Category Archives: Lexington Theatre

Why Do We Do It?

Lexington Theatre, , , , , , ,

It’s 1989.

It’s warm June evening.

We’re rehearsing KING LEAR.

Wait…

It’s an older story than that.

It’s an old and favorite tale among theatre folks, told a variety of ways. Here’s how I remember hearing it first (probably from my raconteur friend Chuck Pogue, a man untethered to accuracy, but always firmly adhered to poetic truth).

Sir Laurence Olivier was on a train, passing the journey studying the script of a possible next project on the stage, when another traveler plopped himself into the seat adjacent. The gentleman noticed Olivier’s reading material, expressed interest, and introductions ensued. The gentleman, it turned out was an avid actor in a small village theatre. He energetically regaled Sir Laurence with his hilarious and tedious adventures and misadventures on the boards as the miles dripped away ever more slowly.

Know anyone like that?

I can only sense your smirk and assure you this narrator is fully cognizant of “there, but for the grace of God…”

Eventually the gentleman thespian reached his stop. He rose from his seat, looked back at Olivier, and smiling sadly farewelled; “Why do we do it, Larry?”

Well…

…I have a thought or two.

It’s 1989.

It’s warm June evening.

We’re rehearsing KING LEAR.

It’s an outdoor summer Shakespeare festival in Woodland Park in Lexington, Kentucky. We’re rehearsing on the usable parts of a set still under construction built around a big tree that just might be as old as the play. At least we like think so. An anachronistic concrete sidewalk slashes about 20 feet across the front of our stage. It originates from the park’s swimming pool up the hill. The pool is not as old as the play.

In fact…

(Oh my God, here comes another side note.)

The pool in Woodland Park is another symptom of Lexington’s perverse love/hate of water.

I’ve been told that Lexington is the largest North American city lacking a large element of water. No ocean, no lake, no river, no bay.

Yet, I believe we harbor (le mot juste) a genetic longing for water.

The Town Branch of Elkhorn Creek formerly ran through downtown Lexington. It wasn’t scenic or particularly useful and it may have contributed to the cholera epidemics in Lexington in the mid-1800’s. We covered it up with concrete and bank buildings. It still runs under downtown Lexington. A few years ago, as an art installation, a microphone was lowered to the underground branch and as you walked between businesses on Vine Street, one could faintly hear the sound of running water. Today, Lexington is building a new park and hiking trail in the downtown area and striving to include some semblance of flowing water.

Similarly…sorta…

In 1885, Woodland Park had a lake; Lake Chenosa. Lexingtonians recreated on Lake Chenosa until the 1950’s when the city drained it and made baseball fields instead. Now, I love baseball, but…what kind of mind? But Lexington’s longing for water will not be denied. Lake Chenosa was replaced by a public swimming pool. Go figger.

(End of side note…thank…)

So…

…we were rehearsing KING LEAR. Lear had just been advised; “Thou should not have been old till thou hadst been wise.” (a line delivered precisely and definitively by yours truly.)

Three young boys strolled up the sidewalk from the pool. They looked to be nine or ten years old; barefoot, swimming trunks, no shirts, towels draped about their necks; last icons of a Huck Finn summer. They paused and listened to us for a few minutes, then gathered their satiated, chlorine-wearied towels of gold and moved silent on the road to Elsinore (apologies to Tom Stoppard).

A bit later, I was watching from the wings as Lear roared; “Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow, you cataracts and hurricanoes.” I noticed that one of our swimmers had returned, spread his towel on the sidewalk, and was sitting akimbo and devouring every line. He stayed until we finished; “We that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long.”

Why do we do it?

We do it for the applause, the instant gratification.

We do it for the narcissistic thrill of hearing great lines launched into the ether by our voices.

We do it (as Stephen King suggests) to let the gorillas out.

Yes, I believe all that is so.

But perhaps the collateral benefit might be to at least intrigue, and at best inspire young swimmers.

Perhaps it’s a genetic longing.

Perhaps it’s a story older than KING LEAR.

