Spring cheers and Shipoopi dances

Twiggy the cheerleader wants me to give her an S.  Give her a P.  Give her R--I--N--G!  What's that spell?  What's that spell?  Spring!

Twiggy has her pompoms.  She's doing a Herkie.  If you squint you can see her tiny top and hot pants.

The preschoolers celebrated Pee In Your Shoes Day with an outpouring of, shall we say, enthusiasm.  Who marked the calendar for this special occasion?  No one consulted with me, or I would have brought more towels and disinfectant, plus spare socks. 

Spring is sprung.  The grass is riz.  Entirely too much puddle-wonderful wiz on those goat feet.  The grape hyacinths are channeling the Buddy Hackett "Shipoopi" number in The Music Man.

Well a woman who'll kiss on the very first date
Is usually a hussy.
And a woman who'll kiss on the second time out
Is anything but fussy.
But a woman who waits 'til the third time around, 
Head in the clouds, feet on the ground!
She's the girl he's glad he's found--she's his 
Shi-Poo-Pi! Shi-Poo-Pi! Shi-Poo-Pi! Shi-Poo-Pi!

My biggest moment in theatre occurred in the summer of '95.  I was subbing for the children's theater director doing the lights, woefully unprepared, and excited to blow the train whistle.  My eldest was holding the heavy satchel as Charlie the anvil salesman.  

Danger Baby had the words for "Rock Island" written on his hand.  The youngster portraying Marcellus Washburn deserved an Oscar for staying in character all the way through the "Shi-poo-pi" number even though his belt broke and his trousers sank further and further toward his shoes as the song went on.

Whatddya talk?

Thanks for the hyacinths.

Thanks for the daffodils,

jonquils and narcissus.

Ever met a fella by the name of Hill?

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

Bohemian Girl

Be the first on your block to read Terese Svoboda's Bohemian Girl.  It's short, poetic, picaresque, and packs a punch.  I've got so many reference points snapping back and forth on mental telegraph lines I must be building new brain cells.

How can writing be so epic and spare at the same time?  The story is an inch wide and a mile deep.

The word for today is "tableau":

Some years ago I became the custodian of a plush velvet album with photographs, bits of ribbons and black fabric, Czech newspaper clippings and handwritten letters.  The album had been a family hot potato, being mailed, handed off, or left on doorsteps like last year's fruitcake because none of us know the people in the album or speak Czech.  We are just sure the album might be important  to keep.  I'm guessing that the young woman in this photo might have been creating a tableau.   

tableau [tab‐loh] (plural ‐leaux or ‐leaus), a ‘picture’ formed by living persons caught in static attitudes. Tableaux were sometimes used at the ends of acts in 19th‐century melodrama and farce. The parlour‐game of tableaux vivants (‘living pictures’), in which living people adopt the postures of characters in a famous painting, was also a popular diversion in the 19th century, and is sometimes found in modern pageants. In a story or poem, a description of some group of people in more or less static postures is sometimes called a tableau.  

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/tableau#ixzz1Zxhm3mhy

[Also, my dad is doing better, out of pain, eating like a bear, slipping out of bed, and nutty as can be.  Today he is saying, "G A N E L G E".  If you can figure that out, please comment!]

Hoopoe

Privilege and responsibility are the dual characteristics of citizenship. We lucky American citizens have the privilege of voting for our officials, and the responsibility to be informed voters. On this day of the Texas primary election, I had a heavy burden and great joy besides attending the post-election precinct convention. More on that note later. For now I'm talking about the hotly contested goat and troll auditions for the spring music festival.

My little sister, the choral director, will never believe it. I evaluated music auditions! She used to stand beside me in the pew of the United Church of Christ (not the same congregation as Senator Obama), and suggest tactfully that I didn't need to sing the hymn "if I didn't want to". I could "just read the words silently", she advised in a whisper. My little brother would support her suggestions with his most forceful aspect, and it is mighty tough to exert influence wearing a pale blue polyester suit with wide lapels and a navy and orange floral necktie.

We won't even discuss how I went to CVS to buy a new toothbrush, and the Bee Gees' "Stayin Alive" was playing on the piped-in Muzak. The Bee Gees sang higher than any of the preschool kids trying out for the Wee Billy Goat. An old married couple, okay, over fifty, was rocking out in the greeting card aisle.

