Where Is The Stage?

Back in the ancient times, the era my children always thought I was born in, when someone asked "Where's the stage?" it meant the stagecoach coming into town. I must have watched too many old westerns but never heard the word coach following the word stage. As far back as I can remember I always wanted to know where the stage was or what I could turn into a stage.

Perhaps The Little Rascals were a bad influence with all those little productions they would put together.  I must have been about eight and my little brother, Kenny, six years old.  We would make up little acts, put a few benches and chairs on the driveway in front of the garage door and put on a show for the neighborhood children.  What we actually did has long since faded from memory but kids always showed up to watch.

Because I was such a tomboy Mother put me in tap and ballet so perhaps I could walk more like a lady. Then there were the classical piano lessons and recitals with frilly dresses. In grade school I never passed up a class play even though I got to play exciting parts like being a hollyhock in the second grade. My doll got a better part than I did as it was baby Jesus every year in the Christmas play.

Junior high brought the talent shows into my life.  I can remember embarrassing my older brother one year by doing Al Jolson in black face and another year wearing a sailor suit and doing Honey Bun from "South Pacific."  I think that was about the time he started telling everyone I was not his sister. But in junior high I also got involved in speech, drama and debate so there were endless opportunities to perform. Then I can't forget taking roller skating lessons at Muskogee's Stardust Skating Arena and getting involved in two roller skating shows.

In high school there were as many classes in speech, drama and debate as there were in math and science.  There were endless opportunities for speech tournaments and plays all four years capping off with Muskogee Central High's first musical, "Bye, Bye, Birdie".  This was also the years of folk music and hootenannies so naturally I grabbed up a guitar and joined in the weekly hootenannies in the park.  

Do I sound a little stage struck?  It was so bad that by the time Mother decided I should go to a nice normal girl's school and turn into a nice normal lady that the only reason I really went was because Stephens College was very heavy into theater and dance.  Two days of classes in theater with girls from New York in their flowing capes and tights terrified me and constituted a quick major change to television, radio and film production. Time to put the thought of starring on Broadway  away and move on.

When I married the "then husband" I did a pretty good job of staying away from any stage and even gave up roller skating until two little boys came along.  All children should learn to skate - right?  All children should have the chance to perform in plays and talent shows even if their school does not offer them - right?  All during the boys' years in school I sort of became a director of talent shows and summertime plays. How could the "then husband" argue with affording the boys the same opportunities I had growing up?

Without realizing it things got much worse through the years, all of which I will write about in my blog "How Lucky I Am To Be Born A Baby Boomer"/ "Things I Should Have Known".  There was learning to ice skate at 40 and then skating in an ice show and on a precision team for five years, "The Irving Opry", "The Irving City Limits", "Have Music, Will Travel", "The Wynnewood Follies" and numerous street fairs and festivals. Finally I found the Ardmore Little Theater two years ago.

Truthfully my first audition at the theater two years ago made me feel like those theater classes at Stephens but this time I didn't run away. My blogs have been sketchy for the last six weeks as I have not had the mental capacity to reminiscence about what happened in 1979 while trying to learn a lot of songs and how to play the spoons especially when I didn't even know people played the spoons. The next audition will be better and even though there are not a lot of parts for a member of the "72 Young Club" I am having more fun than anyone should have. 

Thank you Marshell, my "now husband", for fixing his own dinner for six weeks, being totally supportive even though I will have put 1,640 miles on the Tesla before the play is over and listening to the noise of drums, spoons or tap shoes.  I have a feeling I can drive anyone crazy but he is a prince and just hangs in there.

Back to the real world next week if I ever really knew what that was.  I am sure there is some cliffhanger I left dangling in the last story.

Just Normal Everyday Stuff

By the time the 4th of July rolled around in the summer of 1979 I was wondering how it had flown by so fast.  There had not been as many leisurely days by the pool as I had expected but I really didn't really have any complaints.  

Alpha went home right after the 4th of July after having been with us for almost four weeks. Sounds like a long time for a house guest, especially your mother-in-law, but Alpha was lots of fun and a tremendous help. While she was there Dennis and I got the rest of the drywall up in the basement without too many curse words, there were several Kansas City Royal baseball games she enjoyed, trips to a winery and tours of all the interesting points in both Kansas and Missouri. Perhaps she needed to go home to Warner to have some quiet time as there was certainly none around our house.