I dunno.

It’s above my pay grade…

…sigh…

…but I did deliver that one line pretty well, dammit.

Swamp Dreaming

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, Lexington-70's, Pogo, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It seems like a good night to pull my eyes and ears and head out of the 24/7/365 news apocalypse, and instead, sail into some YouTube videos of Blossom Dearie, Oscar Peterson, and Thelonius Monk…and perhaps visit a while with Pogo Possum.

Pogo and his friends invariably slow me down, charge me positively, and make me smile…not from a distance, but sittin’ right next to the Okefenokee denizens relaxin’ on the same log. I can smell Albert’s awful cigar and wince when he gulps Pogo’s bowl of wax fruit in its entirety before recognizing the fruit’s ersatz-ness. No problem, just a fine excuse to move into Pogo’s house (and larder) for a few days convalescence. Pogo don’t mind.

The first house I owned was on the north side of Lexington about a block from Louden House in Castlewood Park and it had a bit of that casual feel about it. I grew up in that neighborhood and felt cozy there.

Janie and I made our early discoveries together with each other there. In fact, I still believe it was my first tortoise-shell, Scandal, who convinced Janie that I might be worth taking a chance on. We would open a champagne bottle, take the foil, and roll it into a small ball, toss it, and Scandal would trot after it and return it to me. Who on this planet could resist a champagne-fetching cat?

However, not all the discoveries were pleasant in this 50+ year old (in the 1980’s) house. The morning Janie looked up in her bath and instead of the ceiling, saw a lovely azure sky was a challenge, and the unheated bedroom was a challenge of a different sort…though the latter had its upside.

But the Okefenokee-ness of the nest came from the friends who dropped in. I remember Paul Thomas coming by to help move Janie in by ordering pizza. I remember Eric and Becky Johnson watching “White Christmas” with us, and continuing to watch it to the end with Janie even though I had slunk off to bed halfway through (Hey! I was a workin’ guy!). I remember Chuck and Julieanne’s après wedding do-dah in the parlor. I remember Vic Chaney brutally critiquing my meagre collection of record albums (remember those?). I remember Gene Arkle pondering for over an hour before he made his next tragic chess move in a series of tragic chess moves. I remember Joe Gatton bouncing into our Sunday breakfast on the porch and helping us plow through the Sunday papers, about the only news we consumed those innocent days.

No, we didn’t eat the wax fruit, and the cigars weren’t awful, they were non-existent. But the company was easy. There were no conversational land-mines of which to be wary. Outrageous and wildly inaccurate things were said and then laughed away. Offense was rarely taken.

We had little…

…and thus, little to lose…

…and thus, little to defend.

We had each other…

…inside decrepit brick walls…

…a fragile and powerful bubble of heedless good will.

We had it all.

Sewing the Sea to the Sky

Lexington Theatre, Lexington-70's, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It was a warm, salty, sunny day in the June of 1984, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

I lived then, and live now in Lexington, Kentucky, the largest US city with no major water element…or so I’ve been told. We have no ocean, no lake, no river. We do have the Town Branch of the Elkhorn Creek that runs through our downtown, or at least it formerly did. We (“we” being folks before my time) paved over the creek. Thus, it now runs under our downtown.

I’ve never seen it.

But I suspect many of us Lexingtonians, like divining rods, know it’s there, and I think we harbor a longing for it. A few years ago, an enterprising local artist ran an audio cable through a sidewalk that lies between a 20-story downtown bank building and its parking structure to a microphone near the underground waterway. Hidden speakers whispered the sounds of running water to the strollers on their way to make their mortgage payments. Not exactly ocean surf…more like trickles of desperation.

I love where I live, but I do long for big water…and a major league baseball team. It’s all that stands between Lexington and perfection in my book.

The first time I saw an ocean I was on a winery/vineyard business trip to California. One late afternoon, my colleagues and I drove our rental gondola of a car due west until our path ended on two tire tracks on the grass. We walked to the cliff overlooking the biggest water I’d ever seen.

