Today being Independence Day, I am declaring my own independence of writing an entry in the blog, mostly because my mind is blank. Instead here is yet another excerpt from my would be book, with the working title: "The Agony Is Not Over -- I've Won!'
I am a Sophomore at what was then called Eau Claire State University.
I often say in jest that when I went there it was called Eau Claire Normal School and there was only one building., “Old Main”. Actually that is when my mother Alice attended as a young woman on her way to a two year teaching degree.
My Sophomore year I find myself in a tug of war between two real heavyweights on the faculty, Grace Walsh, legendary Speech and Debate Behemoth and the soft spoken father figure Earl Kjer, whom all actors under his tutelage in theatre affectionately dub “Papa Kjer.”
It is always with dichotomy that I arrive at defining junctures and turning points in life. I remember my Sophomore year in high school, Autumn 1957, having returned to the home farm the previous Spring from being asked not to come back to Holy Cross Seminary in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, because Fr. John Paul has decided I am not “priest material” .. a statement that I now relish every time I hear his voice resounding in my head. Suffice to say it was a “you can't fire me, I quit” situation.
Autumn, 1957, I try to convince my parents that I should be able to try out for theatre at Menomonie High School and to try out for football as well. Football practice to play practice makes perfect sense to me. I would even have time to grab something to eat at Bark's Bakery in the between. But Mother Alice puts down the proverbial foot. You can't do both. You must choose. I wanted desperately to be a defensive back for the Indians because I have learned from playing backyard football with my three brothers that I love to punish them just at the apex of a pass reception when they are stretched out and most vulnerable. But at 145 pounds, this decision requires little time.
Now it is college and two of my heroes have expressed an interest in me. In Grace's class we are all told to choose a speaking category and will have to be an extemporaneous speaker, a debater, or an after dinner speaker. Grace uses her classes as her farm team and she is a genius at winning tournaments by sifting through the chaff via the class room.
I am in Grace's fundamentals of Speech class and I am also taking theatre classes from Earl Kjer and Wayne Wolfert, having gotten my toe in the grease paint my Freshman year, running spot for the musical comedy, The Pajama Game, and getting my first role, a silent private at attention in the Union Army, as one of the all time greats to pass through my beloved theatre, Gary Reineke, of Augusta, Wisconsin, renders a stirring portrayal of Abe Lincoln in Illinois.
There are no small parts, only small actors according to the theatre axiom. In the green room, the Eau Claire drama majors rewrite that axiom. There are no small parts, only shitty ones.
In Grace's class, I choose after dinner speaker. Surprise, surprise. The theme passed down from the Speech Gods of Judgment is to “Make a Prediction about the Future” and be funny. I settle on my prediction: Before the end of the 20th Century, man will once again become dominant over woman.
I piece together a series of one liners that in present society would have me in Politically Correct Hell, being spit roasted by Helen Gurney Brown, the entire staff of MS Magazine and Virginia Woolf.
The dreaded day arrives and I deliver my stolen material from 3X 5 note cards. I got the grade I deserved, but Grace has no one else to turn to for the upcoming Speech tournament at Bradley University, so she figures what the hell.
The trip to Illinois has only one highlight. The driver of the '53 Pontiac, a polished Senior, is so busy impressing the young girls in the back seat by way of the rear view mirror, that somewhere in Northern Illinois on a two lane highway, he hits the right shoulder and over steers, careening us across the highway onto the left shoulder, repeats the same move to the gravel of the right lane, then, white knuckled, finally gains control of the vehicle and is thankfully silent for the rest of the ride.
I only clearly remember two things about the tournament. I walk into the first round class room to find myself surrounded by well dressed, well groomed students from the entire Big Ten. They are wearing neckties. I have not yet learned to tie one.
As each gets up to deliver his hilarity, I find myself laughing out loud at all of them. I am the only one laughing. This occurs to me about a nanosecond before I hear the judge call for the contestant from Eau Claire State. I am a genuine Rube.
I give my little routine to an austere audience, too frightened now to laugh even at my own jokes, playing to silence, plopping back down in the wooden school chair in a pool of my own perspiration and wondering how I am going to possibly be able to go through this for two more rounds before the agony ends.
