"Frances kept angels in step with earthy baseball cheer" from the December 13, 1979 Door County Advocate
By FRANCES MAY
Frances kept angels in step with earthy baseball cheer
By FRANCES MAY
"One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Rosemary, get in step. Alma, tie your shoe string before you trip on it and fall on your noggin. One, two, three, four.”
We were 12 little girls between eight and 14 practicing the traditional drill for the 1926 Christmas program. Some of us were from the "Big Room," grades from sixth through 10th, some from the Little Room," grades from primary through the fifth.
At that moment we were lined up, one behind the other, in two rows facing Mrs. Kibbey, sharp-eyed, abrasive-toned, martial Big Room teacher. I was the eager red-head fourth in line to her right and my brown-eyed sister, Rosemary, sixth in line to Mrs. Kibbey's left. I was in the sixth grade that year, Rosemary in the fifth, never in the same school room except in such instance, getting ready for the event of the year, the Christmas program.
After baseball season, which ended with snow on the ground, the only diversion from lessons was the Christmas program, the great annual talent show-off. But even then, in the midst of Christmas preparation, baseball flavored our lives and our vocabularies.
There were nine kids in our family, our neighbors on the next hill had 10 and all around us were fair sized families. We had our own backyard softball lot. Brothers were pitchers, school stars, in the Friday afternoon games played against other county teams. But now the schoolyard was piled, with snow, paths to the outhouses and to the water pump. We spent noon hours and recess time practicing our parts for the program.
Unfortunately that year neither of our teachers could play the piano. But Mrs. Kibbey said that in spite of the handicap we had to have a drill. It was customary, our parents would expect it, were looking forward to it.1 didn't think so but did not voice my opinion. I was only a sixth grader and I had seen Mrs. Kibbey swat the big boys for what she called "sassing back."
My mother had groaned, "Two white dresses this year. White stockings. Let's hope your dress from last year will fit Rosemary."
"Now," Mrs. Kibbey snapped, little beady black eyes seething to see me, heart, mind and soul, top to toe, even the grubby elbows and homemade underwear beneath the winter weary green wool dress my cousin Ida had outgrown. I felt she could see me straight through the three taller girls in front. I was wishing desperately for a way to distinguish myself. I did not like being low girl on the totem pole. She said, "Mark time till I rap my ruler on the desk. One, two, three, four."
"One, two, three, four. Hit-the-old-apple, Hit-the-old-apple." Across from me Rosemary and Norma Jorgenson nodded at my baseball lingo and fell into perfect step with me. We caught fire and 24-high black shoes marked time together.
"When I hit the desk, right row turn right, left row left, march to the chalk X, turn again, march to the X at the back, turn and meet at the center. March, down and meet me center stage. Yes? Yes, Alma? What is it?"
"When are they going to build the stage and put up the calico curtain"" Alma Witte had real golden hair and enormous blue eyes. She had not yet discovered that she was the most beautiful girl in the school. She and Rosemary were the only two girls who could bat the baseball across the road into Butler's orchard.
"Oh, that's weeks away," Mrs. Kibbey said, annoyed. "We don't even have the stars made to paste on the wands and don't forget to ask your mothers to sew tinsel on an elastic head band. We'll use the same figurations as last year. You older girls should remember the figure eight and the double wheel, the cross-over patterns. Well, we don't have a piano but maybe you can hum a tune under your breath, like 'Mine Eyes have seen the Glory.' Try that. Let's go, now. One, two, three, four." She hit the desk with her yardstick and we marched off into confusion.
It did not go well. Mrs. Kibbey screamed and made Helen Wagner cry. She was the littlest angel and she had to be in the showpiece drill because her father was head of the school board. Mrs. Kibbey dared not pull Helen's careful curls. Helen had a slightly lame foot from an early bout with polio. She was gentle and sweet natured. She could not be left out. Mrs. Kibbey ground her little gray store teeth, thrust her hands into her own hair, and gave up for the day.
Inspiration did not arrive the first week of practice. We marched up and down the front of the Little Room, clop-clop-drag, in and out of step. Little kids at their desks, industrious with waxen crayolas and small, blunt nosed scissors, were making Santa Clauses and Christmas trees on tablet paper. In one corner of the Big Room, the ninth and 10th graders were rehearsing lines for the Bird's Christmas Carol.
At home Mama had spruced up my last year's organdy dress for Rosemary. She had basted side seams in Cousin Ida's confirmation dress for me. (She had to give the dress back after Christmas. A confirmation dress was a keepsake.) The five dollar check from the Wisconsin Grandma would supply funds for two pairs of heavy white cotton stockings.
The schoolroom windows were pasted so full of red and green cutouts that you could scarcely peer between them to see the pump or the outhouses. Upright in a snowbank behind the boy's outhouse was a fat branched, rich green spruce tree. Helen's father and older brother had brought it on the sleigh one snowy afternoon, bells jingling on the harnesses of his team of grays. (Mr. Wagner liked showing off his horses. They won prizes every year in pulling contests at the county fair.
After Wagners had unloaded the tree Mrs. Kibbey went out into the entry to thank them while Helen hurried into her coat stocking cap and galoshes. Mrs. Kibbey had excused her early. It seemed to Rosemary and me that she was glad to get rid of dear little lame Helen. We didn't notice that Viola Putala, the substitute with two good feet, improved the performance the least bit.