A couple of days earlier, I had made my first hajj to City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco and now I was standing at the physical and logical end of Kerouac’s road. I was at the end of the western world, basking in that western light, gazing across to where nothing was visible, nothing was promised, nothing was assured, and nothing was finished. The possibilities of Diebenkorn’s and Seurat’s blank canvases were immediate and possible. What was on the other side? Stoppard advises; “I wouldn’t think about it if I were you, you’d only get depressed.” Tolkien is more hopeful, but just as final, and since I did not want to visit those Grey Havens while still in my 20’s, I reluctantly pulled myself away…changed more than a bit, to a more pedestrian search for Dr. David Bruce’s winery and some colossal chardonnays.

I have been mesmerized by big water ever since. Key West, Clearwater, Biloxi, New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, and the Outer Banks. Waves and tides, sunsets and sunrises, lakes, bays, rivers, marshes, herons, dolphins, pelicans…

Pelicans…

…ah yes-s-s-s, pelicans…

…back to 1984.

It had already been a long, full day and we still had a ways to go…but that was alright. By this time, I was pretty warm and salty myself, and still fairly sunny.

The Outer Banks are big water writ even bigger water. These fragile strips of sand are far enough out to sea that to the east you can’t see Africa though you’re told it’s there, and to the west you can’t see the mainland though you’re told…

Sunrise over the water inspiring your day.

Sunset over the water evaluating your day.

Promising to do better tomorrow…or perhaps, do nothing at all.

This day, the Queasy Rider and I had been covering ground all day.

We had left the third member of our expedition, P-Tom, back at the beach house, nursing his badly sunburned feet. P-Tom had camped out the previous afternoon on the deck of his uncle’s beach house, in the shade, with 800+ pages of light reading about Confederate naval fortifications. As sure as Martello walls must crumble before the onslaught of the modern cannonballs of 1861, it was just as inevitable that P-Tom’s page-turner was no match for the insidious onslaught of the warm ocean sun.

He fell asleep.

The shade moved, as fickle shade will.

His beach-appropriate bare feet were exposed.

He snored.

His feet simmered.

We’ll turn that inevitable page for him.

Queaser and I were sympathetic, but still ambulatory. Heartless and undeterred, we beat our un-fried feet down the road to adventure.

We checked out the site of the Chicamacomico Races. This is just fun to say out loud, and it was where the Blues and the Grays in the jolly 1860’s spent a jolly day chasing each other up and down a sandy stretch of beach that meant little to either side, to no discernible improvement to the strategic chances of either side. I forget who chased who first, but both factions got their turn to chase. It was like a re-enaction of something that had not yet been enacted. I dunno. It plumb evaded me. Maybe there was yelling and whooping and beer involved. Maybe it ended in a real nice clambake.

We moved on to see the lighthouse at Hatteras. This is the lighthouse that had been moved back from the encroaching sea. It was an impressive feat, but not speedy, and we had a ferry to catch. We were on our way to Ocracoke Island.

Ocracoke was pleasant and small—humps of sand, clumps of sea oats, and a squat lighthouse that was moving nowhere.  We had pretty well “done” the isle in about 20 minutes, but we had time to kill before the return ferry. We treated ourselves to a dark little restaurant and some dubious-looking, but tasty chowder.

Now we were returning on the ferry along the fringe of the Pamlico Sound to Hatteras. We were leaning on the rail looking toward the mainland we were assured by the maps was out there somewhere.

A line of ten or twelve pelicans flew sinuously past on a course parallel to our craft…above the horizon…then below the horizon…above again…then below again……repeatedly……………..sewing the sea to the sky.

I admire pelicans.

They look so ungainly on land and so commandingly graceful when they fly.

Sewing the sea to the sky, a beautiful unconscious act of nature, oblivious to and unconcerned with the fact that their stitches will never hold.

