Twenty-two pounds of solid liquid

SHERWOOD KIRALY

Last weekend we drove up to Santa Barbara to attend the wedding of

the artist formerly known as Chris Krach.

Chris has served as a volunteer for seemingly every event to take

place in town in the last 20 years or so. Any vital community

contains a handful of people who organize 90% of the community

service, the fundraisers, the holiday observances, the school dances

-- everything that wouldn’t happen if it were up to me -- and Chris

is one of these. She gets it done, and whatever she can’t get done,

she gets somebody else to do. I said hi to her Downtown one afternoon

and before we separated I was co-editing the PTA newsletter for a

year, and Patti Jo didn’t know it but she was, too.

There were over 100 people present at the groom’s home for a

sunset ceremony on a deck overlooking the ocean. The bride was

radiant, the groom bore a striking resemblance to Ernest Hemingway

and there was a buffet dinner. We all admired the ocean as if we came

from Nebraska.

All very fine and a great success, but there seemed to be

something missing.

Patti Jo and I asked the wedding planner, our neighbor Maggie

Hempen, if there was a wedding cake, and she said no, but there was

going to be a chocolate fountain.

You’re a sophisticated person. You’ve been around. No doubt you’re

familiar with the chocolate fountain. But I, and most of those

present, had never seen or even heard of one. When they set it up

inside the house, put a dropcloth down in front of it, plugged it in

and got it rolling, we gathered round and gaped like yokels.

It was maybe three feet high ... four tiers, 22 pounds of

chocolate, cascading down, no gaps, like a cloak.

“The grown-ups are even more excited than the kids,” Patti Jo

murmured.

“They’ve lived longer without seeing one,” I said.

On the table below were strawberries, melon bits, little brownies

and fondue-like sticks, so you could skewer your food and stick it

under the falls. I would have added those little ricey clusters, so

we could’ve made our own Nestle’s Crunches. But the kids seemed happy

with the available choices.

The chocolate fountain lady told us that weddings are a perfect

venue for her product. High school proms, she said, are not so good,

because teenage boys tend to stick their faces in the chocolate and

throw random things into the fountain. But a wedding reception is

perfect because adults and the very young can appreciate a true

marvel.

I stuck a strawberry into the chocolate and gave it to Patti Jo.

As we left the reception we didn’t speak for awhile, but I knew what

she was thinking: We married too soon.