It's All Yours. 1961. Eighth Grade Operetta

This is the heavily annotated script for our Operetta.  The show was a Really Big Deal for me.
I got to be 'Coordination and Direction', which meant getting out of a lot of classes to go to rehearsals to document blocking decisions, etc.  It also meant staying late at school and going in on Saturdays to work on songs or make stencils and hang out with Mr. B.

It is a subject on which I can bore people to distraction.
At the 25th class reunion, it briefly became a game to try to find something I did not remember about the show. (Not entirely sure it was the 25th.. One of the gatherings at Tepe's that a lot of people attended.)
"What did Dave Conklin do in the Operetta?"
"Dave Conklin was not in our class that year"
"Yes he was! He started in Kindergarten!"
"He was in England for a couple of years.  He was not in the class in 8th grade."

Here is the list of who did what.  Yes, I did re-type it.  The original ditto is really faded.

Obviously, I could go on and on.
I'm proud of knowing the Delaware State Song and being able to add it into the Song of the Underground.  I got to sit with John McDevit in the Gourmet Club scene. I still know all the words to Susie Diver's great song.

I will skip over a rant about the fact that we did not get to have an evening performance (and follow-on party!) because of some scheduling person not paying attention and booking health guru Bonny Pruden to speak at Home and School - or something like that.  We missed out on a party, though.  Not fair.  Wanted that party.

Herewith a bit more of the show.
Feel free to ask me about it.  I'm likely to sing if you do, though.  Be warned.
You can read the whole thing if you want to.  I have scanned all the pages and put them here

driving parents crazy on car trips

Okay.  Keen car trips.
You can play alphabet.
You can see how many different license plates you can find.
You can play that geography game where you have to name a place that starts with the letter the last name ended with.
You can play Ghost.
OR
You can sing.
You can sing silly songs.
You can sing rounds.

Pretty standard stuff; pretty standard squabbles.

BUT
You can find other things to sing.
I know of someone who said that she and her brother would sing in seconds.  We never did that.
But you can do some mind-bending other things.
Like 
1) Sing a round with everybody singing the same words at the same time while the tune is being sung as a round.  Hard to do.  The more familiar the song, the harder it is.  Difficult for two people to keep going.  Try it with three!

2) Sing the words "George Washington Bridge" to the tune of  the old 'Cranapple Juice Drink' ad, just one syllable after another over and over with no regard for phrasing all the way to the end of the verse.  It actually comes out even. (turns out that the tune is "when you are in love, it's the loveliest time of the year" recorded by Mario Lanza.  Thanks to Newlin for knowing that.)  Not sure why it is more fun to sing the Bridge than the Drink, but it is.
                   *** ----OR ---- ***
This is the one that gets to the listeners the most..
3) Sing a song with the words one syllable off from the tune.  Our specialty was Yankee Doodle.  Just sing 'Yankeekee Doodle" to the first 5 notes and the extra syllable puts you one off for the rest of the song. Takes concentration.  And it doesn't come out even, of course.

Maybe I just had a weird childhood.

There was a Hagstrom trip once in the 80's where we tried to make interesting and long sentences using only 6-letter words.   "Seeing Larry's killer escape, Martha framed George."  "Martha should attend church."  I think this exercise grew out of some Paul project having to do with trying to guess six character passwords.

 

Lunchtime Salt Curling

Ha!   I just found these four little plastic curling stone thingies in a box in the attic.  I bought them in the late 80's with some thought of playing with them at work, which never happened. They have a ball bearing in the bottom for easy sliding. You can use them for a bunch of different games, but the primary one is described on a board game site as:
"Based on Curling, players move their two Sliders across the table or another smooth surface. Score 1 point for being closest to the edge, 2 points for a 'cliffhanger'. First player to score 10 points wins."

This is exactly what we used to do with salt shakers at school!
I don't know that we kept score, but this game was definitely played by seniors at lunch.
Since seniors were first through the lunch line, we often had some time to kill while waiting for the underclassmen to finish eating and announcements to be made before we were dismissed.
Naturally we found a sophisticated game like this to play.
Perfect because the faculty didn't like it, but it really was not rowdy enough to warrant intervention.

This pincushion rocks!

More hobby woodworking.  This time Uncle Axel's.  There were several of these little rocking chairs in existence at one time.  

This remaining one is a bit the worse for wear.

The pincushion is fine.  You could still use the little slot in the top for scissors, I suppose. Four out of six pegs to hold spools are broken off, and the little drawer has a weak floor. 

But, hey, I don't keep it around in order to use it, do I?

Here's a picture of Axel for good measure.

Somewhere there is also a picture of the Santa and Reindeer wooden cutouts that he made for lawn decorations in the 1950's,  back before it was possible to buy all your Christmas decorations made of plastic with LEDs.

EDIT 1/24/12:

Now THAT's interesting.

I found the picture of the Christmas display.  It is not Santa at all!  Memory is pretty strange.

EDIT 6/19/2012:

HA.

My memory is not completely goofed up, after all.

There really was a Santa display at Axels' house.

 

Wilmington Dry Goods, bargains, and street names

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Before there were chains of discount department stores, there was Wilmington Dry Goods on Market Street in Wilmington from 1924 to 1977.  The Wilmington Dry stores in the suburbs after that just don't count.

This site tells more than you want to know of the history of the enterprise, but skip down to the pictures.  They are great.

http://www.oldwilmington.net/oldwilmington/wdg.html
Multiple levels, wooden floors, piles of things on tables.
Going there was always an adventure.

I hardly remember the Market Street entrance.  We always went in from King Street, which meant that if it was a market day, when we were really little, Daddy would buy warm roasted peanuts from a cart there as we left - a little bag for each of us. Surely we were not allowed to eat them until we got home, though. Peanut shells in the car are just unimaginable.

I do remember thinking it was pretty strange that all those farmers' trucks were on KING Street, when MARKET street was right there, one block over.  It was not so much that the trucks were in the wrong place.  It was more that the streets must have had the wrong names.

I was reminded of all of this when I put on this jacket this morning. 

Each of my brothers had one of these coats, bought at Wilmington Dry in the 1960's.  I still use them (coats, not brothers) as 'barn jackets' for outdoor jobs in almost cold weather. The inner lining in the sleeves is shot, but I would say that they seriously turned out to be a real bargain.

A blow for Gender Equality – 1964

History was made with the 1965 Tower Hill Yearbook.

The girls varsity field hockey team was undefeated in the fall of 1964, so the decision was made to have it be their picture on the divider page of the yearbook, opening the Athletics section.

Such a fuss!  Previously, it had always been the football team featured on this page. Always.

Elsewhere in the yearbook, in an informal calender of senior year events, it is noted in November,  "Upper School rent by schism over Evergreen athletic divider."

You see who prevailed.

The Class of '65 was solidifying its reputation.