Shotgun Wedding!

The day of the wedding my uncle – Charlie (mom’s brother) and his wife (Lois) came to the farm and picked up my mom (Matilda) to head for Saskatoon to their niece’s wedding. My dad would stay home and look after me and my four siblings. The next stop was near Crystal Springs to pick up my mom’s younger sister and her husband – Elsa and Rhett. Now Rhett had not had time to get to the bank and needed some money to go the wedding. He asked Charlie if it would be alright to stop at the Domremy bank and pick up some cash, as it was on their way to Saskatoon anyways. (Domremy was a smaller hamlet with a population of about 125 people.) Charlie agreed. No problem to make a quick stop. The wedding wasn’t until 5 pm and this would have been around 2 pm. There was lots of time to make it to the wedding.

As they pulled up to the bank, Elsa commented that it was strange that the bank’s curtains were drawn shut. Usually, they are only closed when the bank is closed and it wasn’t 3 pm yet. Oh well, maybe somebody forgot to open the curtains up this morning and there was too much sun shining in their eyes.

Charlie pulled up alongside the bank and Rhett when in to retrieve some money from his bank account. Rhett sauntered up the stairs to the bank and as he entered the door, he was met by a masked man with a sawed-off shotgun in his hand telling him to put his hands up and get down on the floor.

Now, Rhett was known to be quite a character and a quick thinker. He was known for his sarcastic joking remarks when someone asked him a question and being a really good storyteller. So, when Rhett was told to get down on the floor in his brain, he’s thinking what his options are. He quickly decided to make an exit from this bank, to heck with laying down on a floor while it was being robbed.

Charlie had just turned to talk to the women in the back seat when Rhett came running down the steps of the bank and yelled at Charlie to “get the hell out of here, there’s a bank robber inside with a gun”. The passengers all looked at themselves in disbelief, wondering if this true?

Rhett was known for playing practical pranks on people, but the look on his face looked like this time he was telling the truth. Rhett continued running across the street, with his arms pulled over his head, and entered the local co-op store warning this business as well about the bank robbery that was happening in their sleepy town.

Charlie made the decision maybe he’d better take off, just in case Rhett wasn’t playing a trick on them. As they started to pull away from the curb, the masked robber came out of the bank with a sack of cash and waving a sawed-off shotgun in his hand.

The women started screaming as the robber opened fire on the 1968 Chev Impala. He peppered the front passenger fender with buckshot and flattened the tire. Charlie continued down the road with the flat tire, until he was sure no one was following him.

Fortunately, the bullets only raised havoc with the fender, none of the passengers were shot. Before they were able to get back into town and check on Rhett, Charlie had to change the flat tire. Fortunately, he had a full-sized spare tire in the trunk, not like today where a lot of vehicles just have those small fake “doughnut” spare tires. As they raced back to town, they were unsure what they would find.

As they all calmed down and found Rhett in the co-op, they waited to hear what had happened. The robber had gotten away with an unknown amount of cash and no one had been injured at the bank or in the town. Everyone involved with the robbery on this day was very grateful that no one had gotten hurt.

The wedding party decided they had best get going and carry on to the wedding in Saskatoon. They knew they were going to be late, but better late than never.

Once they arrived at the wedding, they had missed the ceremony, but were able to get in on the socialization part. And socialize they did, people couldn’t believe the story. Holy cow! So glad everyone was safe. The story was told many times that evening, and little did they know they would continue to tell it until the wee hours of the morning.

Later that evening as they headed home roadblocks were set up at various locations and all vehicles were stopped looking for the masked robber. When the police heard that it was their car that had been shot at and Rhett was the person who entered the bank the police would hop in the back seat of the Impala and get Rhett and Charlie to tell the story once more as to what happened. Apparently, this happened at every roadblock between Saskatoon and Star City. I imagine every time the story was told it got a little more embellished each time. By the time Charlie and Lois made it home early the next morning the cows were bellowing waiting to be milked.

Buck shot pulled from the front fender of the car was used for show and tell for some of the younger kids of the parents. What a story they had to tell their classmates the next day!

The bank robber was eventually located, but not the money. Once again going from old memories the robber was an ex-policeman. Most of the aunts and uncles had to go to court to testify or try and identify him in a lineup. He was found not guilty for some reason or another. Not sure why, it might have been because the cash was not found with him? Who knows where that cash is? Has it been spent? Filtrated over the years into our economy? No one knows for sure as the money was never found as far as anyone knows.

From that day forward, Rhett was known as the “Roadrunner” for the speed in which he crossed the street telling Charlie to get going. This in fact became known as the “shotgun wedding” in our family’s history of storytelling. It made for a great story everytime the family would get together. Many tears flowed from people’s eyes from laughing way too hard!

I hope you enjoyed this non-fiction / fictional story. It’s a story that deserves to be told. How many of us can say we were involved in a bank robbery? Not the best choice to make in life – robbing a bank that is! Get a job has been my motto.

And I did some research for bank robbery songs but didn’t really care for the ones that were suggested so I decided to go with a favorite band and song – Money by Pink Floyd from the album Dark Side of the Moon released in 1973 and written by Roger Waters. It was on side 2 of the original album. This album spent a total of 1380 non-consecutive weeks on the US Billboard Album Chart – that’s over 26 years! It re-entered the US charts 47 years after its original release date. Pretty amazing. And it is an awesome album to listen to, from start to finish! If you have access to Prime Video, they have a great Classic Album showing how Dark Side of the Moon was developed, the song writing, interviews with members of the band, etc.

If you missed out on some of my blogs from 2021 you can go to my website and read them there. I finally managed to update my site with them and hope to keep it updated with my blogs!

Merle Lee Ann Pratt – merleleeannskitchen.com – Email: merleleeann@gmail.com

This column is sponsored by MacKenzie Funeral Chapel and Crematorium – We will be there when you need us – Bev and Brian Stobbs

130 9th St. E, Prince Albert, SK

Phone: (306) 763-8488

https://mackenziechapel.ca/

by Merle Lee Ann Pratt – Merle Lee Ann’s Kitchen, author of “A Baker’s Dozen”

Shotgun Wedding!

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