilly. With the kitchen a wreck and themselves covered in icing, Nancy and hubby bolted out the door, cake in arms, to find the fifth location: the restaurant where to drop it off.
They finally found the restaurant. But it was closed. The hubby had to go next door and find someone to let him in.
Then it was a mad rush back to pick up the bride (sixth location) and drive her to the church (seventh location). Nancy was sure she would be blamed for the mess and her in-laws would be furious. But after arriving ever so late, the bride and the rest of the family were lolling about. They had no idea what time it was. Nancy and hubby did not mention the preceding events. They had a minute to dress for the wedding and grab the bride.
At the church (over an hour past the start time), the guests were nonchalant and milling around the grounds. The wedding went off without a hitch.
The reception continued into the night. But the hubby drank too much. And he and Nancy had to return to the stranger’s house to clean it up. The hubby barfed in the toilet—which then wouldn’t flush. Nancy and her hubby only had a few hours sleep before they had to get up to catch an early flight back to the U.S. Nancy wondered if she was supposed to leave a note apologizing for the vomit in the toilet—but she and her husband weren’t supposed to have even slept there.
But miraculously, one thing did go right: the next morning the toilet finally flushed! They made it to the airport on time. And lived to tell the tale. Which actually didn’t occur until over five years later.
Great story! That’s why I love listening to The Story.
