|
Philip Spiess
Richard and Gail: The Walnut Hills cheer I remember endearingly, so much so that I adapted it when teaching Middle School, is: "We fight hard, we fight well; when we fight we fight like Helen in the high chair! Who put her in? Pa! Ma! Sis Boom-bah! Walnut Hills, Walnut Hills, Rah-rah-rah!". (And here's one I made up for my Middle Schoolers: "How do you like your tater salad? How do you like your slaw? How do you like your oysters? Raw, raw, raw!")
Barbara: As a long-standing member of Stage Crew, I knew that auditorium intimately, in the attic, in the projection (spotlight) booth, back stage (including the trap door midstage, the props closet and the dressing rooms, as well as the photographs in the backstage hallways of dramatic productions dating from Miss Lotze's reign in the 1930s, my mother's period at WHHS), the electrical board (reputed to be the largest in Ohio, with the possible exception of Taft Auditorium), the batten rail with its stage weights (no sandbags here!), under the stage (including the orchestra pit, which was usually covered), and in the Salt Mines (the area so-called under the auditorium itself). Friday nights were the nights we worked alonside the Scenery Painters (largely girls) till 9 p.m., getting ready for shows; we'd send out to the local Frisch's for Big Boys, onion rings, and root beer for supper. The one great fear I had was being sent above that plaster ceiling to change the light bulbs in those five very big central ceiling lights. Mind you, it was a plaster ceiling -- if you stepped on it (or fell on it) you'd go through and be precipitated down onto the sharp backs of those wooden theater seats which were there in our day (neither picture shows them now). Suspended just above that plaster ceiling in the auditorium attic was a series of catwalks, allowing one to move around to do various tasks, such as changing the light bulbs in the ceiling lights or cleaning the glass through which they illuminated the room below. If you look closely (particularly at picture 2), you will see that there were openwork metal grills surrounding the actual lights themselves; these were part of the auditorium's ventilation system.
Therefore -- when you were sent to change a light bulb in one of those central lights, you had to (a) go up into the attic at a point (as I recall) probably inside the first room of the projection booth; (b) climb onto the first catwalk (which kind of swayed), and make your way, by the network of catwalks, to the light in question; (c) said light being located inside a metal drum in the middle of the surround of open metal grillwork (mentioned above), you had to reach from the catwalk over the open grillwork (which, being open, you therefore had a clear view all the way down to the floor of the auditorium, reminding you how far you would fall if you misstepped) to open a door in the metal drum; (d) then (our arms not being long enough) you had to step onto the open metalwork and crouch there while you changed the bulb, hoping like hell that the screws holding the grillwork in place were still sound and screwed in tightly; (e) if the bulb to be changed was on the far side of the drum (I think there were three or four bulbs inside those lights), you actually had to crawl inside the drum and stand on the thick glass of the light (again, hoping it would hold) in order to change the bulb. (I'm perspiring here just writing this after more than 50 years, remembering the experience!). You will understand why, as we Stage Crew guys grew older, we sent the younger (and smaller) guys up to change the bulbs.
|
