I Loved To Teach

When I directed Harvey during my third year at Southwestern, ( 1977)  I was becoming bold enough to retain some of the original language, in part because I thought Vincent should have instruction in the delivery of such lines and experience with a troop that was not overly inhibited. Austin Hamner, Judge Gaffney, was Morman and was excused from saying “those words” in his lines.  The last week we softened all the words but one for performance in the “Bible belt” as I had promised we would. The most offensive word left in was ‘bastard.’ I still feel that the word is necessary in the context of that line. It is bold and shocking, and Vida, who would never use the word, needs to be shocked into abandoning her determined course of action. Elwood is about to receive a severe treatment at the sanitarium to make him forget his invisible rabbit friend, Harvey. She asks the cabby to wait; he says he won’t. Too often he has been the first person to deal with someone who has just had this treatment. He remarks about what a pleasant man Elwood is and how he enjoyed visiting with him on the trip from town but warns that "when he comes out of that room, he will be a perfectly normal human being—and you know what bastards they are."

I couldn’t think of a suitable substitution, so I left it in, but I instructed the actor, Joe, not to emphasize the word. Just the same, the language offended the superintendent, who chose the indirect approach—his manner toward me turned cool. Personally, although I dislike confrontations and always over-react to them, I prefer approaching disagreements directly to stringing them out and holding grudges. I think I was a better teacher over all because I could never hold a grudge, even though, in telling of things now, it may seem to be done grudgingly.

I once had a principal named Charles Orahood who stopped speaking to me on several occasions, once for three months. I had absolutely no idea why on this occasion—usually I was all too aware. I finally ended the impasse when he came to a ballgame in the company of the superintendent of schools, George Glenn, whose wife Nola also taught English in our small department, and who had been my principal until that year. Consolidation had at first placed him at the junior high and Charlie, the principal from the Wilkinson rival school, above him at the high school level. Then Mike Holzhausen, the new superintendent, suddenly took another job, and George was reassigned to become Charlie’s superior. I knew George well. He had a delightful sense of humor, and he lived life with a sparkle in his eye and a joke on the tip of his tongue. I was sure of his friendship. He once told me that I had done the two most difficult things a teacher would ever have to do—leave a school and come back to it, and preach and teach in the same town. His secretary, Carolee Speers once told me that I was the most popular teacher they had ever had at that school (Charlottesville). Mr. Orahood, on the other hand, was a retired military man and was more somber. I remember that he would stand at his window as the buses fell out in formation after school. “I love that.” He would say. And kids in his single algebra class told that he couldn’t resist going to the window to identify every airplane that flew over. As an obsessive/compulsive myself, I respect that affection and the bravery it took to allow a class to have this peek into his private world.

At the ballgame I said, with a bit of over-projection, "Hello, George. I see you’re with my principal. Do you noticed that he doesn’t speak to me? Never does these days! I haven’t the slightest idea why." And the man began to talk to me again. He was never very friendly (Is that any wonder?), but he did acknowledge my presence. I believe I was a threat because I could have had easy access to George’s ear. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t take advantage of that situation, and I did understand my place as a subordinate to him—most of the time.

He had a policy of selecting a student reporter to write a column for the Anderson daily paper, which I had never read. It was a carry-over from Wilkinson High School, which had been nearer to that town. The policy required that all columns be submitted to him before being sent on to be published. I was one of two senior class sponsors. It was not my responsibility to proof it. I never had read it before or after it appeared in print. Mr. Orahood had grown lax about his submission policy when he chose to become dogmatic about the spending of senior class funds, sensing that students were scheming to deplete the fund before selecting a class gift. They felt it was too large an amount to be “expected” to donate.

Instead of calling in the two sponsors and discussing the matter so that we could shape policy, he made a dictatorial pronouncement. I thought it was fortunate that the public outcry came from the “Wilkinson” segment of the consolidation because he could forgive them more readily. The two groups had girls in similar positions of popularity, and they disliked each other enormously. The Charlottesville girl was our neighbor and played the lead in the junior class play the year before the schools had become step-sisters. I had observed an occasion upon which he was leaning across the counter, engaged in a friendly chat with the one he admired when the one I knew and admired walked in. He stood up, distancing himself, glared at her as if she had no right to interrupt, and snapped, “What do you want?”

Unfortunately, I had seen the article for the Anderson Herald being passed around in speech class and had taken it away from someone. I scanned it hastily with no knowledge that its author was assigned to be a reporter or that this paper was to be published. When Charlie had called the girl in to castigate her for airing dirty laundry, a policy I also did not approve of, she looked for a scapegoat and replied that I had read it and approved it. For the first time he confronted me directly.

I listened to him quietly and then informed him that I had no capacity to approve or disapprove, no knowledge that it was to be published, and that I had handed it back to its author with a disapproving shake of the head that must have projected my innocence of the charges to the whole class. Then I said, “I certainly think it is unfortunate that she chose to submit this article. However, I must say that I consider every word of it to be a statement of truth.”

