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Page 17
Warner's parents had emigrated to Kansas. The second year the
grasshoppers "took them," with the result they all came back to
Russellville, and along with Warner came a "make-up" box which he
had in some manner acquired, together with a yearning for a
theatrical career. Therefore, he was an actor, none could
successfully dispute. He had the evidence. Warner put on many
home talents, advertised under the auspices of the Rathbon's
Sisters, the Mt. Pisgah Aid Society or other neighborhood
organizations.
From a comparatively modest beginning, we aspired to greater
things--harder plays and more cast. Warner soon learned the more
there were in the cast, the more doting fathers and mothers,
aunts and uncles, would turn out in the audience to see and
admire his uncanny histrionic abilities.
Eventually, we assayed a tragedy--an unavailing struggle against
fate. "Sea Drift" was the name of our first--and last--tragedy.
The climax was to come in the 8th or 9th Scene of the 10th or
12th Act, when in point of actual time it would be after midnight
and our remaining audience (those who, of necessity, had to stay
to take 95% of the cast home in time to help with breakfast or
the milking) either somnolent or clear "gone."
The script went like this: The heroine is stranded on a bit of
driftwood far out on the storm-tossed sea. From the lighthouse
the startling cry rings out: "A fair maiden in dire peril in the
sea beyond the breakers! Oh, Oh! Who will save her?"
"I will save her, or lose my life!" responds the hero (Warner),
who thereupon hurls himself into the angry waves from a beetling
cliff. A fearful struggle ensues between man and watery elements
(ably aided and abetted by several bucketsful of real water from
the wings). The maiden is rescued and brought to shore, but for
some reason known only to the author the effort is too much for
the hero. With a choked and exhausted murmur, "Call her Sea
Drift. She is God's gift from the sea," he then and there expires
from overexertion and exposure.
This called for an ocean scene--a considerable of an ocean scene--
and none of us had ever seen it. But we had read geographies and
seen pictures, and Uncle Bud Nichols had several stereopticon
views of the ocean at its worst. The Clodfelter girls sewed long
strips of sheeting together and Jess Carrington, our local barn
painter, painted the result of their labors to look like what he,
in his artistic mind, thought the sea ought to look like. We
borrowed two hand-power blacksmith's bellows from Fred Fink's
blacksmith shop to put at either wing, and under the loosely-laid
sheeting. The bellows pumped air underneath, thus causing
undulation after undulation, making what we though was a most
realistic semblance of the ocean in active operation. My
particular part, among others, in this theatrical venture, was to
operate one of these bellows, and operate it like "hell," as
Warner said, at the proper time.
A few of our props and effects are worthy of mention: the
lighthouse was built from four round old time banana shipping
crates fastened end to end, with a lantern from the livery stable
hanging cheerily in the top. . . David Henry Burton, local
inventor, hooked up immense quantities of old baling wire to some
sort of wooden structure representing the driftwood the heroine
was to cling to so perilously, in such a way that when Jude
Glover, concealed beneath the ocean, turned the handle of a lop
sided grindstone, the "driftwood" and beautiful maiden clinging
thereon would bob up and down. A hand cornsheller shelling corn
into a tin bucket emitted most of the noises we thought an ocean
would make on an occasion like that.
Shep Wilson, who could bark like a dog, and who, it was said, did
go with a show one whole summer in that capacity, and who,
concealed in the corn field out alongside Hebron School House,
did scare the little girls almost into hysterics one afternoon,
lent us generously of his caninal talents.
Eventually, we eventuated into the Big Scene--the maiden was
adrift, the cry of alarm rang out.
"I will save her or lose my life," quoth Warner, in a voice that
sounded like an auctioneer at a farm sale. Jerking off his coat,
he plunged into the raging sea. Buffeted by the angry waves, he
crawled to the fair maiden. He grasped her tenderly and started
for the shore. Midst the noise of the corn-sheller, the barking
of the dog, the efforts of the bucketeers and bellowsmen, and
encouraging cries from on shore, his foot caught in a seam of the
sheeting, ripping up about two yards of the ocean. The air we had
so industriously pumped in, rushed out at the rent. The sea
collapsed. The corn-sheller ceased shelling. The barking dog and
frenzied shore cries were hushed. A dead silence fell until some
sacrilegious individual in the audience whispered loudly, "It's a
miracle boys; he's walking on the sea." . . . Some good Samaritan
finally got the curtain down.
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