HAPPY DAZE
Published in Wetmore Spectator and
Seneca Courier-Tribune — October 11, 1935
By John T. Bristow
In glancing over the current issue of The Courier-Tribune I notice that the good citizens of Seneca are putting on a Biblical show this week. That’s fine. Whenever I hear of home talent aspiring to portray those ancient characters on the stage I become interested right away. It recalls to mind the time when I myself was, briefly, in the cast of a local entertainment of that sort held in the old school house here in Wetmore many, many years ago.
It was a show the likes of which Wetmore had never had before, nor since—a show that stands out in memory as the one classic of the times—a show that rocked the whole countryside, rocked it with near volcanic convulsions.
Considering the extraordinary performers and the conduct of an audience which ran wild, this little review is not offered as something worthy of emulation. Nor is it to be construed as criticism. Rather, it is something to be contrasted with the newer interpretations and renditions, something to be compared with present-day reactions as against old-time unbridled responses.
As aforesaid, with other local talent—grownups, and some lesser lights, including an injection of members of “that tanyard gang”—I was cast for a minor part in that show. To give you the right slant on this last mentioned group of my theatrical co-workers, I should say here that my father operated a tannery in the old days, and “the gang” — frequenters of the yard—included just about all the happy-go-lucky youth of the town, vividly alive, and callow. Collectively, we made quite a record—something short of enviable, it now pains me to relate.
It was my dear old Sunday School superintendent who had selected me for one of her characters in this Biblical show. I had been marvelous—so she said—in her Sunday School, committing and reciting as many as twenty Bible verses on a Sunday morning, for which I would sometimes be given a little up-lift card. She said that my good work in her Sunday School was guarantee enough for her that I would handle the part assigned me creditably. I would not need to attend rehearsals. All that I should do was to have my good mother make for me a heterogeneous coat according to specifications. She would instruct me at the last minute so that I wouldn’t forget.
I was to take the part of Joseph—Joseph, the boy. And, although a bit irregular, and I might say diabolically devised, to save the stage-carpenter the trouble of making a pit to cast me into, one of my Hebrew brothers—I think it would have been Judah, who, off stage, was a big Swede — was to have batted me on the “bean” so that I couldn’t protest when he and my other naughty brothers would sell me to the Egyptians, and thus banish me to the Land of Bondage. I wouldn’t need to rehearse? Oh, no, of course not! And as it turned out I didn’t perform, either.
The show was going strong. The audience applauded and yelled itself hoarse. After a particularly exciting scene, Rolland Van Amburg, the town clown, jumped up from his seat and yelled, “It’s the best thing Wetmore ever had—I’ve had my money’s worth already! Come and get another quarter!” Van was ably assisted in this demonstration by one William Morris, leading merchant.
The sponsoring lady was in high glee—happy daze. She said to her puppets, “It’s taking! Oh, dear children, we must give them this one again!” She flitted about from one to another, saying, “Oh, girls, please do hurry!”
The scene which had so excited Van was a tableau draped in naught but thin mosquito bar and set off by the best soft mellowing light effect that could be had with the oil-burning lamps, depicting some Biblical event with strictly private and as time goes quite modern interpretations. Embroidered beyond the original concept, it exhibited in silhouette some of Wetmore’s fairest damsels—some who will read this and blush—in an amazing state of dishabille. I should like to—and probably will—hear from Montana and Idaho, and even faraway Hollywood, on this statement.
A wag in the audience who was not man enough to show himself, like Van, yelled, “Take down the bars!” The audience roared! The sponsoring lady beamed! Things got to going so good for the director that she began pulling surprises on the performers. Wholly without warning, she ordered Clifford Ashton to take off his shirt. That young Englishman, ever obliging and obedient, had about completed the job when Dr. Thomas Milam cried out in his most dramatic voice, “Put that shirt back on, you idiot!”
The woman, who was my Sunday School superintendent, overhearing the Doctor’s remark, forthwith gave another curt command: “Off with that shirt, Clifford—off with that shirt!” The voice carried, full and resonant, through the calico partitions to the rear of the auditorium. That command became a phrase which was hurled at Clifford as long as he lived here. He is now in Seattle, Washington.
As already stated, I was to have taken the part of Joseph. I had a sort of vague idea that my beautiful coat of variegated hues was to have been torn from my person by my brothers to show to my old man as evidence of a lie they were going to tell him. And not knowing what turn of mind the now deliriously happy director would take next, I beat it—went outside and thought I would see the show through the green shutters which covered the old school house windows.
Outside, I found that other deserters had preceded me. Bill McVay, a grown young man, bewhiskered for the occasion, with a flowing white beard the likes of which has seldom been seen on this earth since the days of Moses, said, in his drawling voice, “I could drink all the whisky the old town’s got and it wouldn’t faze me—but that thing has bumped me off my feet. She’ll have to get someone else to take my part.”
Actually, I was afraid to remain in the cast, fearing, the way things were happening, fast and furious like, that I might be persuaded against my will to appear before that hilariously responsive audience with greatly reduced apparel. I really was in a dangerous spot. The plot called for partial forced disrobement. Knowing the hyenas who posed as my brothers, and knowing also that those brothers had caught the spirit of the producer in a large way, I had the feeling that when they would have finished with me, working in that free atmosphere, that it would have been sans pants for little Johnny.
It should be borne in mind that the director of this very extraordinary show was an extremely odd woman, very religious, and sincere—and, having ideas of her own, she had the courage to mirror them bounteously in her work.
The show was all right, of course. Biblical, and all that. And, viewed with an eye for the beautiful, it was all that Van said it was. But coming as it did in an age of many clothes for women, it was a revelation.