SEARCH THROUGH HISTORY CONTINUES

In today’s digging I found photos of myself I didn’t even know I had. All were from my years teaching at college – they were my faculty photos for the yearbook. I showed them around to a couple people and both said they would not know it was me, that only made me wonder who I was back then.

Maybe we look at ourselves through somewhat jaded eyes. I thought I looked the same, just younger. In all five photos I was wearing a jacket an open color 70’s style shirts, big colored prints. The shirt blended with the jacket, except for the white turtleneck and blue jacket. That was my favorite. Since many of the shirts were flowered I have a hard time believing I actually wore that kind of shirt.

I also found many more photos from both “No Time for Tombstones” and “Adrift.” I thought I had put all the photos I had of those were two-plays on my Facebook page. I wrote and directed both for the college drama team – Portrait Players. Both took a great deal of research and a pre computer search for photographs to get the correct look.

I had forgotten I had photos of an AK-47, the gun favored by the Viet Cong. That was for “No Time For Tombstones.” Since they were illegal in Canada, I had a friend in Vietnam send me pictures. The maintenance crew shaped the gun and inserted a metal barrel and I filed those suckers into final shape and painted them. I had one for a very long time and can no longer remember what happened to it. I though they looked pretty good but found out how real they looked when we made our first performance stop in the States. The play opened with the capture of the principle characters and a young Vietnamese boy. The boy tries to escape and is shot in the process. The guns did not fire. The sound effects were on tape. But when the sound exploded a Vietnam Veteran dived under this seat. From then on we got help to indentify the vets in the audience and warn then of what was coming,

I know their sandals were made from old tires and we did the same. Their clothing was grey cotton that looked like pajamas. It was a great play and in great demand. We ran if four years to be in as many Canadian churches as possible,

Two of the principles were alive when we did Adrift and I found all my correspondence with them as I was gathering information and trying to find out what they talked about on the raft for 19 days. Both were children at the time and remembered very little. I wanted to be as true to the story as possible,

AJ Hunter wrote books on both stories. But they were written while wars were still in progress and much was banned from inclusion. I found a photo of the USS Lashaway, the ship that was torpedoed and sank and another of the raft on which they survived. I even found the drawing I made for the construction of the raft including directions on how it would look like it was floating. The secret was tractor tire inner tubes.

All the plays and skits we did have such great memories for me but then I guess that is just another thing that happens as we age.

I know I have changed. It is hard to remember when I was thin, but there are some photos to prove it. It is even hard to remember how hard it was to write these scripts and produce the plays. Now it all seems like fun – it wasn’t. On both plays I had to begin rehearsals before the script was ready. I’m sure that is not the way to do it. But the cast would memorize a long section and I would have a completely new rewrite the next rehearsal. I figure that by the time we were done they had memorizes maybe a dozen different plays. I hope they have forgiven me by now.