Feel the city breakin' and ev'rybody shakin'and we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive. Ooh, hoo, hoo, hoop, Stayin' Alive.

"Did you ever hear of a hoopoe?," my lead teacher asked. We are talking about birds, not bad disco haircuts. The hoopoe is actually an Old World bird with a bad disco haircut; cute in it's own way, but probably not critical for Texas preschoolers to learn. It says its name, oop-oop-ooping along.

The music festival troll has a big nose and a club. This is all starting to sound familiar. Few children are brave enough to even audition for the part. I want to reach across the divide between my inflated imperial status as auditioner to their young hearts as auditionees to tell them THE TROLL IS THE ROLE TO GO FOR! Few moments in my own childhood were as deliciously nasty and satisfying as playing Cinderella's stepmom in a neighborhood basement production. Well, maybe that time when I was two years old and went totally berserko running up and down the aisles of Leon's Food Mart with my exasperated very pregnant mom in slow pursuit.

Trolls and goats and hoopoes, oh my! Bad disco suits and grocery store hoots... My little brother's very first LP was the Snoopy vs. The Red Baron album of the Royal Guardsmen. The strange comedy cover album by a sextet from Florida included the song that haunted my afternoon. The "Alley Oop" words and music are by Dallas Frazier, 1960, based on the comic strip.

There's a man in the funny papers we all know

Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop

He lived way back a long time ago

Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop

Well he don't eat nothin' but bearcat stew

Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop

Oh well this cat's name is a-Alley Oop

Alley Oop Oop, Oop Oop Oop

Now I will listen to some election news, oop oop!

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Seven veils of Salome stuck to your shoe

You're interviewing for a job, and realize your fly is unzipped. You're walking down the red carpet at the Academy Awards, and someone yells that you have toilet paper stuck to your shoe. You are trying on bras at Home Depot! Yes, all these are the stuff of nightmares--yours, mine, and my walking buddy's.

An inconsiderate person has moved out of an office near my school and left tons of stuff in and around our dumpster--desks, computers, boxes, printers, holiday popcorn tins, paper, a door... The regular trash bags are piled up on top of all this junk, and the wind is gusting up to forty miles per hour.

The Tuesday garbage truck arrives and empties the dumpster. Somehow one of those continuous-feed multi-form printer paper stacks gets wrapped around one wheel. The paper just keeps unfolding and trailing along behind the garbage truck like toilet paper stuck to a giant's shoe! As the truck lumbers through the neighborhood, the paper flaps and twirls in an impressive dance.

I'm thinking about seductive, nightmarish dances with trailing and twirling diaphanous veils because the Dallas Opera is about to perform Richard Strauss's "Salome". How will the opera be staged? What creative visual interpretations will be imposed on this intense music? I pray it won't be updated to our current time with veils of Bounce, Charmin, duct tape, and printer paper! What would Mr. Whipple do?

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Age lines

Went to see a performance of "The Foreigner" by Larry Shue. It ran long for me. My companions said certain sections dragged. That wasn't my problem with it. "The Foreigner" just hooked more cars onto the long blurred train of country-house dramas that I've seen performed in high schools, middle-schools, community colleges, dinner theaters, and suburban repertory theatres over forty years. I'm trapped in "The Hollow" and I can't get out.

You know the country-house drama routine. An assortment of guests assemble for a weekend at a hunting lodge, rural inn, country house, or even beach house. They are not all who they pretend to be. There are deceits and manipulations. Sometimes there's a murder. Often the guests have to help the owner raise money to avoid foreclosure. In a frightening number of these plays, the guests decide to put on a musical talent show to raise money and/or solve the murder. Romantic pairings reshuffle. Inheritances are decided. The bad guys are run off, true lovers survive misunderstandings, the crime is solved by the town fool or an outside detective, and the country house is saved until next season.

You've been to these performances, so don't pretend you are from some different culture. The set always has three entrances; the left to the guest bedrooms; the center to the outdoors; the right to the kitchen and servants quarters. The elderly roles are played by the youngest actors wearing bad gray wigs, mustaches, and beards that look like they came from the Halloween aisle at Hinky Dinky. The kids have drawn on fat black age lines that could be seen from across a football field, and just look like weird facial grafiti in a small theatre. The young female characters are dressed in bright outfits from the junior department at Target, even though costumes for the other players hint at a time period or region. Too often there's a guy stuck wearing lederhosen. Actors of all ages attempt accents that obscure understanding of their lines.

