The first Saturday night of every month is family night at our house. No one goes on dates or to spend the night with friends and/or cousins.

During one of these family times, two months ago, seventeen-year-old Jason my, older brother by a year, was about to toss the Yahtzee dice when the phone rang. It was our nine-year-old sister Casey's turn to answer the phone.

We take turns answering the phone at our house. The tradition started when Jason and I got old enough to answer it and we would fight over who was going to get it first. Daddy solved our dilemma by declaring that we would take weekly turns answering the phone. This week was Casey's week and we waited while she went to the living room to see who was calling us at nine o'clock on a Saturday night.

She came back and told Mama it was for her and not more than half an hour later, Mama came back in and announced the most gosh awful news.

She said, "Bob's finally getting married!"

Thus, two months later on Thursday afternoon, when I could have been playing baseball or fishing down at the creek with my friends, I was standing in Gilmore's Dress Emporium and was about to take on a good case of the hives because of the dress my future aunt, Miss Harriett Smith, wanted me to wear as an attendant in her wedding. The gown was a hideous shade of green that reminded me of what Kermit the Frog might look like if he got deathly sick. Then there were the puffy sleeves and the high-collar with a cameo in the center.

This was the final fitting before the wedding on Saturday at ten in the morning at the only church Miss Harriett July Smith had ever attended; soon be the only church Robert Dale Moses attended -- the First Methodist Church of Clarkson. We had always attended First Baptist and Daddy commented to Mama that he didn't know what a forty-something Baptist could do with a Methodist -- much less a nineteen-year-old Methodist that was a Smith. Mama gave him one of her looks and told him to hush such talk in front of the children.

Children? Heck we were almost as old as the bride!

The thing with Mama and her sister, my Aunt Eleanor, was that Bob get married and not to Pauline Jolene Johnson who he'd been dating off and on since graduating high school. Pauline is twelve years-older than Uncle Bob, which is the excuse Mama always gave to me for not liking her brother's interest in the lady. And besides that, Pauline wore skirts that were way too short for her age and was always doing something with her hair - - nothing that ever looked like anything anyone had ever seen in their life -- and what's more didn't want to see ever again. I found out through my sources, (my best friend's Mama told me), that Pauline took Mama's boyfriend away from her way back when and Mama is not the forgiving type.

So, Mama and Aunt Eleanor were going all out on being thrilled with the upcoming nuptials, while I was becoming deathly ill over the whole affair.

Miss Harriett July Smith was not supposed to be with Uncle Bob -- I was.

I know I'm only sixteen and he's my Uncle, but I've been in love with him since I was five and a half and he saved me from that bear at the family reunion at Grandma Moses' house. Okay, it wasn't actully a bear -- just a great big wooly dog that looked like a bear -- but all the same he'd saved my life.

So on my sixth birthday, when I blew out the candles, I wished he'd be my husband someday. Not only that! I'd pledged every bit of my love for him by kissing a toad down at the pond when I was eight and I could never possibly look at another man. If this marriage took place, I'd be an old maid. And by golly my claim was not about to be jumped!

"Mindy-Lou, stop fidgeting," Mama said. "You're acting like you have ants in your pants."

"I think I'm coming down with something," I said, in my most feel-sorry-for-me tone, but she and Aunt Eleanor only laughed and kept talking with Harriett about the damn dress. I sighed and made faces at myself in the mirror.

There just had to be a way to stop the wedding, which was day after tomorrow. I knew if I kept thinking something would come to me.

The next morning, when I was in the middle of my gravy and biscuits and cantaloupe, my best friend Lily Culpepper called and said she wanted me to meet her in the park. She was running errands for her Mama, who was five months pregnant with twins, and would have time to eat a picnic lunch with me if I'd pick up the burgers at Mr. Q's Corner.

Thus, around noon I was inside the best burger place in town grabbing a couple of greasy burgers loaded with everything and a couple of orders of fries and two vanilla milk shakes. When I got to the park, Lily was waiting for me in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln -- not that Abraham Lincoln. This was Abraham Bartholamew Lincoln, who was a hero in Clarkson during the depression when he rescued children from a fire at the school. He died a couple of months later in a flood while helping rescue a mother and her two babies. The statue was put up the following year when it came time to put up a new statue of a hero in our town. The idea was to give children good examples to follow. There are only ten because it seems that having to pay taxes to put up statues and then keep them up cooled some of the ardor of all those civic-minded people -- especially when the citizens decided they would vote to cut a few salaries to pay for them.

Anyway, Lily and I sat down next to Old Abe to eat and she said, "Do you know about the bachelor party tonight at John Wilson's house for your uncle after the rehearsal?"

"Daddy mentioned it to Mom last night. He said some of Uncle Bob's friends from work are going to be there. He asked one of them to be his best man and some more of them are going to be attendants. Harriett has as many people in the wedding as she does guests -- almost."

"Well, Mama said that Margaret Hansen told her that her daughter Donna -- you know the one who took all them dancing lessons and then came back and opened up the hair salon -- anyway she's gonna' jump out of the cake!"

"She's gonna' strip for them?"

"That's what Mama said Margaret said. And you know Margaret is always reliable when it comes to news like that. I wonder if Harriett knows."

I giggled and said, "Are you kidding? If she did she'd be havin' kittens all over the place. She gets mad if Uncle Bob even looks at the mannequins in Mrs. Draper's store windows."

We talked about the wedding and I was in the middle of a tirade about the dress I was being forced to wear when the best idea I'd ever gotten in my life plunked itself down inside my head. I stopped in mid-sentence and stared into space for a moment.

"Oh Lordy!" Lily said. "I know that look."

"What look?" I asked.

"The one where you tell me this is the best idea you've ever had in your life and we end up in trouble up to our butts and then some."