Blind Gymnast

     “I thought, ‘just this once. . .’”  That refrain we would hear many times in the next 45 minutes.

     It was one of the most memorable assembly school programs going back 40 years.  We experienced a variety of programs in our small country school.  For one, the highway patrol would present some kind of program on driving safely at least once a year.  Some were gruesome films of car wrecks. 

      Towards the end of my teaching career, Burlington Northern presented a program encouraging students to consider railroads when choosing a career.  The presenters showed all the jobs Burlington Northern was trying to fill.  They also included a section on safety at railroad crossings. 

      Kansas Highway Patrol sent us Trooper Nathan (I think that was his name) every year for a highway safety program.  From him I learned to follow the vehicle in front of me by two seconds.  It was a much easier way to figure a safe following distance than the old way that required the driver to figure car lengths and coordinate that figure with speed. So many car lengths for every ten miles an hour.

    Many of the programs were musical.  I remember when I was a student a couple who sang show songs.  The only song I can remember them doing is “Anything you can do, I ca do better.”

     Another program I remember was a magician who doubled as a clown.  He made a stream of fifty-cent pieces flow out of Jerry Tanner’s nose.  Poor Jerry about pulled his nose off trying to get a coin out of his nose when he returned to his seat.  The same guy made a stream of water go in one ear and out the other of a volunteer participant.  At least so it appeared.  Those on the fringe of the audience could see the water coming from a tube behind the magician’s right ear.

      The local REA boys, our electric power source, put on an impressive safety program one March, about kite-flying time.  They set up a miniature substation on the gym floor.  They fried hot dogs representing a cat or other animal that touched the hot line while crawling around on the pole.  They set kite lines on fire and made pinwheels and sparks that were quite impressive.  They demonstrated all the safety equipment, insulated tools, special gloves, that they used when working on power lines.

     Lester Andersen, a friend from church, was one of the presenters.  Once he took us on a private tour of the local substation after we had dined with him and Georgia after church one Sunday.  He made us promise not to jump up and try to touch any wires before we entered the yard.  He said he’d never speak to us again if we did.  We didn’t.

      A musical assembly program at school also had a church connection.  The man’s name was Pruth McFarlane.  I never saw him out of his wheelchair.  He sang for the assembled school.  The only song I remember was the brown bear one.  “Ah me, ah me, All he said was ‘Woof!’” was the refrain.

      While performing at the local schools, Mr. McFarlane stayed at the Bank Hotel.  Leo Snyder, owner and manager of the Bank Hotel, brought Mr. McFarlane to church with him.  He sang an anthem for the church service.  We met him up close and personal after church service.

        Another safety assembly brought us a bow-and-arrow expert.  I remember him shooting a blunt arrow with no tip across the gym and through the bottom of a cast iron skillet.  He might have been the one who fired a wax slug bullet through a skillet, too, or I may have two shows confused.  Both displays were impressive.  I have often thought since then that guy must spend a fortune on cast iron skillets.   

     There were quite a few science programs brought to us through the assembly program, especially after the 1957 Sputnik launch by the Russians.  A man brought a bottle of liquid oxygen (or was it nitrogen?).  He instantly froze a wiener by dipping it in a container of the stuff.  He poured some down the barrel of a toy muzzle-loader and shot a cork quite a ways.  He about ran the rods out of a toy steam engine by fueling it with the stuff.

      A blind man brought his leader dog and showed us how well he got along with the dog’s help.  During his demonstration, he slipped on a stairway going down to the gym floor.  We all gasped.  He recovered and told us he slipped intentionally to show us how the dog would react, but I often wondered if that was the truth.

      Our blind gymnast came much later and to Kansas where I was a teaching.  He brought quite a bit of equipment because we had no gymnastics program.  He had uneven and parallel bars and a horse.  His program was a safety program, too.  When he wasn’t on an apparatus, he was talking.

    He told us how as a young kid, six or seven, people told him not to use a knife to carve towards himself.  He would put his eye out.  But he thought he could get by just this once.  He demonstrated with imaginary stick and knife pulling the blade towards him, the blade slipping and hitting him in the eye.  He followed up by saying, “I thought just this once. . . .  Isn’t it funny how so many people in prison thought the same thing?”

      He told how he went along for three or four years with one eye.  One day he was throwing a stick up in the air and catching it.  Yes, folks had told him not to do that.  He could put his eye out, but he thought, “Just this once. . . . “  as he demonstrated tossing the stick in the air and missing it as it hit him in his good eye.  “Isn’t it funny how many people in prisons thought the same thing?” he repeated.

      Between anecdotes, he demonstrated his skill as a gymnast.  He pointed out that though handicapped, he still could still use his ability for something good.  He hoped we would not follow in his footsteps, but would listen to and develop good safety habits.

      Unfortunately, his career as an entertaining gymnast was coming to an end.  His left shoulder was troubling him, as evidenced when he had to make two or three efforts to maintain a handstand on the parallel bars.  He would be unable to perform much longer.

    I’m not sure what became of the guy.  Like most of the programs, the presenters entered our lives for a day and then they were gone, never to be heard of again. 

      There was one exception to that.  A big guy put on a program for us (I can’t remember what he did).  He was probably an ex-football player, he was that big and muscular.  He took a volunteer from the audience, put her one his shoulders and did some kind of Russian (maybe) dance where he was squatting and kicking his legs out one at a time with the girl on his shoulders.  When the program was over, the school superintendent announced that he thought the guy should be on television.  We all cheered and encouraged the man to try to get on tv.

      Some months later, when we had almost forgotten the whole thing, the school got a letter from the performer telling us he would be appearing on The Danny Thomas Show. The letter thanked us for our encouragement and gave the date of the show in which he was appearing.  We tuned in and sure enough, there he was with Danny’s television Daughter (Angela Cartwright, maybe?) on his shoulders doing his Russian dance.  We were thrilled to see someone we knew on TV, and to think we might have had some small part in his success by encouraging him.