Howard Cosell was criticized because he had never played football. I have never been an actress, except a few times in my marriage that I won't get into in this blog. Still, I've been known to speak in Transylvanian vampire mode while dancing to Buddy Holly and imitating the hairstylist of Fluffy the Paintbrush for my Tuesday first-grade art students. Without hammering my point, the combination of sets, make-up, costumes, and accents in these plays make about as much sense.

Country-house dramas are safe. They take us out of the business and politics of real life, send us on vacation with people we don't know, and serve us the dramatic equivalent of banquet rubber chicken and green beans. They make sure we don't trouble our pretty little heads with contemplating the human condition, moral or philosophical issues.

Bad accents...country setting...biscuits or grits...not who they seem...manipulations of finances...distraction from all philosophical and ethical issues...safely unquestioning audiences...

Good golly, Buddy Holly! The President is entertaining foreign dignitaries down in Crawford again this weekend!

Sore Throat

Woke up with a scratchy, raw throat at 5:21 this morning. Oh, no! Please, please, not strep! After awhile I knew I was going to have to eat a sloppy joe with a big stacker dill pickle. It's not the best thing for a sore throat, but it's as close as I can get.

I belong to the Campbell's chicken gumbo soup recipe* contingent of Midwestern sloppy joe eaters, not the Heinz ketchup-Manwich contingent. This is very important. Down here in Texas when a displaced Nebraskan meets a displaced Iowan, the conversation gets around to loose meat sandwich preference pretty quick. Like religion and politics, it's important to find out just what kind of person you are dealing with so you can avoid stepping on conversational toes.

The best thing of all for a sore throat is a Tastee sandwich from the Tastee Inn & Out drive-in at 48th and Holdrege Streets in Lincoln, Nebraska. Actually an order of three Tastees is about what it takes to do the job of recovering from a sore throat. I sure hope the Tastee drive-in is still there.

When we turned the pea-green '54 Chevy into Tastees on the looping tree-lined driveway off Holdrege, the microphones stuck up from the ground like giant white lollipops. The pick-up window was on the passenger side of the car. Sometime I got to lean out of the car to get the cardboard tub of Tastee sandwiches from the woman with the white uniform and hairnet. Ahhhh, the steam and mustard aroma! [The tub made a fine tom-tom.] If we went inside to order and eat, the person at the counter would write up our order and send it in a pneumatic tube! This was fascinating to me as a kid, just as my sons loved the Omaha drive-through bank with the clear pneumatic tube.

I've invested a large chunk of today Googling Tastees, Maid-Rites, and other loose meat sandwiches. Never did find a photo of the Tastee Inn & Out in Lincoln, but it was lots of fun, and my throat is feeling much better. It was easier finding a photo of the original Runza Drive-In on the way to Pioneers Park, and the original Valentino's by the Ag Campus. Dad says the first Tastee Inn near the main NU campus was the site of the mid-Seventies Hong Kong Pizza King, a multicultural experience, and later became Pontillo's, home of the very bad breath meatball sandwich.

You can read the review of a play presented at the FringeNYC Festival last August:

Onion Girl, a new play written by Joye H. Cook-Levy and directed by Scott R.C. Levy, tells the story of Billy, a young woman whose Mother has died and left her the family business: the Tastee Inn & Out in Sioux City, Iowa, a relic of the original fast-food days. Regulars can drive up and place their "usual" orders with a person they know, and “onion chips with an extra container of dip” is a house specialty...