In July the New Neighbors had a Summer Social which included the husbands.  Most of their activities centered around the ladies but about once a month or so there was a couples affair.  This particular one was a bring a dish to share and the club provided the drinks.  Dennis did not sound very enthused about going which I sort of ignored and made the best summer salad I could come up with.  (These affairs always forced you into a situation of making something spectacular.)

When it was time to get dressed to go Dennis proceeded to try on all his casual clothing.  He had suits for work and sloppy garage clothes but it seems like it had been awhile since we had gone anywhere that required nice casual. There was an abundant amount of cursing as the clothes were tried on and then pitched on the floor. Nothing fit.  I had made him fat and he was not going to any stupid party.

My first reaction was to cry, a very adult thing to do.  This was not the first "fat fit" as I always referred to them in my mind.  They actually occurred almost every time there was a Ford Motor Company affair but those were sort of command performance affairs where he had to show up. They also occurred most of the time when I suggested we go to something as simple as going to the movies.  Long before we moved to Kansas City I simply stopped suggesting we go and do anything just to make life a little smoother.

After the initial tears slowed down I just got mad.  This New Neighbors event was sort of an event I needed to show up at since I was a member of the Board and these people were my friends.  All those company affairs and evenings going out with people he worked with that I did not particularly like or have anything in common with flashed through my mind.  Somehow the words "Well, you can stay home, but I am going" popped out of my mouth.  That prompted a bit of a rage but I stood my ground for once and he did finally find something to wear.

The evening was not really very pleasant as I put on my happy face.  He was not speaking to me which made it easier to get through the evening and he made no effort to be the least bit sociable. It was, after all, my fault when he gained weight.  I guess I was going to have to stop force feeding him every night after I tied him to a chair in front of the television. Wonder what his reaction will be when I get the courage to tell him that the club's bi-annual Wine and Cheese Party will be at our house in October?

With the drywall finally in place in the basement and the thought of the Wine and Cheese event coming in October there was still a lot of work to be done.  Having a hundred plus people at the party was going to require more space.  The next step was something called
"tape and bed" to hide all of the drywall seams. I had seen the finished product from wallpapering in new construction but had no idea how to do it.  So I went and watched some guys working on a new house.  It looked pretty simple and certainly I could do that.

Armed with a wide blade, a bucket of drywall mud and a roll of paper tape you just put a swipe of mud on the seam, stick up the tape on the mud and put another swipe of mud on top and smooth out the edges. Oh, My God!  Starting on the ceiling I quickly learned when gobs of mud fell on my head, the tape bubbled up when it got wet and there was NO smoothing of the edges that this was actually some art form and the guys I had watched must have been masters at it.

After a few attempts at the ceiling and trying to remember that I had not seen the real drywall guys cry I decided to perfect my skills on the walls.  At least the mud would fall on my shoes and not in my eyes and my hair. Also two of the walls were only half walls since it was a walkout basement with lots of windows.  Perfecting my skills did not seem to ever happen.  I got better at it but smooth seams never happened without much sanding. I would much rather insert toothpicks under my fingernails than to sand but one does what one has to do.  

By the end of the summer the tape, bed and sanding job was done to near perfection. I did realize in all the ordeal why the blown on ceilings and textured walls were so popular.  Perhaps not all drywall guys were masters of their craft.  The rest of the house usually required a daily cleaning from hoards of children running up and down the stairs tracking drywall dust everywhere.  Actually the goal was to have it done by the time Wes's ninth birthday rolled around so he and his twenty-five little friends could have the party in the basement and the backyard. I was not very good at birthday parties and after that one I got more creative about different locations for the annual event.

Barney had called the Monday after our interesting talk about all the things we had avoided talking about through the years.  He apologized but I told him he wasn't the only one that did not say what really needed to be said.  He was going to be out of town for several weeks promoting his book and doing seminars.  I had all the stuff for his house done and could have delivered it while he was gone but he said for me to wait until he got back. There are times when I wished I had not started the conversation but the time apart might have been a good thing.  Maybe..........

Oh, and the annual two week vacation to Warner, Oklahoma is coming closer.