I have many friends who are stage actors and directors. They are pelicans. They create people and situations that stun and move real people. They sew the sea to the sky for the run of a show. Their stitches never hold. The show closes and the moment disappears except in the minds and hearts of those they stunned and moved…and later of course in their stories shared and expanded with other pelicans over omelets at Josie’s breakfast oasis.

These thespian pelicans are oblivious and unconcerned. They have new lines to learn. They have new, un-permanent stitches to sew.

They have new sowing to do, and new lies to tell.

I admire pelicans.

One Day in 1988

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, , , , , ,

Today was an off-and-on gray day in Lexington. It was very warm. We’ve had flashes of heavy rains this summer. Thus, everything is lush green. The angel flower we were given last year survived the winter, but started the spring as a desolate flat spot. Today, it is an exuberant member of our landscape jungle family covering about sixty square feet and putting out six to ten huge blooms per night. The fern explosion at rear corner of our garage is still ebullient this second week in August.

It wasn’t always so.

35 years ago today, we had had no rain for two months. The grass was crunchy and brown. It was 94 degrees in the blistering sun…but the house we had been living in for about eight weeks was full and happy.

Janie and Roger were getting married.

Chuck and Julieanne Pogue had come in from Hollywood to vacuum the new house for the occasion. Fred Foster was cooking for the crowd. Dick and Cel Pardy were holding court and flinging bird seed. Steve Caller was scanning and critiquing the bookshelves. Janie’s mom offered salient advice on the inherited landscaping. Jim Rodgers pronounced the pairing perfect. Laughter and love reigned

Jim, as usual, was right.

Janie and I had been pointed towards each other two years before by our guardian matchmaker, Robin Dickerson.

She, as usual, was right.

35 years have only been the best.

How can they possibly get better?

I can’t wait to see.

Ask Me About My Shirt

Lexington Theatre, Lexington-Today, Movies, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“…conversational silences, even when motivated by the mere necessity of drawing breath, must out of ordinary courtesy be bridged somehow.” — Bruce Montgomery (aka Edmund Crispin).

“Ask me about my shirt.”

Out of nowhere and pertinent to nothing that had been said before, that was Queezer’s contribution to the afternoon’s tale-spinning.

I suppose it would qualify as a bewildering example of strategic chitchat…maybe not in normal company, but this was a group of theatre types. Conversational gambits gambol freely in such flocks.

There had been the slightest of pauses in the last boozy speculation of Montana Joe’s wistful reminiscence of a non-existent girls softball team in the Missoula of his youth; a softball dream team immediately and rudely dubbed; “The Humping Heifers of Montana” by the mis-enlightened ribald listeners of this day. Those listeners and their raconteur were only slightly embarrassed by their own crass-itude, and that embarrassment was overwhelmed by the self-pleased, wheezy guffaws from this gaggle of geezers. Said guffaws depleted the reservoir of oxygen in the geezers, thus creating a gap in the chinwag.

This was the gap Queezer sought to bridge with his sartorial demand; “Ask me about my shirt.”

He’d been politely waiting, enduring, besides the admiration for the softball team, the afternoon’s other discussions ranging from;

  • frank reverence for the scat singing of Cyrill Aimeé,
  • the value of singing lessons for young actors,
  • the remarkable competence of past local newspaper reviewers who had once said nice things about us,
  • incredulity about the amazing odds against our dogs being the best good dogs on the planet which clearly they were,
  • the stark drop in attendance and support for live theatre,
  • and the profound beneficial effect of the new pitch clock in major league baseball.

Burning issues all certainly, but lacking somewhat in focus and priority.

Queezer filled the lack and the gap; “Ask me about my shirt.”

Breath and drinks replenished, wary eyes queried sideways. Was this a trick question? Like; “How many fingers am I holding up?” or “How many colors of blue make up the sky?”

Junesboy finally sighed and took one for the team; “OK, where’d ya get that shirt?”

Queezer proceeded to rattle off the provenance of his very nice camp garment to an audience that in the soporific summer sun soon resembled William Powell’s post-prandial cigar-and-brandy old boys nodding and snoring in their New Year’s tuxedos in AFTER THE THIN MAN.

