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.