There's some disagreement about the year of the invention of the loose meat sandwich, but all signs point to Sioux City, Iowa. "Loose meat" is a pretty unappealing name. I had never heard that term until a 1994 episode of Roseanne. The Food Timeline's History of Sandwiches has a section on Sloppy Joes:

During the second half of the nineteenth century ground beef gained popularity in America because it was both economical and nourishing. Recipes for Hamburg Steaks (aka hamburgers) were included in many popular American cookbooks. Cooks often added inexpensive fillers (bread crumbs, ketchup, tomato paste, eggs, sweet peppers, minced onions, Worcestershire sauce, bottled horseradish, pickle relish, mustard, salt & pepper were the most popular) to stretch the meat. [Duh!] This ground beef mixture was then fashioned into meatballs, meat loaves, hamburger stew, and loose meat sandwiches....Where do sloppy joes fit in?
"The origins of this dish are unknown, but recipes for the dish date back at least to the 1940s. It dates in print to 1935. There is probably no Joe after whom it is named--but its rather messy appearance and tendency to drip off plate or roll makes "sloppy" an adequate description, and "Joe" is an American name of proletarian character and unassailable genuineness. There are many individual and regional variations on the dish. In Sioux City, Iowa, a dish of this type is called a "loosemeat sandwich," created in 1934 at Ye Olde Tavern Inn by Abraham and Bertha Kaled."
--- Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p.297).


Besides Tastee drama and history, there is Tastee art. This is from Kent Wolgamott's review of Wendy Jane Bantam's exhibit last spring:

...She also captures some Lincoln landmarks with three smaller paintings that also display her quirky sense of humor. They're "Sub Zero at the Topper Popper," "Zesto Zesto," in which ducks frolic in the parking lot in front of the ice cream shop, and "Spies at Tastee Inn & Out," where rabbits surround the building and one is on the roof holding binoculars.

I love it! I tried to find that painting on the website for her gallery, but I think Wendy sold it.

Okay, we've got drama, history, popular culture, medicine, and art. Now it's time for religion. This is the Tastee Inn Prayer from a story by David Boles. (I bet I went to school with his sister):

"Oh, Lord, may the pick-up window never be on the right side of the car and may the building never get a new coat of paint."

Can't you just hear Janis Joplin singing, "Oh Lord, won't ya buy me a Tastees sandwich. My friends all get curly fries and chocolate shakes, too..."

*Sloppy Joes:
1 lb. ground beef
1 can chicken gumbo soup
1/2 cup chopped onions or 1 heaping tbsp minced onions
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp catsup
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp salt & a shake of pepper
Brown beef and onions. Add other ingredients. Simmer 30 min.

Get on the bus, Gus

I think there should be City Bus Theater; part Mystery Dinner Theater, and part Diner Theater, but more mobile. Actors get on and off at different stops, and do improv on the bus, while the audience rides along wavering between avoiding making eye-contact and joining into the improv. This idea isn't new. Actors pop on and off of the subway in New York City doing little bits of comedy and drama, funded by the city.



I rode a bus a lot back in my Lincoln days. Went downtown as a kid to swim lessons at the YWCA and to the public library, or to the dentist. Did my Christmas shopping at Woolworths and the department stores after a ride downtown, where all the lights are bright* . I rode a city bus home from high school via the VA hospital and the mall. Commuted to the university, and learned it was possible to walk the six miles to campus carrying a large, heavy bookbag if I missed the bus.



On a cosmic level, I learned the bus never arrives until you give up and accept that you missed it. The whole privacy concept on public transport is a topic open for discussion. You ride along putting your energy into creating the repellent force field so you don't have to interact with the other passengers, and yet you are eavesdropping. You pretend to ignore people acting out in various ways, but you gradually develop relationships with the repeating stranger. You ride the bus home from work every night for five years with the same guy, gradually becoming more intimate, but you never learn his name or where he goes after he gets off at 33rd and Randolph Streets... How would Studs Terkel get the stories of everybody riding on the bus?

There's a popular kids' book and play called "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever", and then there's Ms. Frizzle and the kids on the "Magic Schoolbus". Somewhere in the middle is "The Best Field Trip Ever". The field trips that are burned into my memory are the trips to the Lincoln Journal and Star newspaper offices, the Gooch's Mill macaroni plant, and the Skyline Dairy ice cream plant.

I can remember exactly five times when I got in trouble as a kid, not that I was perfect, but, well, actually I was real close! Usually if I strayed, my over-active guilt complex kicked in, so no official sanctions were required. One time I got in trouble on the bus on the way to a field trip downtown. I'm pretty sure it was fourth grade, and we were on our way to visit the newspaper. We had received a lecture about not making faces and waving out the bus windows. Imagine my surprise to look out the window of the bus and spot my dad walking down the street on his lunch break. Wouldn't you wave??? Of course! Would a jury convict?? "An example was made of..."!

