Section 2. Dummies
Sometime in the late 1960s or early 70’s, Ned heard about an old-time melodrama act that was produced by the Gaslighter Theater in Campbell, where the audience was encouraged to cheer the heroes and boo and hiss the villains. Our entire family attended a performance, possibly on a New Year’s Eve. We had front row seats, and since it was a cold night, we had a mess of coats that we piled onto an adjacent empty seat. The Theater gave out free popcorn, served in rectangular paper red and white checkerboard container, that the audience could either eat or throw at the villain – I think we ate ours (I certainly wasn’t about throwaway anything as tasty as popcorn). In any case, either Ned or I had the idea of doing something with the empty container. So we ended up using all our coats in the empty seat to build a person there, with the basket as a face, topped by a hat. We had a mild giggle at that, but we were really rewarded when one of the performers remarked on our new buddy, inviting the rest of the audience to come by at intermission to see what we had done.
My next Frankenstein came about at Mendocino Woodlands Camp, located in the redwood forest just a couple of miles east of the town of Mendocino. It is a popular location for all types of folk dance and music camps. There hadn’t been a Scottish Country Dance camp there for some time, but a dancing friend of mine, Arlene Baxter, wanted to organize one. She was worried that because she was starting from scratch, she might not get enough attendees to make the camp a success. I had no interest in going there to dance, but I wanted to do my bit to support her effort. So I signed up and attended, but didn’t actually attend any of the dances – mostly I had a lot of free time to enjoy the beautiful woods (as well as the delicious food that was supplied). I also hung around a lot with the musicians.
One of the events of the camp was a fund raising auction – campers brought with them various items they no longer required and left it to the other attendees to bid for them, with proceeds going to the camp. Barbara McOwen, one of the staff musicians, submitted a bottle of Chianti with a looooooooooong neck – the bottle stood three or four foot tall. I’m not sure who purchased it – either me or one of the other band members. In any case, there was a party going on into the evening, during which I went into the cabin assigned to the band … with the Chianti bottle. I set up a clothes hanger at the top of the bottle’s neck, and hung from that a dancing jacket. Pinned to that was a pair of pants that went to the floor and into a pair of shoes. I pinned gloves at the end of the sleeves, and somehow (I no longer remember) had one of the sleeves up horizontally, so that it appeared to be holding a tray (I did tell you that I had a lot of time on my hands while there, right?). A white paper plate served as his head, complete with sunglasses. And he sported a name tag – Bernard (Fig. 7.2.1).
When he was complete, I wandered over to dance and made sure I accompanied the musicians back to their cabin at the end of the party, to enjoy their reactions to their new cabin mate. And man, it was worth it. Afterwards Bernard came back to the Bay Area with one of us, and I think made another appearance elsewhere, but regretfully he came to a sticky end when the Chianti bottle was mishandled and broke. RIP Bernard: we hardly knew ye.