1979.....I'm Still Standing

Sometimes it is hard to look back at a particular time frame and remember just what was going on in our lives and the world around us.  In 1979 I think I thought of myself as just a healthy, normal, All-American girl or woman if being thirty-three qualified me for that. I was thinking that I had died and gone to heaven living in Kansas City and actually it was a pretty interesting year.

The average cost of a new house was $58,100.00 and the cost of gas was 86 cents.  A new mercury Cougar cost $6,430.00 and a new Mustang was $4,494.00.  ESPN started broadcasting for the first time competing with ABC Wide World of Sports.

Best album of the year was "Saturday Night Fever" although Pink Floyd's "The Wall" sold 150 copies in the UK in 2 hours.  Other hit makers were Donna Summer, Billy Joel, The Village People, Michael Jackson The Bee Gees, Prince and Rod Stewart.  Movies that came out were "Superman, The Movie", "Kramer vs. Kramer", "the Muppet Movie", "Alien" and "Star Trek".  

It actually snowed in the Sahara Desert, Ted Combs roller skated 5,193 miles from LA to NYC, the Walkman debuted with a price of $200.00, the first snowboard was invented and the game Trivial Pursuit appeared. The popular toys were Hot Wheels, Nerf Balls. Barbie dolls and Atari. Television gave us 60 minutes, MASH, Mork & Mindy, SNL, Happy Days and 43 million people watched Elvis on ABC.

In the thirteen years that Dennis and I had been married by 1979 we had moved eight different times through three different states and five different towns.  Three of the moves were due to job changes while the rest came from someone being unhappy with what ever house we were living in.  The amazing fact in all the moves was that we actually lived in one house for eight of those years.  It wasn't all bad as I think it gave me good skills to become a home mover expert and helped me develop decorating abilities to some make of those places even habitable.

My attitude about cars has always been if it started when you turned the key, could make it's way down the road and back then it was fine. It did not have to be shiny or new.  In the thirteen years married to Dennis we had actually had nineteen vehicles and three dragsters.  In the early years before Ford Motor Company there were some really cool ones I wished I still had like the '61 and '41 Chevys or the '37 Ford and the '52 Ford pickup. We did still have the '50 Mercury that we bought for me to drive in 1967. But then there were the endless array of Ford lease vehicles that changed every September. I can't complain about the lease cars from Ford as most of them cost under a hundred dollars a month with all insurance and maintenance paid.  They were all top of the line vehicles fully loaded with all the bling so they could be sold as "executive company cars".  The only thing we had to do was to put gas in them.  The only hard part was to remember what I was driving when I went to find the car in a parking lot. Dennis of course had a company car but I did not count those in the nineteen and I could add eight more onto the total count.

The revolving garage door was confusing but then again growing up with two hot rod brothers, living and helping through engine swaps, weekly clutch repairs on one vehicle and Dennis travelling five days a week for many years gave me more auto mechanic knowledge than a lot of guys had. Then there was an occasion when I tore the race car engine down one night when Dennis was gone to see what damage the big kabooie caused one Saturday at the races.  I am even proud of my first place trophy for being the fastest at changing spark plugs. It was all really fun and I am glad I got so much car knowledge in my little brain.

As far as the brain goes it took me four colleges, four different majors and twelve years to finally graduate. There was always a problem in what other people wanted me to grow up to be and what I wanted.  I also discovered that I enjoyed being a stay-at-home Mom although at times the thought of a little extra money popped into my brain and I would go get a "real" job, one where you had to stay in one place for "X" number of hours.  That never worked out well as it was more fun to stay home, play with the kids and put on a stack of record albums while I danced my way through house-cleaning.

There were a lot of world events going on in 1979 but I did not pay much attention to them.  It was the era of the Women's Liberation Movement that I never really understood.  Even though I was in a less than happy marriage and medical school was difficult for women to be accepted I felt like I could not have been more liberated.  I had a great volunteer job, wrote a bi-weekly column for the local paper, did a monthly twelve page newsletter for the New Neighbors, had a beautiful house, nice cars even if I didn't care about them, great friends and neighbors.  

Just another one of those years when it felt great to have been born as a Baby Boomer.  There was great music, pretty cool cars, respect for others and a general attitude that there was an element of fun in everything that needed to be done.