THE HAZARDS OF TRYING A COME-BACK
Greencastle, Indiana
July 2, 1930
Mr. Claud E. Fix
Shelbyville, Indiana
My dear Mr. Fix: I received your very kind letter of May 30th, relative to a proposed oratorical "come back" on my part before a Shelbyville audience. I say "come back" because I was the alleged speaker of the evening with the Shelbyville Rotary Club in May of this year. It may happen you have heard of that disaster, and are charitably giving me an opportunity to redeem myself in the eyes of Shelbyville people. Your surname indicates such. . .
Experience has taught me a repetition is generally more dangerous even than a first offense. It is in law, and it generally is in other things. Let me illustrate from my own experience.
Years ago, my home town, Russellville, Indiana, had a home talent company. In fact, we have had many of them. The town and community was surfeited with them. The epidemic would break out, die down, and then break out afresh. Warner Kinkead was the cause of most of it. Warner was our self-imposed "leading man" on all and every occasion. For one thing, he was a bit older, but his principal claim to "stardom" was due to the fact he had spent two years away from Russellville, and was therefore more sophisticated and worldly-wise. The rest of us had ventured no farther than an annual pilgrimage to Crawfordsville for the County Fair. . .
Warner's parents had emigrated to Kansas. The second year the grasshoppers "took them," with the result they all came back to Russellville, and along with Warner came a "make-up" box which he had in some manner acquired, together with a yearning for a theatrical career. Therefore, he was an actor, none could successfully dispute. He had the evidence. Warner put on many home talents, advertised under the auspices of the Rathbon's Sisters, the Mt. Pisgah Aid Society or other neighborhood organizations.
From a comparatively modest beginning, we aspired to greater things—harder plays and more cast. Warner soon learned the more there were in the cast, the more doting fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, would turn out in the audience to see and admire his uncanny histrionic abilities.
Eventually, we assayed a tragedy—an unavailing struggle against fate. "Sea Drift" was the name of our first—and last—tragedy. The climax was to come in the 8th or 9th Scene of the 10th or 12th Act, when in point of actual time it would be after midnight and our remaining audience (those who, of necessity, had to stay to take 95% of the cast home in time to help with breakfast or the milking) either somnolent or clear "gone."
The script went like this: The heroine is stranded on a bit of driftwood far out on the storm-tossed sea. From the lighthouse the startling cry rings out: "A fair maiden in dire peril in the sea beyond the breakers! Oh, Oh! Who will save her?"
"I will save her, or lose my life!" responds the hero (Warner), who thereupon hurls himself into the angry waves from a beetling cliff. A fearful struggle ensues between man and watery elements (ably aided and abetted by several bucketsful of real water from the wings). The maiden is rescued and brought to shore, but for some reason known only to the author the effort is too much for the hero. With a choked and exhausted murmur, "Call her Sea Drift. She is God's gift from the sea," he then and there expires from overexertion and exposure.
This called for an ocean scene—a considerable of an ocean scene— and none of us had ever seen it. But we had read geographies and seen pictures, and Uncle Bud Nichols had several stereopticon views of the ocean at its worst. The Clodfelter girls sewed long strips of sheeting together and Jess Carrington, our local barn painter, painted the result of their labors to look like what he, in his artistic mind, thought the sea ought to look like. We borrowed two hand-power blacksmith's bellows from Fred Fink's blacksmith shop to put at either wing, and under the loosely-laid sheeting. The bellows pumped air underneath, thus causing undulation after undulation, making what we though was a most realistic semblance of the ocean in active operation. My particular part, among others, in this theatrical venture, was to operate one of these bellows, and operate it like "hell," as Warner said, at the proper time.
A few of our props and effects are worthy of mention: the lighthouse was built from four round old time banana shipping crates fastened end to end, with a lantern from the livery stable hanging cheerily in the top. . . David Henry Burton, local inventor, hooked up immense quantities of old baling wire to some sort of wooden structure representing the driftwood the heroine was to cling to so perilously, in such a way that when Jude Glover, concealed beneath the ocean, turned the handle of a lop sided grindstone, the "driftwood" and beautiful maiden clinging thereon would bob up and down. A hand cornsheller shelling corn into a tin bucket emitted most of the noises we thought an ocean would make on an occasion like that.
Shep Wilson, who could bark like a dog, and who, it was said, did go with a show one whole summer in that capacity, and who, concealed in the corn field out alongside Hebron School House, did scare the little girls almost into hysterics one afternoon, lent us generously of his caninal talents.
Eventually, we eventuated into the Big Scene—the maiden was adrift, the cry of alarm rang out.
"I will save her or lose my life," quoth Warner, in a voice that sounded like an auctioneer at a farm sale. Jerking off his coat, he plunged into the raging sea. Buffeted by the angry waves, he crawled to the fair maiden. He grasped her tenderly and started for the shore. Midst the noise of the corn-sheller, the barking of the dog, the efforts of the bucketeers and bellowsmen, and encouraging cries from on shore, his foot caught in a seam of the sheeting, ripping up about two yards of the ocean. The air we had so industriously pumped in, rushed out at the rent. The sea collapsed. The corn-sheller ceased shelling. The barking dog and frenzied shore cries were hushed. A dead silence fell until some sacrilegious individual in the audience whispered loudly, "It's a miracle boys; he's walking on the sea." . . . Some good Samaritan finally got the curtain down.
But what I started out to illustrate was the mistake we made—I mean the big mistake. We had advertised "Sea Drift" for two nights, thereby giving our second night's audience an opportunity to get ready for us—which they did in due and ancient form, as will be quickly sensed. A shame, since as a whole, the show probably progressed more smoothly the second night—up to the Big Scene—which was never finished.
Later on, the male part of the cast met on the bench in front of Sam Brown's meat market to talk it over, and inquire of Warner how he was getting along. His talk was short and much to the point: "Boys, we're not appreciated, and they needn't never ask me to put on a play in this town again. . . I didn't mind the tomatoes, or the potatoes much—or even the eggs—could see 'em coming and dodge 'em. But I would like to know the SOB who threw that china door knob."
I presume you see my point by this time concerning a second effort in Shelbyville—oratorically.
Seriously, I . . . shall have to refuse your very kind offer. My father-in-law has been very low for months. He lives in Pennsylvania. My wife was called to Pennsylvania by the family, who thought the end was about come. . .and I shall have to hold myself in readiness to go at any time. Respectfully,