“I ordered it from L. L. Bean. It’s the shirt Roman Polanski wore when he sliced Jake’s nose in CHINATOWN. He got it from Lebowski’s laundry basket. It was one of the bowling shirts in scene three. Before that it was worn by Elliot Gould in the Japan golfing scene in M.A.S.H. Gould borrowed it from Hunter Thompson’s Samoan lawyer – that’s where the beer stains came from. Isn’t it great?”

This went on for a good 20 minutes or so.

Then I woke up from my doze.

But it is a real nice shirt and I really like camp shirts and Hawaiian shirts, whether they’re Tommy Bahama or off the $5.99 spinning wire rack down at Walgreen’s. One of the glories (and there are many) of retirement and hermitude is the possibility of wearing outrageous, voluminous shirts every day. After thirty plus years of a coat-and-tie career, it’s a possibility I strive to realize each morning.

My all-time favorite shirt was a flimsy camp shirt I bought in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was made in Japan, cost $8.99 and featured not one, not two, but three full dragons in livid color set against a cream background.

It was a quality piece.

Mel Gibson wore it while prowling the treacherous streets of Jakarta with Linda Hunt in THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. Before that, John Saxon wore it while getting his ass kicked by Bruce Lee in ENTER THE DRAGON. He borrowed it from Sean Connery who wore it while sipping tea with Tetsuro Tanba before jumping in the bath with Akiko Wakabashi in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

I wore it in “The Fifth of July,” directed by my friend Montana Joe on the Guignol Theatre stage in 1983.

It was a helluva shirt.

I’m glad you asked about it.

Hey!

Wake up!!

Club Nova

Lexington Theatre, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Rowdy and jes’ happy to be there!

I saw a video of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire this afternoon. The wind was swirling at 110mph, the temperature was -50°, and the snow was flying in every direction like a freshly and maniacally shaken snow globe.

It was intended that I should be terrified, or at least intimidated by this.

Meh.

I’ve been in Anchorage, Alaska watching the fog freeze.

I’ve landed in Edmonton, Alberta at 1am in February in an icy glaze.

I wandered jacket-less in a 45° morning in Key West seeing signs on store doors apologizing for being closed for the first time in decades because of the “frigid conditions.”

Perhaps you’re thinking; “Yeah, that’s rigorous, but you can’t compare it to Mt. Washington today.” And perhaps you’d be right.

But…

…I’ve been to Antarctica…

…in the basement of Levas’ Restaurant in downtown Lexington in January.

Hoo boy!

It was the winter of 1985.

The unfinished basement of Levas’ Restaurant was the home of Actors’ Guild Theatre at that time and rehearsals were beginning for their next production; “Terra Nova” by Ted Tally, a dramatic retelling of the heroic, but doomed attempt by Robert Falcon Scott in 1910 to be the first to reach the South Pole.

Heroic but doomed…

One might be tempted to attach that same forecast to any attempt to recreate the vastness, harshness, whiteness, and absolute cold of the Antarctic in the basement of a Greek-leaning eatery/piano bar on Main Street in Lexington, Kentucky, an almost Southern city whose snow-removal system is longingly referred to as “April.” Keep in mind, said basement had concrete floors, square metal ceiling supports, low ceilings, and just enough space for about 30 plastic chairs for the audience. Nothing screams polar extremes like plastic chairs.

But for all those geologic and climatic and architectural obstacles, we had some things going for us.

The script was fine.

The director (Carol Spence) was committed and smart and clear. She assembled a rowdy cast and herded them expertly towards a moving end.

The landlord (Angel Levas) believed in the value of the arts but also believed in the value of makin’ a yankee dollah. He resisted adjusting the thermostat of his building to accommodate the non-paying underground thespians in the basement. ‘Twas brillig indeed! The Antarctic’s proximity was a nightly given.

