Eight Grade Theatrical

Toward the end of each year the eighth grade put on an amateur theatrical production and I was selected for one of the minor parts. My one chance to perform as an actor was not to be as I had my attach of appendicitis and missed the last couple of weeks of school. This was a critical juncture in my life and for awhile it would be touch and go whether I would survive or not. But I did after the few critical days about four days after the operation. As for completing the eighth grade schoolwork there was no problem (I was excused from the end-of-the-term semester tests as I had been for since the time this exemption was available to me) and I was promoted to being a freshman in high school.

Although I liked not having to take the semester tests (I still needed to take the intermediate six weeks tests I feel now that this was somewhat of a disservice to me as the experience would have been useful in preparing me for the exams I faced in college. Not long ago I was looking through the material I have saved from my Gowrie school days and I find I still have the playbook for the production I missed.

In high school the junior and senior classes each had a play that they produced but I never tried out for these. If nothing else the difficulty in arranging to attend evening practices mitigated against my participating as by that time we had moved out to the Peterson farm.

[I’m not sure that my dad is remembering this accurately. In his papers, I found a script for a play called “Spring Fever” by Glenn Hughes. The copyright date is 1937, the year my dad turned 17. If this is the play he is referring to here, he could not have been part of the cast when he was in eighth grade. On some of the front pages are inscriptions by some of the cast members. None are addressed to my dad by name, but they are clearly addressed to the individual who played Professor Virgil Bean. — LRS]