My Life as a Child Star

Very few people are aware of my childhood acting career. Yep, I was a child actress. Not a star of television or movies, but theatre.

I starred in productions such as "Pa Vacuums The Living Room", "Radford and Mary Helen's First Date", "Trup and Cookie Monster Go To Athens", and "Paula and Jennifer Tell Everyone What They Want for Christmas".

Each of these productions was produced, written, and directed by myself or one of my cousins and starred all of us.

Our stage was a 10 foot long solid granite picnic table that sat underneath two huge oak trees in my grandparents' yard. Our audience consisted of a couple of cows and six or seven goats.

Our productions were based on somewhat true events culled from the lives of various family members. In some cases, we just selected a few family members and made up an outlandish stories about them.

We did three performances a day; that gave each one of us a chance to be a different character in the story and interpret the story in our own way.

"Pa Vacuums The Living Room" was a comedy based on a true story. My grandmother was a meticulous housekeeper and my grandfather helped around the house. As my grandfather vacuumed the living room, my grandmother was right behind him telling him how he was doing it all wrong. We thought it was quite comical, so we wrote our own version of it.

"Radford and Mary Helen's First Date" was a fictional romantic comedy. The leading characters were my dad's first cousin and his wife. We had absolutely no idea as to what their first date was like, but I'm sure fairly certain that they did not spend the date telling each other how ugly the other one was and knocking the crap out of each other. (For the record, Radford and Mary Helen are still married, and to my knowledge have never called each other ugly and have never knocked the crap out of each other.)

"Trup and Cookie Monster Go To Athens" was a semi true account of my cousins' aunt, the aforementioned Trup, and my cousins' grandmother's trip to Athens. Cookie Monster (another of my cousin Ann's nicknames and another story for another time) was not the best driver in the world. Trup had described their adventure to my cousins in great detail....and letting them know in no uncertain terms that she had almost been killed 26 times in that trip.

In our version, Cookie Monster is oblivious to driving in the wrong lane, going through stop signs and traffic lights, and constantly chattering about how awful everyone else is driving.

Trup had one line that was repeated 117 times in the play: "Watch out!!! You're going to kill us both!! AAAAAHHHHHH!!" (AAAAAHHHHHH!! was rewritten especially for our play. If our grandmother heard us say what Trup actually said, which was "SSHHH****TTTT!!!!!" she would have yanked out her switch, which would have shut down our play immediately.)

"Paula and Jennifer Tell Everyone What They Want For Christmas" was another semi true story.

For the record, my brothers and I NEVER told my grandparents what we wanted for Christmas. The rule in our house was that under no circumstances do you TELL someone like a grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc. what they WILL get you for Christmas. If you happen to receive a gift from someone, no matter how you felt about it, you were to act like it was the best gift ever and thank the giver.

Paula (my aunt by marriage) and Jennifer (her daughter.....my cousin) were carbon copies of each other. Let's just say I was quite shocked when one Thanksgiving, Paula told Jennifer to run get the Sears catalog so that they could tell (not show....not ask....TELL!) my grandmother what she (my grandmother) was going to get them for Christmas. My grandmother listened, but I can't remember if she actually went and bought any of what she was told to get.

Our little play consisted of Jennifer and Paula telling my grandmother what they wanted her to get them for Christmas from the Sears catalog. I played the part of my grandmother. In my version, my grandmother whipped out her hickory switch and proceeded to chase both of them around trying to give them a good whippin' for being so impudent.

As we got older, one by one we retired from acting. We still had plenty of material to draw from, but the pay was not that great, the cows and goats began expecting more diverse material, and it got harder to answer "NOTHING!!" without laughing whenever my grandmother would holler out "What in the world are y'all doing?".