Last year I wrote about the Wellsburg school and the wonderful Christmas programs we used to have. I have heard from many readers who also went to rural schools and their Christmas programs were also very memorable and special. Rural schools seem to all be very similar and I think anyone who ever attended a rural school has pleasant memories of them.
There is one school play or skit that we did in Wellsburg that still stands out in my memories. I was in the 6th grade so it was about in 1961. Mrs. Marion Kramer was the upper grades teacher and she was a very talented teacher. She re-wrote a skit she had found about this Russian couple that were trying to come to America. She adapted it to make it more relevant to our area. I don’t remember the name of the original skit but she re-named it John and Edith.
`Well it just so happened that we had this couple in our community and their names were John and Edith. John had emigrated from Russia, the Ukraine area I think, but Edith was born and raised in the community, in fact just a couple of miles from where my family lived.
John and Edith were very memorable people and you could describe them even as a little eccentric. They were very nice people but they had some peculararities that made you remember them. Of course I guess you could say that about all of us. Now keep in mind this was at the beginning of the Cold war with the Soviet Union.
I remember everyone back then was concerned about a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. Some people built bomb shelters (more like root cellars.) County court houses were designated as bomb shelters, as if they could survive a bomb blast. In school we would have drills in which we would practice what to do during a nuclear attack. We were to crawl under our desk and cover our eyes. Even as young kids we knew that this was a poor idea and actually the best thing to do during a nuclear attack would be to bend over and kiss your b—t goodbye!
But back to the story. The real life John looked like what you would think a Russian would look like. He was average height but he was stocky, very muscular. He was a farmer and he took pride in hard work. In fact he seemed to enjoy doing things the hard way, kind of like my Dad. His nose looked like it had taken a punch or two and of course he had this neat Russian accent. I enjoyed listening to him talk, he was very pleasant and told funny stories.
John was a smart man but he had a simplistic view of things and he would choose what he thought was the simplest way to get things done. For example, when he needed to take his bull to the pasture, which was about a mile away from his barn, he would grab a pail of feed and walk in front of the bull and the bull would follow him. No rope or halter, they would just walk down the road together.
One time my Dad needed to borrow a bull so John loaned Dad his bull. There were no stock trailers back then to haul livestock in or at least none that we knew of. So John walked the bull over to our pasture which was about 1 ½ miles away and when the bull was delivered, my Dad and I met him at the pasture gate. John visited with us for awhile and then he walked home again, said he didn’t need a ride. A very simple way to accomplish a task!
Edith was raised on a farm but it didn’t seem liked she liked farm life all that well. She and John in some regards were very different from each other but they also seemed to be good for each other. I got the impression that Edith would rather have had a more sophisticated life style. She was a little taller than John and she was always kind of pale looking and her skin had a light blue tinge to it. I don’t know if this was from make-up or some sort of medical condition but she looked, well, kind of like she was dead.
She smoked cigarettes and the brand she smoked we called OP’s (other peoples). She would drive around to the neighbors that smoked and bum cigarettes. She drove a very unique looking car so you could see her coming and what made it so unique was the color although I don’t remember for sure what color it was. A 2 tone something. I just remember everyone knew her car. John also drove a unique colored pickup so you always saw when he was coming.
Edith belonged to the Democrat party and she enjoyed going to political functions. There was a story about Edith when she went to a Democrat Party social event and John went with her. They were having hors d’oeuvres which was some sort of chicken, presumably the 50’s version of chicken wings. Everyone was sitting around on chairs, they passed a plate of chicken around for people to take from and then later they sent a plate around to put the used chicken bones on. But when the plate of chicken bones came to John he thought there was a lot of meat still left on some of the bones so he picked them up and ate the rest of the meat off them! I’m sure Edith’s skin color was no longer light blue but more beet red!
In our school play of John and Edith, I played the part of John and my sister Arlyss played the part of Edith as Arlyss was in the 8th grade and taller than me. In real life Edith was a little taller than John. What us kids didn’t know was that Mrs. Kramer had shown John and Edith the play and asked them if it was okay to use their names. They both agreed it was fine and Mrs. Kramer invited them to the program.
When Mrs. Kramer wrote the play she felt okay in using the names John and Edith as they never, ever came to any Wellsburg school events. They never had any kids but if they did go to a school function they went to Heimdal as that town was closer to where they lived.
Before the Christmas program was to begin someone looked out at the audience and to our great shock, in the middle of the audience were John and Edith! We told Mrs. Kramer but she wasn’t concerned. She knew them very well and she said they would find the whole thing funny.
I don’t recall all of the play but I know it was very funny. The part I recall the best was when John (me) was going to pay for their airplane tickets and I reached into my back pocket to get out my wallet but it was stuck! I couldn’t get it out of my pocket!
My favorite TV star back then was Red Skelton, particularly his character called Clem Keddidlehopper. I recalled a scene from the Red Skelton show in which Clem had the same dilemma of having his wallet stuck in his pocket and the funny antics he did trying to get it out. Because the audience was laughing at my dilemma I tried to adlib all those antics and it must have worked out pretty well because the audience kept laughing. The other cast members stood there with perplexed looks on their faces as none of what I did was in the script.
After the Christmas Program was over, the real John and Edith stayed around and visited and said they enjoyed the program. They never let on if they realized they were the actual stars of Mrs. Kramer’s story.
The source for this story is my memories. Thanks for letting me share them with you.
Author’s note: I will be doing a 4 part series of stories about horse sales in North Dakota from the mid 1960’s to present day. Horse sales were funny, dramatic, scandalous, sometimes dangerous and always entertaining. If you have any memories of horse sales you would like to share, contact me at [email protected] or 701 351-5401.