Mom and I used to have a wardrobe evaluation--"You can't wear that! It looks like an outfit the woman eating the Velveeta sandwich at the bus stop would wear." Geez, I miss Fritzi today. One month. Anyway, we also used to say, particularly about her mother's fashion color combos, "That looks like a nosebleed on raspberry sherbet."

Jim Lehrer is a major bus fan. Have you ever read any of his books about the one-eyed lieutenant governor of Oklahoma, or his White Widow?

*DOWNTOWN by Tony Hatch- as recorded in 1964 by Petula Clark
When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go - downtown
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know - downtown
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown, things'll be great when you're
Downtown - no finer place, for sureDowntown - everything's waiting for you

Don't hang around and let your problems surround you
There are movie shows - downtown
Maybe you know some little places to go to
Where they never close - downtown
Just listen to the rhythm of a gentle bossa nova
You'll be dancing with him too before the night is over
Happy again
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown, where all the lights are bright
Downtown - waiting for you tonight
Downtown - you're gonna be all right now

One shoe off and one shoe on

I started writing last evening about our neighborhood production of "Cinderella" in Julie B.'s basement in 1965. This morning I opened my KERA/PBS email newsletter, and was astounded to see the lead item:

RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN'S "Cinderella"

Among the classics of musical theater, one of the most cherished productions is one that was originally created for television: Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Cinderella," starring Julie Andrews and a cast including Kaye Ballard, Alice Ghostley, and Edie Adams. An enchanting musical adaptation of the classic fairy tale, it was watched by an astounding 107 million viewers during its 1957 network premiere, but amazingly the film has not been seen, or in fact available in any format, since that initial telecast. "Impossible things are happening every day," however, and now GREAT PERFORMANCES grants the wishes of musical theater fans everywhere, presenting the restored original film for the first time in nearly half a century. Cinderella herself, Julie Andrews, hosts the program, recalling fond memories and backstage stories from the landmark show that includes classic Rodgers & Hammerstein songs like "In My Own Little Corner," "Ten Minutes Ago," and "Do I Love You Because You're Beautiful?".

Collagemama is not really old enough to have seen the Julie Andrew's "Cinderella" on t.v. in 1957. My cherished memories are of the 1965 t.v. version starring Lesley Ann Warren, Ginger Rogers, Walter Pidgeon, Celest Holm, Jo Van Fleet, Stuart Damon, Pat Carroll, and Barbara Ruick. I mistakenly thought that version was not available in any format, or I would have gotten it when my little princes were young.

You must remember that the same little girls who played "Beatles stewardesses" staged our neighborhood play. Julie B., who was always Paul's stewardess girlfriend got to be Cinderella. It was her house and she was a blond, after all. John and Ringo's girlfriends (Nancy Joan and DeeDee) wouldn't even consider being the evil stepmother, so I was stuck with the role, and enjoyed it totally. It was a clear case of playing against type. We were all nine or ten at the time. This was our second major production. The first had been something to do with a duck who ate muffins, and was performed on our patio. Trouble was, our block didn't have any guys our age. We had to take the tallest six-year-old, Brent, and groom him for the part of Prince Charming, hoping he wouldn't be in an asthmatic oxygen tent on the day of performance. He did not really measure up to the appeal of Stuart Damon. My young siblings, Roger & Mary Jane, were the King and Queen. There were at least two more kids in the show, Jimmy and Janie, but I can't remember what parts they played. Maybe someone will remember who played the fairy godmother.

The Rodgers & Hammerstein "Cinderella" was shown on the Hallmark or Kraft showcase. In 1965 "a television special" still meant something worth seeing. It's amazing that we reconstructed the whole story and many of the songs from one t.v. viewing. We all watched on our home black & white t.v.s, and we memorized it start to finish. In the olden days before slo-mo replays, vcr and tivo, we had to have better attention, listening and memorization skills. Some of us went on to perform annual original take-offs of "Laugh In" and "The Smothers Brothers" on New Years Eves.

