Wake up. It’s June. What’s wrong with you? Where’s the joy? Isn’t this the month that Rogers and Hammerstein said was “busting out all over”? I don’t see any of you dancing in the streets. Is it because you’re all up to some “camp”? How boring. Probably no HBO.

It’s summer, isn’t it? Summer is holy in Maine. Los Angeles has it year-round, and they have no respect for it.

Here it’s holy. Celebrate it. Break out the Hawaiian shirts, shorts and white sneakers. It’s watermelon and lemonade time. And I want to hear some wedding bells. Yes, wedding bells. It’s June!

All I’ve been hearing for months are shouts, pounding, curtains being ripped and dishes being thrown against the wall down in Waterville’s City Hall, not to mention jackhammers tearing up landscape and peace in that little Frank Capra village of Hallowell.

I long to see one of those old-fashioned wedding caravans that used to roll by front porches across America, from Kansas to the Kennebec, on their way from the church to some distant rented hall.

Even if you didn’t have a June bride in the family, somebody did. We could hear them coming from blocks away, horns honking, people in convertibles shouting.

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The happy couple were always in the lead car with strings of cans and shoes tied to the bumper, followed by carloads of friends and relatives just behind.

We would get out and stand on the porch and wave and shout. We may not even have known them, but it didn’t matter. It was a wedding.

I just know that was exactly how some of you out there tied your knots.

Ask your grandparents if they remember those ancient melodic words: “June-tune-moon-spoon.” That’s right, June is all about the sacrament of marriage.

Songwriters in Manhattan and Hollywood were writing a lot of songs about June weddings, and people were singing them. If you’re too young to recall Dean Martin’s “It’s June in January,” then surely you’re into Eminem’s “Two hundred fifty thousand miles on a clear night in June/And I’m aiming right at you.” Yeah!

And surely you remember the great Shakira who sang, “I need you soon, I’ll be your groom/This feelin’, this vibe, this night in June.”

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If you’re a fiscally serious Republican concerned about the economy, then you know that weddings move the market needle up every year. Florists salivate at the sound of wedding bells. Weddings are all about flowers.

And you must be aware of how much cash wedding apparel contributes to the economy. Tuxedos, wedding dresses, and don’t forget cakes. Yes, cakes, big ones with tons of icing and the happy couple on top. You get to pick your own.

I’ll let you in on a little-known secret. Bakeries in more cities than you know hit the jackpot every year baking cakes for gay couples. Yes, they do.

Movies about weddings are always big at the box office: “The Wedding Crashers,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “Mama Mia,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and hundreds more. Who wants to see a movie about a divorce?

I love weddings, especially the big, ethnic weddings. I’ve been to Orthodox Jewish weddings in Brooklyn; Irish weddings in the Bronx, San Francisco and Los Angeles; and Italian weddings.

My baby sister’s great Italian wedding in 1956, as she joined the famed Pisciotta family, was a show stopper. It was so Italian, so big, so noisy, so much fun that Francis Ford Coppola copied it for the nuptials in “The Godfather.” I made that up.

Only seven more days left in June. Ask her, ask him, buy the ring. If you haven’t ordered the cake, call Hillman’s Bakery in Fairfield, rent a tux, one for him as well, set the date, seven more days. Why are you sitting there? Need entertainment? I make great balloon animals and I do weddings. Same-sex weddings free.

OK, so you can’t do it in June; I understand. People have to travel. At least a dozen members of the family have their vacations planned and don’t want to spend it in motel in your town or in a tent in your backyard with the mosquitos and ticks. I don’t blame them.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.


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