The agony ends and I return to the hotel, secure in my insecurity, and I nap before the evening's concluding banquet, at which the winner of the after dinner speaking category will deliver his speech.
I am awakened by ecstatic pounding on the hotel door and shouts of pure glee from my fellow speech mates.
I am dumbfounded to learn that I have won the prize and will be seated at the head table. The agony is not over.
It is the longest meal of my life and I know how the condemned feel as they consume their last meal.
The warden introduces me and I take the final walk alone, shackled by rusted chains of self doubt. As I reach the podium and the immense crowd falls silent, the miracle of Sister Dolarette, my grade school music teacher, is once again repeated.
I manage to get the first punch line through the microphone and laughter rolls up to me like a tide and here it is, calm and poise, just like in the Second Grade. I start strong and finish strong, and in my ears is the voice of Dean Wiseman, my high school speech and drama coach: “A speech should be like a woman's dress, long enough to cover everything and short enough to keep it interesting.”
Grace is all smiles as the diners disperse. “Hotshot Heagle!” she crows, “You're my after dinner speaker!”
I return victorious to be sent to three more area tournaments, each an inferno more daunting than Dante could ever conjure, and like a Never Was at The Kentucky Derby I don't even place. The only certainty in live performance, as in life, is uncertainty.
Many years later I hear a familiar voice in the telephone earpiece. It is the retired Grace and she wants me to entertain for an AARP luncheon at the Holiday Inn, Eau Claire. This, after chewing me a new orifice a year earlier for singing The Vasectomy Song at a Theatre Alum Banquet. I am floored. So when she reaches the bargaining point and tells me “we are a poor organization and we have no budget for entertainment” and that “you have always been my favorite”, I am ready to beg for the chance to work it for her.
I arrive early, as I am a creature of habit, and as the AARPists filter in, I find they all have a common ground.They are Eau Claire's retired wealthy. I have been bamboozled yet again.
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Grace, rest her soul, was a short woman with tiny feet and a gigantic bosom. I remember sitting in her class as she twisted and played with a string of pearls just above her bodice, when suddenly the string broke and all the pearls, every one of them, disappeared like a colony of ants in single file, directly into her cleavage.
She watched the retreating parade, then looked at us, matter of factly.
“Well. They're gone forever.”
Now she is at the Holiday Inn podium and laying it on thicker than Tammy Wynette's Max Factor.
“I was Larry's teacher back when I was small” she starts, and unwittingly, I am sure, sets me up for a slam dunk. She finishes, gives me that don't you dare sing that disgusting song look as we pass.
“Grace,” you were NEVER small! Ladies and gentlemen, Grace Walsh is the only woman I have ever met that can start the car and blow the horn at the same time.”
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I have not spoken with Gary Reineke in years but we share a history of trodding the boards. He was King Henry IV to my curious attempt to play Falstaff, a role that at my current age I am nearly ready to understand but would not be able to memorize .
Memorizing and delivering Shakespeare is tantamount to trying to absorb a foreign film with subtitles. It takes a while for brain synchronization.
Gary is masterful at it. We are at scene's end the night before we open. John Manlove is director, English magpie, jerking up and down the darkened back rows of the theatre, his body in synch with the flowing rhythm of the young King's description of the battle just fought. Falstaff is a grateful bystander, listening as Gary makes the far turn and kicks it home. He has mere feet to go and suddenly loses it: The Noble Douglas, falling down a hill was .. (oops, its gone, but Gary's pause is almost imperceptible) was so shaken, he was taken!
Manlove erupts in a chorus of agonizing expletives, but I can barely hear them as I am filled with a new admiration for an actor who is already one of my all time heroes . He just ad-libbed a couplet! My Liege!
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Note: Somewhere in the back of my tiny little mind, a voice is gnawing at me, telling me that I have already published this excerpt on this site. I went searching the entire archive, but I couldn't find it. that doesn't mean it isn't already there. My apologies if I have begun to repeat myself.
I hope you did something to declare your freedom today. The way things are going, the end of democracy is near.
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