It’s a new year and a new season for high school showtime! It won’t be long before high schools will be announcing their spring musicals and plays.

I enjoyed high school plays but during my abbreviated college experience I was working 30 to 40 hours a week and had no time for plays. Over the years that followed I often thought that someday I would get involved in community theater. Alas, my career took priority. Nowadays I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge.

Of all my high school memories, drama experiences are among the most treasured. The closest I ever came to participating in a school musical was helping paint sets but when it came to plays, you could count me in.

At my now defunct alma mater six decades ago plays were presented each year by the junior and senior classes. As juniors, we presented “The Thread That Runs So True.” This was a three-act comedy based on the experiences of the author, Jesse Stuart, as a young teacher in a one-room Appalachian country school. Unlike the slapstick “school house” plays, this gentle comedy included a bit of romance (G-rated, of course,) music and lessons about life.

It was here I learned about the importance of good casting. I desperately wanted the male lead but after tryouts Mrs. Riskedahl, our drama coach, took me aside and explained that she had an even better role for me. She cast me as the big, dumb school bully. Initially, I was upset with her decision but I ended up loving the role! (I suspect this was early-career typecasting.)

It was here that I learned not to do stupid things with my father’s car. Dad had to drive a truck to Waterloo to pick up a part for his employer and Mom and the little sisters rode along. They spent the night with my aunt at Cedar Falls and, with my brothers staying with cousins, I was left home alone with the family’s ’57 Ford.

Luckily, play practice was scheduled for the next night so I had a perfectly legitimate reason to drive the car 11 miles to the high school. I had discovered a few weeks earlier that if you were really quick about it you could shift this car’s manual transmission without using the clutch.

En route to the high school that evening, I picked up two good friends to give them a lift to play practice. These friends happened to be females and, I learned, the presence of females can make a 16-year-old boy do foolish things.

I was showing off my ability to shift without using the clutch, something I thought would amaze and impress my passengers. Suddenly, when I depressed the clutch it would not spring back to its normal position and the car was stuck in low gear.

We drove — very slowly, of course — to the high school parking lot where I parked the car and proceeded to worry. Mrs. Riskedahl drove me home that night and I had several long, dark, lonely hours to figure out how and what I was going to tell Dad in the morning.

Early in the day I telephoned my parents at Aunt Marie’s home. Dad took the news surprisingly well and told me to take the car to a repair shop. The clutch was repaired and nothing more was ever said about it. I think Dad understood the power females have over a 16-year-old boy.

Our play went over quite well. My friends Rich and Helen had the male and female leads and gave marvelous performances. The rest of us performed well, too, and the audience responded enthusiastically.

When play time came around during our senior year, Mrs. Riskedahl allowed us to vote on two plays — “The Mouse That Roared” and “Our Town.” I dearly wanted to do “Our Town” but “The Mouse” prevailed and we had another great time presenting that comedy.

By now I had my own car and it had an automatic transmission so rehearsals for our senior class play were not as eventful as those of the previous year. Unfortunately, I continued to act foolishly in the presence of females.

Playwright Thornton Wilder, who wrote “Our Town,” understood. “Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools,” he wrote, “and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.”

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2025 by Huisman Communications.