My friends - One of our subscribers asked me yesterday when I would be posting another excerpt from Dr. Gordon Wilson's little book, "Fidelity Folks", which represents life in and around New Concord in Calloway County in the late 19th and early 20th century. Professor Wilson's down-to-earth presentation and his interesting commentary about his early life in Calloway County give us some glimpses into a world that was far simpler and gentler than that in which we find ourselves today. Because of the large response to my weekend offering concerning depositions and affidavits, I find myself "snowed under" in attempting to get these prepared and responses sent. As a result, I am going to bring another excerpt from "Fidelity Folks" to the List today, and I will resume data posts tomorrow. This except is entitled, "Being Entertained", and it describes what the young people of an earlier era found in the way of outside entertainment. -B ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "Fidelity Folks" -Gordon Wilson BEING ENTERTAINED "Most of our entertainment was of our own devising: parties, exhibitions, dinner on the ground, picnics. Sometimes we liked to have others entertain us, just as a boy will eat heartily away from home the things that he will disdain on his own mother's table. When we entertained ourselves, we did not have to pay and thus saved our money for a grand blow-out. Thus the seventy-five cents I made by taking the place of a farmer in our tobacco-cutting crew was spent to the last cent the next week at the circus. My old diary records that I got to see the animal tent and the big top, and also had enough money left for some pink lemonade. At school some forty-five years[this written in 1945] ago the children who lived in Fidelity told us that a man was going to exhibit a talking machine that night in the lumber room upstairs over one of the stores. Father was away on one of his calls, but Mother gave her permission and each one of us boys a dime to get inside the building. On the way we met Father in the dusk, and so camouflaged our voices that he failed to recognize us. We were afraid he might not want us to be so extravagant. About twenty turned out to see and hear the new contraption. In those early days there was no loud, blaring horn; you put some ear-phones over your head and heard a far-away squeaky voice or still squeakier music. We took turns about with the ear-phones, until we had heard some dozen every-day songs, like "Old Folks at Home" and "Old Kentucky Home" and "Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?" But after the magical event was over, away we went in the night air, different boys ever after, for we had been exposed to one of the wonders of modern invention. Later our postmaster-druggist owned a phonograph, but we highly favored ones, had been ahead of our time and place by listening through ear-phones. There were two tent shows that I remember, and I honestly believe that they were the only ones that came to us after I was big enough to attend. One set up its equipment in the old broomsedge field just east of Fidelity, at the edge of the woods. To attract the attention of the assembled yokels, a daring man in tights, walked a tight rope and danced a jig on it and even stood on his head. Then we went inside, where two clowns told corny gags that were then new to us, and a magician swallowed a sword and did stunts with balls, and a ventriloquist and his dummy made every one of us resolve to be showmen to the end of our earthly days. The final act was again outside, where a cinnamon bear danced a jig when someone sang a weird Gypsy song and beat on a tambourine. The other tent show came several years later, after moving pictures had come into slight use. This show was much more varied. There was a magician, again; a boy did some marvelous papertearing; there was a Punch and Judy show; there were short movies, somewhat like our modern newsreels; and there were colored slides thrown on the screens representing well-known songs, the phonograph meanwhile playing the songs illustrated. To the end of my days I will remember how effectively "My Old Kentucky Home" was illustrated by the slide showing the sale of the Negroes "down South" to pay the master's debts. And then came a showboat, which I believe is the best type of folk entertainment. A group of us were picnicking down at Pine Bluff, on Tennessee River, when a showboat came in and tied up at the landing. We peered into the boat and were courteously invited aboard. There were some twenty of us, but we felt that we must have a show, just for us. The proprietor agreed to charge us only twenty cents apiece instead of the regular dime when more people came. That meant forty cents for me,for I had a date. But, after all, what is a big sum like that when it is being spent for HER? There were some fairly good moving pictures, some slides in color, and some of the best fiddle-playing I have ever heard. The crew of the boat consisted of only three people: the proprietor, his wife, and the fiddler. This boat, I learned later, spent twenty years on the Ohio and its tributaries, always adapting itself to changes in types of shows, from the earlier clown acts to the moving pictures when I saw their show. On our way home late in the afternoon we met numerous farmers and their families going to the night performance. We felt big in having had a command performance rather than the regular show. About the last country school I attended we had a man who had been reared in our section who came back to put on his show as an expose of Oriental magic and its kindred arts. He came to our school and gave several demonstrations of hypnotism, his helper being the worst boy in the neighborhood. But we were sufficiently convinced that we thronged the union church that night. All lights were put out except some very dim, weird-looking ones that belonged to the magician. All sorts of stunts were done, gradually becoming more and more corny. The same bad boy did his stunts less convincingly than ever. The village eccentric, who had the reputation of being a half-wit, could not be hypnotised, much to the delight of the audience, which had begun to suspect that we had been taken in. We had paid our money, though, and we sat through about the dullest, most silly program that I was ever around. After this show we did not brag about having attended, for we were thoroughly disgusted with the hokum we had witnessed." ==========================================================================