PAGE 8 OF CV MEMORIES OF WAYNE WOODRUFF

There was not a lot of sophisticated entertainment in Cedar Vale. Most of the things that we did revolved around school and church activities. We were always going to ball games or plays at the school, or district music contests held in the school auditorium or at the school in Sedan, 18 miles to the east, and bitter school rivals. I was always amazed at the school band director, Mr. Beggs being able to play and teach any and all band instruments. Kids like Don Schaeffer and Gary White always won first place awards at the state music festival , Don playing cornet and Gary playing trumpet, if I am not mistaken. I always remember Don being so nervous before a contest, that he would be back-stage throwing-up, but then could come out and play beautifully. He also was a good basketball player and would utilize the vomiting technique to prepare for big games.

One of the school events that I still remember fondly was the production of "The Mikado", which was an all school musical production. This was done during my junior year of high school, and amazingly this little school of maybe 150 students was able to have separate performances with separate casts for each. There were some beautiful voices in that production. Remember Lowell Harp, Nadine Stanhope, Marilyn Holroyd, Janice Sartin among others. The most amazing thing about the "Mikado" was the director, Mrs. Morris. Instead of a band or orchestra, we had Mrs. Morris doing all the accompaniment on the piano, and it sounded just like a full orchestra the way she played.

Driving up and down main street (two blocks)at night was another major form of entertainment and of course cooling off at "the dam" on a hot summer evening. The town night marshal was always sitting in his modal-A pickup at the corner in front of the town hall, keeping an eye on the kids and keeping himself warm with something he kept in a brown bottle. During the winter he would run the engine of the pick-up a little to keep himself warm. One morning one of the kids on his way to school, found the old marshal dead in the pick-up with the engine still running . Carbon monoxide poisoning is sneaky.

Another sad event occurred when I was five or six and still living in the little house next door to the Fosters, across the street from Hays'. Old Charlie Whartenbee lived next door to us on the other side, and every Saturday morning he would round up all the little kids in the neighborhood , load us into the back of his pick-up and take us all up town to the Cedar Vale café, and treat us to pancakes. Great fun. One Saturday morning he did not come out for the weekly excursion. One of the older kids went up onto his porch and looked in the windows. Lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood, with his shotgun nearby and his brains all over the wall was Mr. Whartenbee. That was something that none of us forgot for many years.