On September 20th, Grandma and Grandpa, Mary and Paul Lawler, celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary.  To celebrate the event, family members gathered for ice cream, cake . . . and a very old bottle of wine.

Grandma and Grandpa shared stories of their wedding.  The history

started: Grandpa was particularly tired for the wedding because he had been busy moving into the new house in Hyde Park.  The night before the wedding, he was carting boxes into the new house. 

Grandma interjected, "And in one of the boxes, the very bottle of wine we're drinking tonight!"  Grandpa disagreed: he had carted that particular box into the house before the wedding-eve.  It was a moment best understood if you were there, but maybe you can understand it you know the participants.  Grandma was asserting a bit of literary license, but Grandpa would have none of it: sixty-five years (and one day) later, he knew quite clearly what he had carted into the house.  He wouldn't permit the exaggeration, even now.

Grandma told how, in 1941, they had organized the wedding reception, but one week before the wedding, the hostess had reneged on the original deal.  She would only give a shorter menu (without lobster) for a higher price.  Grandma cancelled the reservation a week before the wedding.  I can only  imagine what everyone thought.  A family member came through, and a caterer was found, and a location.

The reception had lobster salad, as promised, and chicken for those that wanted.  They enjoyed the reception to the point that people wondered why they didn't leave! 

When they went, they had a long drive - the first night they vacationed in Greenfield in far western Mass.

The wine bottle is a "bubbly wine" from Italy.  The label is torn and the exact vintage is not clear.  Grandpa is clear that the bottle is pre-Prohibition (1920). The part of the label that is readable is an award from a wine contest in Paris in 1900.  So, the opened bottle was between 86 and 106 years old.

The wine still had bubbles - not many, but you could see them in a champagnge glass.  It smelled quite strong.  You could see dark particulates floating  in the wine.  I'm not a wine fan; I  call it drinkabe, but not tasty. 

Finally, the cake and ice cream.

You see how some of the photos are "white" and others are "yellow."  I was experimenting with the flash.  Please overlook the mistakes of this amateur photographer.