I recall one particular rehearsal when Carol brought in an improvisational consultant to lead us in an exercise involving the medical stages of freezing to death. We were supine on the floor in the dark and listening as he read from medical books of frostbite damage and the effects of blood flow becoming blood-fled. He crooned to us of the creeping muscular constrictions on the glide path to doom.

Why this show never became a musical plumb evades me.

White sheets were hung. Shiny white material obscured the support poles. The arctic sleds were pulled four feet and we believed they had been hauled forty miles. The plastic seats were filled with enthusiastic audiences who stood at the final curtain, though they may have been trying to get their blood flowing again.

I finally warmed up again by July.

Mt. Washington, you got nothing on me.

On the Road + 70 years

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, Lexington-Today, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I think I first read Jack Kerouac’s road-trip opus about 1968. The wheels that inspired Kerouac’s chronicle had rolled a few years before I was born, but I was now in my teens and had been driving for about 20 months. It was not unusual to find me cruising the intoxicating two-lane rural asphalt through northern Fayette County for hours after my school day at Bryan Station. My folks had moved to Omaha, I was alone, gas cost about 33¢ a gallon, Dad had left me a 1959 sky-blue Cadillac he had restored to viability for the spring…and, of course, I was gonna live forever…and maybe…just maybe…I might catch a gander at that Golden Gate Bridge on the old Athens-Boonesboro Road.

20+ years later, I finally did make it to San Francisco, not on a spiritual journey by thumb, but on a business trip by plane and by rental car…not wine spodee-odee, but Napa cabernet…not crashing at someone’s pad, but snoozing at a Holiday Inn on the Wharf. I’m not complaining. It was fine enough. But my zooming and dreaming though the tree tunnels of the Bluegrass and Jack’s crooning about jazz-inspired freedom and the end-of-the-western-world light had promised a bit more.

I had an afternoon free on that trip. I went moseying. I walked the worn wooden floors of Ferlinghetti’s book store. I smiled to see Wendell Berry so proudly displayed there. I saw an old poster for Job Rolling Papers. I smiled at that too. I’d always thought those graphics were cool without knowing anything about Alphonse Mucha at the time, and also without knowing anything about rolling my own. My own what? I was a 40-something hippie-type liquor and wine retailer who had never smoked tobacco much less anything more exotic (euphemism for illegal). That’s got to be a miniscule demographic.

I also saw a poster for the current exhibition at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. They were showing something called Bay Area Figurative Art 1950-1965.

Whoa.

I went.

For three hours I lost myself in the GI-Bill-fueled creative images of Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, Clyfford Still, and Paul Wonner – the same images in which Kerouac, Carl Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady would have swum after their highway hajj. I imagined myself into a 50’s garage/art studio, listening to Ginsberg chanting “Howl” while Kerouac passed the hat for wine. I know my comfort-loving geezer would not have lasted 20 minutes in that room, but once…once…I drove a ’59 big-finned sky-blue caddy on green-infused country roads…

One week, Joe, Eric and Junesboy, three mature bohemians climbed into Joe’s car and headed towards the Speed Museum in Louisville to see their current exhibition of the works of Alphonse Mucha.

What goes around…

We were on the road, yass, yass, on the road.

We lunched first at the corner drug store. It was Weeny Wednesday. Thus we were nutritionally fortified with hot dogs and milk shakes for the journey. Joe drove, it being his car, Eric navigated, I kibitzed from the back seat, geezer-splaining the ins and outs of Kentucky legislative schemes with my deep, eight-year outdated wisdom. Could there be a more potent recipe for random bewildered tedium?

But the sun was shining. The horse farms were still faintly green in January. The company was fine. We were in no hurry. Hell, we’re retired!

It’s unwise for us to be hurried. None of us are the skilled (<< snort >>) drivers we once imagined ourselves to be; Joe’s reaction time is borderline glacial, Eric likes to look directly and immediately at whomever he’s speaking to (left, right, or upwards when Joe decides the lane markers are mere suggestions), and I read mystery novels at long red lights until the guy behind me honks. We are three creative types who really should hire a limo.