Great Performances airs December 13th, at 9:00 p.m. (check your local PBS listings). I am hoping for tutoring in VCR recording before then. During the PBS funddrive, you can receive a cd or dvd copy by pledging $65 or more. In a fun coincidence, the Dallas Opera's production of Rossini's "La Cenerentola" (Cinderella) is the same week. I may need to go shopping for glass slippers...the evil stepmother never gets to wear the sparkly dress-up shoes!

Consistency is all I ask. Immortality is all I seek.

This is a season for my favorite plays. A few weeks ago I saw "The Importance of Being Earnest" at the DTC. I knew the play inside and out, but I had never seen a professional performance.

Next weekend I'm going to see another favorite, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", by Tom Stoppard. It's a production of the Risk Theater Initiative. I've seen the movie with Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss, and Gary Oldman, but I've never seen Stoppard's play on stage. I claim an ownership in this play. Good grief! Thirty-one years ago my best high school pal and I did a readers' theater of a coin-flipping scene for our senior English class. Because our last names were Papenfuss and Mastalir we related to the interchangeability of the names Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Because we both had a love of words and writing, we savored Stoppard's wit and philosophical pondering. Because we were both frustrated with English class busy work assignments, we relished the chance to complete our project by performing a reading during class. Because we both had names too difficult to spell, we ordered our take-out pizzas from Valentinos under the name of J. Stewart, for Jackie the race car driver. Do not ask me about Milton, Spenser, or Chaucer! Those were the good old days of Billy Jean King, Chrissy Evert, and Martina, Bjorn, Ilie Nastase, McEnroe, and Connors. I doubt that life was really simpler in those olden days, but at least we didn't have tattoos and visible piercings.

Do you want me to be a bear with you?

All the preschool classes are doing creative drama performances this week. Our performances are wonderful, because they are so non-threatening. There's no pressure to memorize lines, because in preschool story drama, the teacher is on stage narrating the story. The kids can listen to the teacher, then say the line. If they are ready, they can listen to the teacher, but anticipate and say the line on their own. The kids are in groups, so they don't feel all alone. The cast might include two mice, three squirrels, four princesses, two detectives, and four rainbow goblins. The show is all about having fun.

Now any Goldilocks knows that you need three bears. In a darling story about a king who went into the woods and ate a big cheese sandwich, there were only two bears hibernating in their den. One of the bears got worried, and wanted his mommy. He went behind the den to sniffle. Then he went behind the curtain. Then my Spidey Sense alerted me that he was going down the dark,dark steps to the dark, dark Green Room (the dressing room for older students). I had to spring into action, and without a phone booth to change. If the bear fell down the dark, dark stairs it would be traumatizing. If the bear went down the steps safely, but freaked out in the dark, dark dressing room, it would be traumatizing. I snuck (sneaking while scuttling) over to the side of the stage to stay out of the video, then up some steps to arrive behind the curtain. I crawled over to the bear and rubbed his back a bit. Then I asked him if he wanted me to be a bear with him in the story. He said okay, and stopped crying. We scuttled back on stage and into the overturned box that was the bears' den. I tried to be as little as a three-year-old, but as safe as a mama. The little bear and I chatted reassuringly and quietly. When the story bears came out of the den to sniff for cheese sandwich crumbs, the two little bears went sniffing while the mama stayed in the den.

There I will be on the video. I hear the camera adds ten pounds. And I didn't even eat the crumbs.

A good time was had by all

Mrs. G's Book Club discusses the works of Shel Silverstein
06:01 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 13, 2004


By JEAN NASH JOHNSON / The Dallas Morning News


No grown-ups

No grown-ups allowed

We're playin' a game,

And we don't need

"Be-carefuls" or "don'ts."

No grown-ups allowed

We're formin' a club,

And the secret oath

Must not be shown.

No grown-ups allowed.

We're goin' out for pizza –

No, no one but me and my crowd.

So just stay away.

Oh, now it's time to pay?

Grown-ups allowed. – Shel Silverstein,

Falling Up
With Shel Silverstein poems to work with, the Mrs. G bunch had to figure that when they arrived where the sidewalk ends at Capers for Kids, fun was in store. With grown-ups gone, the eight panelists made Mrs. G and Capers owner Boo Capers honorary little people. (No, we didn't make up Boo Capers – it's her real name. Call her Boo.)

