The Beginning

by Ed Nelson

  “Rick you should try out!”

  I didn’t commit immediately, I told Pam I would think about it.

  She countered with, “I wish you would, we would have fun being together.”

  Now I was interested, it had taken a leap from being in a play to spending time with a very cute girl who was showing interest.

  I asked, “When are tryouts?”

  “The casting call is for next Tuesday immediately after school,” replied the veteran actress.

  “I will talk to Coach Stone and see if I can miss practice. When will rehearsals start?”

  “We start memorizing our lines right away but don’t get together for our first rehearsal until November.”

  “Great, golf season will be over. I think I would like to do this and spend time with you.”

  “That would be great Ricky,” responded the young girl with a voice that would be described as sultry when she grew up.

  “What do we do at this casting call?” I inquired.

  “You will be given some lines to read, our Drama Coach Mrs. Hadley looks for people who can give the proper inflection; then selects the best person for the part.”

  “What is the play?”

  “Our Town by Thornton Wilder, I bet you will get the role of George and I will be Emily. The story revolves around their lives.”

  “I will give it a try. Where do we meet?”

  “We meet after sixth period in the auditorium.”

  We had arrived at a corner, the girls went one way and us boys another. When they were a little ways down the street I looked back at Pam. She was looking back at me. This was a good sign!

  When I got home I rummaged through all the book shelves in the house but they had nothing by Thornton Wilder. The encyclopedia did give a description of the play with its plot and roles. I made a mental note to look it up in the school library.

  That night I reread an old favorite, about some really little people followed by giants then some intelligent horses. When reading this time I tried to understand what the author was really trying to say. I got the political satire part, and loved the peeing to put out the fire. The intelligent horses meant nothing to me. Luckily that night my last thoughts before drifting off to sleep were of Pam rather than horses.

  Chapter 34

  Monday was a blustery day and I didn’t want to run, but it wasn’t raining, so out I went. I still couldn’t do my five miles faster than thirty minutes, but I wasn’t really winded at the end. I had also increased my sit ups and pushups to one hundred each. I felt like I was in pretty good shape, but that I should be looking for other exercises.

  Breakfast was quiet except for a little bickering between Denny and Eddie. They did that so much that no one even noticed. Mary was still asleep. Dad was deep in thought as he drank his coffee.

  Mum asked me, “Rick what are your plans for this week?”

  “Golf practice every day, but I have to ask Coach if I can skip Tuesday for Drama Club tryouts. I have to call Mr. Robinson to see if he would review the electrical circuit for the Hairdryer.”

  “So long as you keep dinner open on Saturday.”

  I knew exactly what that was all about but said, “Our golf tournament is in Columbus; we leave early but finish late so we will have to stay overnight.”

  “Richard Edward Jackson you will be home for your birthday party on Saturday!” Mum exploded.

  I just grinned.

  She realized I had got her and started laughing, “You little so and so, you will pay for that.”

  Birthdays at our house had always been small private parties. Not even cousins were invited; just our very immediate family. We had always given each other gifts, even if Mum and Dad had to take us shopping and pay for them.

  “We play Marysville on Saturday here, so I should be home by three o’clock at the latest.”

  “I’m still considering Tam Tattlers Tart for your dessert,” threatened Mum.

  “Oh not that,” I replied!

  There is no such thing as Tam Tattlers Tart. Mum always threatened us with it; she swore that she and her sister Mary had been acting up at dinner once so my Grand Mum had told them they deserved Tam Tattlers Tart. After dinner they sat at the table expectantly waiting for their dessert.

  After a while they went to the kitchen and asked where the Tam Tattlers Tart was. At that point Grand Mum told them there was no such thing, and they were getting what they deserved. Mum never did that to us, but we knew we were on thin ice when it was offered.

  “Pax, I surrender.”

  I learned Pax in Latin, Mum learned it in school, Pax Britannia.

  As usual I watched for Tom and Bill coming down the walk before I went out the door. Tom and I had been going places together but we hadn’t seen that much of Bill lately. As we walked along Bill nonchalantly pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and a lighter.

  “Bill, what are you doing,” a shocked Tom asked?

  Every kid I knew had tried a cigarette at one time or the other, but to light one up on the way to school put you in another social class and it wasn’t a move up.

  Bill belligerently told Tom, “I’m tired of being seen as a little kid.”

  “Now you will be seen as a stupid kid,” I replied. “Have you read in the paper how it has been proven that cigarettes can cause lung cancer?”

  “That just happens to old people, I will have stopped by then. If you guys don’t like it walk with someone else, I’m heading down to Wilcox’s anyway.”

  Wilcox’s is a corner grocery store that is just far enough from the school that teachers ignored kids hanging out down there. It is a rougher crowd, not bad as in delinquent but as the guys taking shop class and their girls. Most of them smoked and it was well known that girls who smoked were wilder than those who didn’t. How this was established I have no idea but it was regarded as gospel.

  “Bill do you think that is such a good idea,” I tried to reason.