Today, Joe extolled driving 100mph in Montana as a teen (as the trucks roared by us on I-64 today), Eric thrilled us with descriptions of his 30mph jaunts around Woodford County on his now-defunct Vespa (as two Harleys zipped by us on the right), and I offered a succinct assessment of the Reds’ chances in the upcoming baseball season; “I fear they’re gonna suck” (as a thoroughbred cantered past us with ease and grace and curious patience).

Against all Las Vegas predictions, we reached our destination and it was a good day. It was my first visit to the Speed since its renovation. It’s a treasure. I wish it was in Lexington, but I’m glad it’s as close as Louisville.

The Mucha exhibit was mesmerizing. It had me reliving pre-internet University of Kentucky Guignol Theatre days spent pestering local businesses to put up our production posters to attract an audience. Of course we didn’t have Sarah Bernhardt as a selling point, but we did have Betty Waren urging us on.

A special treat was crossing paths with one of my dozen or so ex-stage-wives who I had not seen for thirty years. At that distant time she wished me safe travels to the Antarctic to freeze to death in Ted Nally’s fine play; “Terra Nova,” in the basement of Angel Levas’s fine restaurant in downtown Lexington. Angel actually participated in our production by NOT turning the heat on in the basement. The Shivering Verismo School of Theatre – who knew such a thing existed?

Despite that frigid parting decades past, it was a warm reunion last week.

We three drifted through the beautiful exhibit. I concocted stories behind the images, Joe envisioned staging the plays and operas, and Eric attracted his usual entourage of other museum attendees who wanted a docent to describe and explain. He is remarkably suited for this role: he is intelligent, verbal, charming, and just happens to be a nationally recognized painter himself…and he can juggle anything.

Eventually, our trio reassembled in the museum gift shop where I made my greatest contribution of the day by finding and purchasing a killer tee-shirt for Janie’s sleep-ware collection. Priorities, gentlemen!

Back to the car and back on the road.

Three bohemians.

Three aging beatniks.

No open windows.

No open bottles.

Just cruise control and conversation.

We wended our way home.

Wended…

Le mot juste.

We missed our exit and had to wend our way through much of Woodford County.

Who cares?

It was a sunny day.

The horses (field ornaments all) were sprinkled in their paddocks.

I briefly flashed back to those après school days…

…on the road.

My Guerilla Theatre Career

Junesboy, Lexington Theatre, Lexington-70's

“I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.” – Bob Dylan.

“Come ON Roger! Dammit!

MOVE!

We’ve got to GO!”

These delicately emphasized instructions landed like thunder on 1970 Southern-Baptist-raised freshman ears that were still trying to accommodate Rhett Butler’s curtain line.

The assault continued; “Get in the car! Sit on Dixie’s lap! She’ll explain. Have you got your sign?”

The sheer number of questions generated thus far was daunting, but offered a promising seating arrangement for the adventure (though he would have preferred to be providing the lap).

Rodge doubted the diplomatic wisdom of quizzing the leader of this expedition (an upper-classman of the Theatre Department named Baker). He decided instead to pursue Dixie’s expertise — seeking to understand the intentions of this adventure and perhaps, eventually, pursuing the attentions of Dixie herself.

In the car for the next three blocks…

Dixie draped a shirt card with strings attached around my neck. It read; “Broad Form Deed.”

She explained; “That’s who you’re playing; Broad Form Deed. We’re protesting against the Peabody Coal Company recruiting today on campus. Baker’s playing the Appalachian farm owner – you’ll see his sign –. When he asks you; ‘What do I get if I sign?’ you smile real big, maybe wiggle some jazz hands behind ears and say; ‘One hundred dollars!’”

“Wait. I’m playing an inanimate object?”

“Yes.”

“What’s a broad form deed, anyway?”

“A slimy legal thing.”

“What’s my motivation?”

“To not get arrested. If you see anyone in a uniform, lose the sign and disappear into the crowd…if there is one. Oh, and if Baker likes you and remembers, he may be the student director of next fall’s show. Could help in auditions. Oh, here we are.”