The man stood menacingly and leaned across his desk, “Oh, is that so? Well, I have some opinions about some things too, young man!”

“Good!” I retorted, “I think it’s about time we aired them, finally.”

Immediately, he sank into his chair and snapped, “You’re dismissed!” That was as close to a conversation as I ever had with him, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I learned that he had elected to move into the consolidation in the larger school corporation at the county seat.

*         *         *

After Harvey, I didn’t see Mr. Wade much, but his cool manner really annoyed me, and one day I approached the matter head-on when he came into the teachers’ lounge and I was alone with him. I had guessed correctly. He felt the stage was just another form of classroom, and some words were not allowed in the classroom. “People shouldn’t have to hear anything they wouldn’t want to hear in their own living rooms.” And he had a good point. I tried to state without seeming to argue that I believed those words Shakespeare gave to Hamlet as he addressed the players. The purpose of the theater “was and is to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature."  We were a long way from class plays.

I assured him that all he had to do was give me a directive to that effect, and I would see that all such words were eliminated in the future. He declined to go on record as doing so, but he got a little edgy, and he raised his voice. "I saw Harvey on Broadway (how I wish I had) while I was in the army, and the language offended me then, too. (Even today I find that a little amazing. I was never in the army and never much around anyone who used cursing habitually.) You can use those words if you want to, but I prefer not to." At this point I pulled my shoulders back, looked him straight in the eye and stated in a firm but quiet voice, "Mr. Wade, I don’t use those words."

His voice became calm again, "I know you don’t," and as he turned and left the room, the difference was settled. I continued to use my own judgment without interference, and the word “bastard” just didn’t come up in another play.

Harvey, selected with Vincent in mind, was, of course, a delightful diversion.  One student told me he had never seen Vincent Mathews smile so much.  At DePauw University, Vincent took an acting class from a man who claimed to believe that no one deserved an ‘A’.  Vince had never gotten a ‘B’ and wasn’t satisfied with that explanation.  He called me (perhaps the only time ever) for advice.  My response was that he had to talk to him.  In conference, the man decided that he could redo his sketches if he wanted to improve.  Vince did his Harvey sketches six times before he got the first ‘A’ that man had condescended to give.  He did his next sketches twice, and ended up with the prize he wanted when the course was over.  There was a valedictorian from Greenfield in that class also.  Bob Padgett approached me when I did the very difficult role of Tobias in A Delicate Balance in Greenfield.  My interpretation was that circumstances had pushed me off that balance beam into madness, after a seven minute “aria” that taxed my vocal cords to the limit.  It still surprises me a bit that Bob’s comment to me after the show included nothing but a criticism of my “out of it” demeanor at the end.  He didn’t know I had lived with a mother who, with the burden of seven children, six of them boys, had fallen off the beam a few times and needed shock treatments to bring her back to us sane once again.

*         *         *

Years later in Greenfield, students gave me a list of local businesses with signs that could be used to advertise the play, Hello, Dolly! I thought it was a great idea until I got a call from the owner of the Bible Book Store. It had occurred to her that perhaps she should make sure that the language would not offend any of her patrons. Did anyone say the words “damn” or “hell” in the play?

“Look,” I retaliated, “I really don’t want to put you or anyone else in the position of being responsible for censoring the high school productions, so why don’t you just not put us on your sign.” I not only was allowed to use my judgment about language (Surely by now the reader would concede that this writer is a bit of a prude, and would not be surprised that there are many words I would never have used in a high school production), but I even had the audacity to use a cigarette in a scene where dialogue demanded. It always put the character in a compromising light, and I never felt I was encouraging young people to smoke, as I had the character light it and put it out after holding it briefly as Vince did in Harvey in the scene where everyone is being ingratiating to him for having had him “committed to the asylum in error.” At the student matinee he pretended to light a rolled-up piece of white paper, which he soon “ground” out after they had rushed to get him an ashtray, open a window, etc. Later, actors playing Elwood P. Dowd, Tim Leonard and Dugan Shelby at Greenfield, used the real thing but there were no student matinees. I also felt that the general knowledge that my beliefs were somewhat puritanical and that I neither smoked nor used alcohol gave me a bit of an edge in those matters onstage.

Incidentally, I had always wanted to do Harvey but had held off for the “perfect” cast. With Vince as Elwood and his delightful co-valedictorian, Rita Williams, as Myrtle Mae, the cast grew comparably in stature. They remain etched in my memory for their performances and for the exhilaration they gave those audiences. It contained a major role, Dr. Chumley, for Mike Yonts and a leading role for Glenda Mitchell as well—he was the dedicated performer and beloved, sparkling-witted companion who would step in as president of drama club when Vince was gone.

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