  “You guys can still get dates, I can’t, that skag Nancy Sparks has told everyone I have a big mouth, so none of the girls I ask out will date me.”

  “How many did you ask?” inquired Tom.

  “I asked about twenty girls in our class if they would like to go to the movies with me, they all said no, and the last couple just laughed at me.”

  Tom and I looked at each other; we had no idea what else to say but knew Bill was going down a bad path. It wasn’t just the smoking, it was the whole attitude he was developing.

  Tom and I walked to school while Bill headed to Wilcox’s. Talking while we walked, Tom and I admitted to each other we had tried a cigarette when we were thirteen and it was terrible.

  Tom also wondered what his first taste of beer would be like. I kept my mouth shut, to me beer was also terrible, I had one with Tab Hunter and Elvis Presley down in Mexico and didn’t care for it at all.

  Classes were all review for our six week exams which would be given on Thursday and Friday. To say I was bored was mild. The only interesting part of the day was in Algebra. Sue Barton told me that Pam Schaffer was really excited that I was going to be in the play with her and that she liked me.

  I tried to slow this down. “Sue I have to try out for the part and get it. Before I can even do that I have to get Coach Stones permission to skip a golf practice. I’m glad Pam likes me and I like her, but we really don’t know each other that well and have just begun to talk.”

  “Oh, she knows she will like you very well, you take girls on the neatest dates.”

  At that point the bell rang for class to start. I was glad it had, I didn’t like the feeling that I might be, being used.

  Tom and I met for lunch, but Bill didn’t show up, he must have gone to Wilcox’s to buy lunch, smoke and be with his new friends, whoever they were.

  Pam Schaffer and Sue Barton stopped by our table as we were finishing. Pam was all excited about the Drama Club try outs. I told her I had found a copy of “Our Town” in the school library.

  “R
ick you will know the story, but not the lines, the book is different from the screenplay. Your reading will be from the screenplay not the book.”

  “Since I can read that shouldn’t be a problem,” I told Pam.

  “It’s harder than you think Rick, you have to know the mood of the person and inject that into the reading.”

  “Okay, I will keep that in mind as I read.”

  “I wish I had a copy of the screenplay, so we could practice; but they don’t hand them out until you have the part.”

  During my study halls and classes I started reading ahead and working problems for the next six weeks. If I kept this up I might have the year done by Christmas. That was a nice thought, but I was really only running a week ahead of my classes right now.

  On the bus going to golf practice I asked Coach about missing one practice. You would have thought I was asking for his first born.

  That was until he started laughing. “Rick I think we can let you off just this once.”

  Practice was putting and sand traps, and for variation sand traps and putting. I would complain if asked, but I could see an enormous improvement in these areas since I had started playing.

  When I got home I called Mr. Robinson and asked him if I could come over some evening to review a control circuit schematic I had laid out. He was enthusiastic in his response. He really liked anything working with electricity. He asked if I could come over after dinner. Mum said okay, so I told him I would be there around six thirty.

  Dinner was Swiss steak and mashed potatoes, one of my favorites. Half way through dinner the phone rang. Mum answered it. She kept saying yes, yes, yes that is me. As I was leaving to see Mr. Robinson she was still on the phone talking to whoever it was. Whoever it was, they were asking her a lot of questions.

  I was at Mr. Robinson’s for over an hour. After he was satisfied that he knew what I was trying to achieve; he went through my circuit in great detail and suggested several changes.

  Once we both agreed on a finished diagram he redrew it for me. He then signed and dated it; he also printed his name, with Electrical Engineer behind it and his license number.

  “Rick when you sell your hairdryers I expect five hundred dollars for this work.”

  He appeared to be joking but I treated it very seriously.

  “Yes sir, I will do that, do you want to have your name on the patent as a co-inventor?”

  He laughed and said, “No, most inventions don’t make any money for the inventor, so I will just take the money.”

  I asked for a blank sheet of paper and wrote down the terms of our deal. He was to receive five hundred dollars for consulting on the electrical portion of this project but wasn’t a co-inventor. I had just read about doing this in a Tom Swift book.

  “Rick I am glad to see you are serious and I wish you the best of luck. You know having the idea is only the first step. You have to manufacture the product, and then sell it. That is not easy, my lad.”

  “Yes sir but I am determined.”

  “Good for you.”

  Chapter 35

  When I got home Mum was still on the phone. She was talking a mile a minute. Dad had made her a cup of tea. From her eyes and wads of handkerchiefs she had been crying, but she was very happy now, almost to the point of hysteria.

  She talked for another half hour and finally wound down. When she hung up she told Dad that was Bet’s. He told her he had figured that out. The other kids were in watching TV.

  Mum poured boiling water over another teabag. That was my friend from the war Betsy. She was my ambulance driver. We all knew Mum had been a first aider in the British Women’s Land Army during the blitz in World War II.

  She continued, “Betsy and I were great friends and had many a good time together. Then I was transferred to Greys in Essex where I met your father. After you were born Ricky, she was your godmother.

  The last time I saw her or heard from her was on VE Day, until she called today. Our war time duties prevented us from contacting each other. After the war I came here, and she was very busy.”

