On Sunday I never left the hotel, except to dash onto the sidewalk to pose for wedding photographs, protected from the drizzle by the marquee of the Pfister, a sort of mini-Palmer House in the heart of downtown Milwaukee.
Otherwise, from putting in an hour on the treadmill in the basement gym at 7 a.m., through a flurry of duties and deliveries, conversations and formalities, leading up to the big event itself at 4:30 p.m. — well, shortly after 5 p.m., once the inevitable crisis, a misplaced grandmother, was sorted out — to dinner and speeches and dancing at a party that didn’t wind down until near midnight, all transpired in the same place, opened in 1893, “The Grand Hotel of the West.”
At this point some readers are no doubt wondering, “Didn’t his kid already get married?” Yes, Son No.1 in July in Michigan. But through that lack of coordination at which boys excel, Son No. 2 arranged to get married four months later. In Milwaukee.
Beforehand, I worried that a wedding on Nov. 10 might be negatively affected by events of the previous Tuesday. That a dark cloud might hang over the festivities, the faint sound of lumber being hammered, concentration camps built, locomotives assembled, clanking in railyards as the cattle cars are hooked together, readying for their long procession south.
But I worried for nothing. Little of that got through the soundproof walls of the Pfister. The groom and I sat in a small executive dining room, waiting. While we did talk of the political situation, we might as well have been a pair of toga-clad Greek philosophers in a cave, speculating whether all existence traces to a store of apeiron, the boundless chaos from which the universe is wrought.
An hour passed. I almost blurted out, “This is going to be my favorite part of the wedding!” But that seemed a diminishment of the expensive celebration to come, and I manfully resisted, Hopping up, I studied a framed photo, taken in the same Imperial Ballroom where he’d wed in a few hours, on Oct. 16, 1899, when the Merchants and Manufacturers Association of Milwaukee threw a banquet for President William McKinley and his cabinet.
All men, naturally, all white. The beloved past that some seem so desperate to claw their way back to.
But even then, change was afoot, if you examine the evidence carefully. Most men wear white tie, because that was what a guest who had to be a white man had to wear on such occasions. But a few wore black ties — more casual, the vanguard of the tattooed, T-shirted, multi-colored men crowding the bar in the lobby below. Given their druthers, most people want to be less formal, less restricted by rules. They want to be free.
Change is always there, if you look for it. You can gauge the age of men in the photo just by noting their facial hair. The oldest men have full beards. The middle-aged men, just mustaches . And the youngest are clean-shaven — there is not a clean-shaven old man, nor a bearded young one.
The Pfister cocooned me. But if I’m honest, I carry that cocoon with me. Like the men in the photo, I’ve got mine. I have my place. And yet …
The white faces of those men are placid, neutral, or mildly attentive. Except one guy, an older man, maybe 60, his pointed beard and mustache white, his silver hair, brushed straight back. He looks at the camera hard over his right shoulder, in an expression of unease. His eyebrows knit. His mouth set, his eyes … a kind of harrowed, anxious look. He is worried. But about what?
Maybe trouble at home. Maybe he didn’t like McKinley, who was also a big tariff man. None of them could know, but in less than two years, McKinley would be cut down by an assassin, ushering in the youngest president ever, Teddy Roosevelt, whose progressive policies would push to government toward helping protect consumers and the environment.
It was McKinley who said, famously, “In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.”
Or not. Seeing the face of that uneasy man at the banquet … well, whatever was bothering him has resolved itself long ago, and he and his children, if he had any, have gone beyond happiness or sorrow. Being upset is not a success strategy. It accomplishes nothing. One must stay informed, stay aware, but life is also to be enjoyed, even in dark times, even as the train we’re all on builds up steam and begins its slow chug toward our destination.