THE NOVEL

Ned Aitchison did something disgraceful when he was in high school and for that something the school expelled him. That was the rumor Tom Rhoads had heard about his grandfather. When pressed, relatives whispered he produced some kind of student play, one the school branded “a risqué girly show.”

I spent several years researching—poring through family records, period newspapers, museum archives, school records—everything I could get my hands on to prove or refute that rumor. In the end, I found no smoking gun, but plenty of smoke.   
- Tom Rhoads

The full truth may never be known, but Tom’s research unearthed enough evidence to write a novel based on the rumor, and to draw a conclusion: it was likely true. The novel begins on a hot August afternoon in 1976, when the venerable Judge Aitchison settles down in his favorite parlor chair, sips a libation, and mentally revisits what happened back in 1915. His high school had expected a serious drama. What it got was a burlesque show. It featured not only Ned’s fellow students performing provocative dances, racy songs, and bawdy jokes, but also a professional burlesque chorus line, a three-hundred-pound hootchie-cootchie dancer, a fire-breathing bull, an “almost” naked lady, a male-female tag team boxing exhibition, and costumes no respectable person in Ned’s hometown would have worn to an orgy.

Tom Rhoads’ retelling of this incident is a farcical romp across Kansas in the early Twentieth Century following the stylistic trail of humorists such as Jean Shepard, Patrick Dennis, Thurber, Wodehouse, Runyon, Twain, and their kin. It brings chuckles through well-developed characters—their strengths and weaknesses, their physical and mental blessings (or lack thereof), and a reader’s understanding of how these characters will react and interact in challenging situations. It is also good history. Tom’s research infuses all the atmospheric references and details surrounding the expulsion story to give a realistic sense of Ned’s time, his hometown, his Kansas. The novel lets a reader live in Ned’s world for a while. And enjoy the visit.