That afternoon Mrs. Kibbey was torn three ways. The, Little Room chorus insisted on a high note at the end of the second line of Joy to the World. The three bigges boys in school, chosen for size, not singing ability with their cracked, changing voices, were practicing in the basement "We Three Kings of Orient Are."
Miss Pritchett, the Little Room teacher, was down there with them. When giggles and guffaws interspersed the singing, voices hollow and ghostlike through the cold air registers, Mrs. Kibbey's lips tightened. When we fell out of step in the double wheel figuration Mrs. Kibbey flew at us and I was the one in the direct line of fire. She grabbed a handful of my red hair and yanked. I yelped. Was it fear or was it the pain that triggered the inspiration?
"I've got it," I cried out. "I know how to keep us in step. I have an idea."
She let go, backed off a bit and stared down that hawk beaked nose at me. "The last time you had an idea, it was a disaster."
I blushed but persisted. "It will work. You'll see."
We were all remembering the noon-hour I had opened a window to short-cut my turn with the water bucket. Rosemary handed it up carefully. My belly on the sill, I leaned out, drew the water pail over the sill, turned and my feet slipped. I threw the icy water over Mrs. Kibbey and her opened lunch bucket, at her paper laden desk. My relationship with her had remained on that slippery footing.
Nevertheless I did not cower under her baleful dark eyes. I went on, "We all know the old school baseball yells. If we say one together, we can keep in step. Can we try it?
"May we," she corrected. "All right. I wouldn't trust you were I not in desperate straits. But what harm could come of this?"
Her instincts were right, but the end result was not exactly a disaster. It was more of a culture shock.
In these later days we would have been called "cheerleaders," but at school baseball games we were as exercised and much noisier than our nine boy team running the baseball diamond. Our school yells were traditional, different from modern "Yeah, team, go" lingo. Our inherited yells marched and rhymed.
As soon as we used one of our pithy rhymes we were in step. We stayed with that particular favorite. As we marched, our shoes hitting the floor loud enough to drown Helen's hesitant beat, Mrs. Kibbey nodded approvingly from across the room where she was listening to the actors rehearsing Bird's Christmas Carol. She paid little attention after that, even patted me on the head once as she passed where I sat at my desk reading Buster Knudson's geography page. She was in such a dither she didn't notice anything that last week.
In our family we liked to sing but no one of us could carry a tune so both Rosemary and my brother Earl were out-voiced in the first offering, "Joy to the World," by all the scholars of the Little Room, among whom were other tone deaf songsters.
Before the drill, which had become my responsibility, I had a small part in the silent nativity pageant. Among several others I knelt almost on the edge of the plank stage. My knees grew numb under the burlap sacking costume and if Ellis Hanson had not snatched my arm when I staggered to my feet I would have landed among the Christmas presents and probably upset the tree with all its lighted candles. I shivered all the way to the dressing room.
Six at a time in the cloakroom we a changed our winter woolen dresses for flimsy white garb for the drill. Angels wore white. I went in with the first group. I rolled my long underwear above my knees so my stockings would not be lumpy and unhooked and re-anchored the stockings so tightly to the garter waist that my shoulders ached. My elastic banded flour sacking bloomers covered the rolled-up underwear and further secured my stockings.
Mrs. Kibbey had threatened, "Hear this, Younkers. Anyone with sagging stockings will get a bad citizenship mark. Now remember, this program counts for six weeks class work on your report cards. Clean necks, clean ears and nails and no drooping stockings.”
This cloakroom had steps leading down to the cellar and the wood burning furnace. Below the steps a dim light shown. Not to be mentioned in the presence of the innocent was the shared knowledge that Mr. Butler in the old, faded Santa Claus suit was downstairs waiting for the program to end so he could make an exciting entrance with ho-ho- ho's and sleigh bells a-jingle.
Behind the calico curtain, waiting for the other six girls to dress and get in line, I peeked through a tiny, three cornered hole, handily at eye level.
Doors and wooden panels between the two rooms had been removed for the occasion. The space was packed. Women and a few small size men had crammed their bodies behind our desks. Small children sat in front of them on desk tops. Men stood at the back of the room. A pall of pale blue cigar smoke overhung the crowd. There was a tang of evergreen, hot wax of melting tree candles, ladies cologne and a whiff of barnyard.
The cloakroom door opened and the other girls got in line. Mrs. Kibbey hissed, "Younkers?" She poised the needle over the last-minute Victrola. "Ready, set, go. One, two, three, four," and we marched, ignoring both her cadence and Joy Bells on the Victrola for our own practiced rhythm. We mouthed a verse that our mothers, and aunts had shrieked on the baseball field. It was likely that our grandparents had known it.
Even Helen kept in step. We banged our heels down on every phrase, mouths moving silently in unison. We concentrated so hard we did not notice that the adult audience was all but falling into the aisles, holding their stomachs, cramming handkerchiefs over their mouths to muffle laughter, wiping, their eyes.
I did catch a glimpse of Mrs. Kibbey as she laid the back of her hand across her gold rimmed spectacles. I read the stricken look as pure delight in our perfection. We finished and bowed to a thunderous applause, whistling and foot stamping in the back rows. We were a great success, but it did not surprise us that much. Mrs. Kibbey did not come near us. She looked out the window, too overcome, we thought, to reward us with praise.
I understand better now why we were that howling success: Twelve little white clad angels, starred and haloed, clumping up and down a stage mouthing that well remembered rhyme: "Chew tobacca, chew tobacca, spit, spit, spit. Riverton, Riverton, It, It, It." As far as I know it was the last time they had such a drill at a Riverton Christmas Program.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
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