In the roomy theater at Capers, a North Dallas creative arts school for kids, they sat on the floor and discussed the man they were honoring in this National Poetry Month celebration. "I always used him in my class at poetry time. You can tell because my Shel Silverstein books are so worn, the pages fall out," Mrs. G said. All agreed hers was the perfect condition for a Shel Silverstein book.

The group couldn't wait to recite their favorites from his three popular books: Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up and A Light in the Attic (HarperCollins, $52.99 for boxed set, ages 9 to 12).

Vishal Gokani, 8, even came with a prop, a TV made from a cardboard box. He couldn't wait to perform "Jimmy Jet and His TV Set." Garland fourth-grader Sarah Israel had been waiting since second grade to interpret "Sick." (She had tried out at school but didn't get the part.)
"I cannot go to school today, said Little Peggy Ann McKay." The 9-year-old belted out the rest of the verse. Then, Mr. Silverstein's vigorous reading of the same piece on CD followed Sarah's. After the poet's outrageous "Sick" ending – "What's that, you say? You say today is ... Saturday? G'bye, I'm going out to play!" – the kids almost couldn't stop laughing.

"He's so good. He left us way too early," said Boo. Mr. Silverstein died of a heart attack in 1999 at age 66. Vishal Gokani: "He has a great sense of humor and his poems always teach a lesson."

Ben Thompson, 11, followed Sarah with his throaty "Captain Hook." Lizzy McClinchie, 11, ran delightfully through "The Garden." Luis Rangel, 8, giggled over "Lazy Jane." ("Reminds me of my dad when he sleeps in," he said.) Second-grader Mason Ponder of Carrollton stretched a bit for "One-Inch Tall," while Rebekah McAnalley, 10, paced herself reading "Melinda Mae" and Eden Williams, 8, deadpanned through "No Grown-ups."

Boo got the gang on stage, making them promise not to "fall up," and turned on the stage lights. "When you interpret or perform poetry strictly for the fun of it, no one is judging you. I like that you can strike a pose from Shel Silverstein's wonderful poems and drawings," Boo told the performers.

Then Mrs. G had them reach into a paper bag and pull out a Shel Silverstein title. They were to act out the selections without dialogue and let the group guess the poem. "That's called pantomime," said Boo.

Working in pairs and with Boo's input on costumes and props, they interpreted favorites, including Eden and Sarah's outstanding "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out."

Mrs. G stole the show with a blankie and stuffed animal, pretending to snuggle in bed sucking her thumb. As she pulled the blanket tightly to her, looking scared and squeezing her furry lamb, the audience blurted the title together: "Afraid of the Dark."

Shel Silverstein would have been proud.

E-mail http://jnjohnson@dallasnews.com.


Capers for Kids

In 1978, Sherry "Boo" Capers started Capers for Kids, a creative arts school and outreach program at 12306 Park Central Drive in Dallas.

During the school year, more than 2,500 students from 20 public and private schools in the Dallas area are enrolled in Creative Drama and Visual Art classes. A summer program also is available. For more information, call 972-661-2787, or visit www.capersforkids.com.


What is Mrs. G's Book Club?

Several times a year, counselor and former reading teacher Angela Glancy, a.k.a. Mrs. G, works with KidsDay and selects a book for the book club. We ask kids to read the book and write a letter about what they think about it, and from those letters we choose a panel to discuss the book with Mrs. G.

What's the next book?

Ella Enchanted (HarperTrophy, $6.50), now a movie, is about a spirited girl under a spell that forces her to follow orders – even stupid ones.

Write a letter telling Mrs. G why you should be part of a book discussion. Send it to Mrs. G's Book Club, P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, TX 75265. Or e-mail jnjohnson@dallasnews .com. Include your name, age, hometown and a phone number. Deadline: April 28. Mason Ponder (right): "My first-grade teacher read me his poems and I got Sidewalk for Christmas."

Luis Rangel: " 'Homework Machine' is one of the best poems I've read."

Lizzy McClinchie (left): "I love to laugh and his poems cheer me up."

Rebekah McAnalley: "I'm a No. 1 fan. Wish we could make him come back to Earth."Ben Thompson: "The Giving Tree is actually my favorite of his works."

Eden Williams (listening to Mrs. G): "When you read 'Grown-ups' you feel silly because you really do need them."

Sarah Israel: "I love him. His humor is dry just like mine."