  “She saw that article in the Daily Mail about our family, all the names matched so she had someone check on us. When it was confirmed who we were she called.”

  Mum then went into the front room to the glass faced locked cabinet where she kept her memento’s such as our bronzed baby shoes. She came back with a small framed picture. It was a picture of two young women in shapeless coveralls. They had their arms around each other’s back and were smiling for the camera. It was two beautiful young ladies in a horrible time.

  “Rick this is your god mother Elizabeth Windsor.”

  She had a second picture that I had never seen before. This picture was taken at your baptism by the Church of England at Gravesend. This is the same church where Pocahontas is buried.

  There was my Dad in uniform, Elizabeth Windsor in a very nice hat and dress. Mum was holding me in her arms. There was also a man dressed as an American General.

  “Mum why is Eisenhower in this picture?”

  “He was the only one they could get to balance Betsy.”

  “Balance Betsy,” I asked?

  “Your father was going to ask his Captain to do the honors but when they found out Princess Elizabeth was going to be your God Mother they thought someone of higher rank should perform the duty.”

  As Mum would say I was gob smacked, “You mean to tell me that Queen Elizabeth and President Eisenhower are my God Parents?”

  “Yes, and ten cents will get you a cup of coffee.”

  “Wow!” was all I could say.

  “When Betsy read that article she had her embassy in Washington check us out to see if we were the same Jackson’s she knew. She originally knew me as Peggy Newman my maiden name.”

  “Wow!” was all I could still say.

  Mum went on to tell stories of some of the things she and her Betsy did during the war. There was one night they were on a train to Greys, a Canadian soldier a good looking young man with very curly hair was passed out drunk. There was no one else in their car, so using their nail scissors they clipped all of his curls. They didn’t brush the curls off, so that when he stood up he would shed hair everywhere.

  They exited at the next stop. Somewhere in Canada there is a middle aged ex-soldier telling his family about the night he got so drunk his hair fell off.

  “Wow!” was all I could say.

  That night I had a hard time going to sleep, I couldn’t even settle down and read. Trying to imagine my Mum as a young lady and running around with a Princess doing crazy things was insane. This was nothing I could share with my friends but it was so neat!

  It was raining too heavy in the morning to run. My running days were coming to an end until spring. I would miss that. Breakfast was a slight rehash of last night. Mum and Dad impressed on all of us kids how this wasn’t to be shared outside of the family.

  Denny nodded solemnly, Eddie and I both said, “Yes Mum.”

  Mary didn’t really understand what had gone on, but she proudly told Mum, “I won’t tell anyone you and the Princess cut the soldiers hair off.”

  Mum and Dad exchanged looks. I think we were all glad that no one would know what Mary was talking about. Talk she would.

  Dad loaded us boys into the Buick Roadmaster and dropped us off at our schools. That car was big enough he could have hauled the whole football team. It was cool looking though, blue and white with port holes on the side of the engine cover. The tires were huge whitewalls, it was really spiffy.

  School was half empty today; the flu had started going around early this year. I heard one teacher tell another that thirty percent of the students were absent. It was going to be a mess with so many kids out and missing their six week exams.

  After school were the tryouts for the Drama Club spring play. I went to the auditorium and there were quite a few kids there. Actors mustn’t get sick.

  A senior student directed all aspiring actors and actresses to sit in the front
row. The Drama Coach and tenth grade English teacher, Mrs. Ramsey sat several rows behind us in the center of the auditorium. She had a clipboard to take notes, and a copy of the screen play. After sitting there for a few minutes she stood and announced.

  “The first person at the end of the row will be given a copy of what they are to read on stage. There are two parts, the first is male; boys are to read this part. The second is marked female; the girls are to read this part.”

  “When the first person goes on stage they hand the pages to the person sitting next to them. When they get on stage there will be another copy to read from. Announce your name and then start reading the lines.”

  “After reading leave the copy on the stand where you found it. Then take a seat anywhere but the front row. In the meantime the next person will have a chance to read over their lines while waiting. Is this clear?”

  I thought it was clear, as mud, I was really glad I wasn’t first. Once it started it actually went smoothly. Well smoothly as far as getting kids up on stage with a script in their hands. I couldn’t believe how poorly some read, not in acting, just in their ability to read.

  I was finally the next to read so the pages were handed to me to study. I read them to myself, trying to understand the emotion of the scene. I had also listened to others deliver the same lines. To me it sounded like the person I would be playing was raging against the injustice of his wife dying.

  Then it was time for me to walk up on stage. Boy that was a different feeling, all eyes on me waiting for me to say something. I stood there.

  Finally Mrs. Ramsey said, “You may want to announce your name, then pick up the script and start reading.”

  I wished l could sink into the stage at that moment.

  I managed to read the lines, putting all the passion into the lines I could. I then went to sit with Pam who had already read her lines. She nodded but didn’t seem excited to see me.

  I whispered that she had done great and that I was certain she would get the lead. She nodded her head in thanks or agreement, but said nothing about my reading.