THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
The original Columbus Drama Club of 1914. Ned, top right corner, served as its first president. There is no explanation for why he is holding a pistol, but also none for why another student is wearing a mop.. .
Ned Aitchison was a senior at Cherokee County High School in Columbus, Kansas, when he produced the play that got him expelled, but how he became a senior is a bit of a mystery. According to what records exist, he seems to have gone from his sophomore to senior year without having been a junior. We do know he was instrumental in forming the school’s first Drama Club in 1914 (his sophomore year) when he served as its inaugural president. Under his management it produced not only Bargain Day at Bloomstein’s as described in the novel, but also, according to Ned, “staged a moving picture” of some fashion—now long vanished. There was no review of the film in the Columbus Daily Advocate, but the paper did report Bloomstein’s played to an enthusiastic, standing-room-only audience and seems to have been a hit.
The old McGhie Theater in Columbus where Ned put on his first show, Bargain Day at Bloomstein's, to a standing room only audience in 1914 The building still stands today, but only just. .
The entire student body of Cherokee County High School. Ned is in this picture somewhere.
Columbus’ newspapers, family letters, Ned’s scribbles, public records and other extant sources fall silent on his last theatrical effort in 1915 (his senior year). The school burned down in 1916 and with it went most of its records. Consequently, today there is no way to verify what he actually produced; we only have the echo of hushed family rumors that persist after all these years. Ned himself never spoke of it, except perhaps once: On his golden wedding day the family held a festive celebration for him and his wife at Wilder’s Steakhouse in downtown Joplin, Missouri. Before entering the restaurant, he paused to point to a dilapidated building across the street and told his namesake grandson, the author’s cousin Ned, that he once staged a high school show there back when it was the old Farmer’s Market. He said this rather proudly, as though the sight of the decaying structure had kindled some warm reflections within him and the play had been a singular event, a treasured personal achievement. Then he skipped to other topics without any further embellishments. Tom Rhoads is quick to stress:
None of this is of any matter today; the loss of records and reflections is of no consequence now that I have diligently reconstructed all the salient and forgotten moments. And improved upon them.