“Here” was in front of Kennedy’s Book Store at the corner of Limestone and Avenue of Champions. We tumbled out and stumbled about in front of 10-12 mildly befuddled students. I shouted; “One hundred dollars!” We reloaded the car and proceeded to a restaurant named Alfalfa’s, three other campus sites, and a witness-less finale at the courthouse in downtown Lexington (several miles from campus and half a state from the Peabody Coal Company).

From there we dissolved into the night.

I had long lost my sign.

I hoofed it back to my campus apartment.

I now had a performance experience that never appeared on my resumé.

I never saw Dixie again.

My arrest record remained pristine.

A couple years later, John Prine’s Muhlenburg County. Resonated immediately with me by his mention of the Peabody Coal Company.

All-in-all……I suppose I was made better by the afternoon. But…………Dixie was pretty cute.

Jim Rodgers’ Natal Day

Lexington Theatre

Oh!

The places we’ve gone…

…the people we’ve been!

We’ve been to Pennsylvania (THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON, ERRATA), and Texas (THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS). We’ve been to Sweden (A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC), Spain (MAN OF LA MANCHA), and England (THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST, SWEENEY TODD, and CAMELOT).

We’ve plumbed the depths of Oscar Wilde and Western Kentucky (FLOYD COLLINS).

All because you saw us there.

I’ve been a lawyer, a doctor, a murderer, a playwright, a sheriff, a barber…

…the King of England…

……a starkeeper……

Hell.

I was even a goose!

All because you said I could.

Once, we even got to sing together. That might have been the best.

Jim, you are a fine, fine traveling companion.

Thank you.

Queasy Rider

Lexington Theatre, Lexington-Today

Rick the Smear was shallow and damned proud of it.

He bragged about it.

He repeated funny stories his friends created to describe his reading habits (Clair Bee baseball stories, Agatha Christie cozies, and the Sunday funnies) and viewing habits (Ed Woods’ DEVIL’S NIGHT ORGY, NBA regular season basketball, and reruns of GILLIGAN’S ISLAND…he was a dedicated Ginger fan……sigh).

He claimed he couldn’t even spell “conspiracy theory.”

He even invented his moniker; “I’m so shallow I’m a smear.”

Nobody was fooled, but it sounded great and you could riff on it forever.

The truth was he was a pretty sharp guy. His acting work was beyond superior and his painting and watercolors were beyond that. Plus, he could sing a little and his juggling was mesmerizing. The man could fling a half-eaten muffin twenty feet in the air, deliver an act-ending Oscar Wilde zinger, and then catch and swallow the soaring pastry in front of a full theatre house. I admit that last might not testify to his profundity…but YOU try it.

But now…

But now…he had bought a Vespa.

Topping out at about six-foot-five and pushing 70 years, he had indulged in a mid-life dream about thirty years late. He was ecstatic, living out the memory of a 22-year-old hippie-type art student zipping along the 1971 perpetually summer (but beautiful) coastal lanes of Santa Barbara, in the guise of a 70-year-old silver-haired mensch on the often stifling (but also beautiful) ocean-less county roads of Central Kentucky.

Yes…a dream.

A dream perhaps tainted just a bit by the heat and humidity, or the jacket-requiring chilliness of Kentucky’s changeable weather. And compromised a just smidge by the prudency of taking a quick inventory of every passing pickup (and there were plenty of those, given the restraints in velocity of what a Vespa can do) to ascertain the presence of a gun rack and a passenger with a free hand. We all know how that flick ends and it’s not with; “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Still…

…there was such glee…such jubilation…

…until…

…there was a beyond-inconvenient flat tire on a hunting-and-gathering foray to the Dixie Café.

Scrapes, bruises, an embarrassed call for rescue and a ride home, and a screwed-up reuben on rye…

<< sigh >>

The Vespa was sold the next week.

As Rick the Smear was fond of saying; “I didn’t say I was stupid…just shallow.”