When I was in the eighth grade, the junior high music classes put on the comic operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore.” Probably because Mom taught voice and timid Miss Voss figured she’d have to make me practice, I was chosen for a lead role “Sir Joseph Porter.”
The late Paul Strandberg was the Captain of the ship, docked at the Central High School stage.
I got to marry Hebe, played by Kathy Schultz, a cute ninth grader who was John Conrad’s girlfriend. That was nice. She was certainly above my station, as a lowly eighth grader. But for now I was a momentary rock star in, for me, an unforgettable moment.
Though the performance went off without a hitch, the Park Region Echo newspaper took no notice.
It’s been 60 years, and I have only vaguely heard mention of the operetta since.
The pandemic and Apple Music changed all that today.
Must have been a clue in the Saturday crossword that made me think of the H.M.S Pinafore. And with all the time in the world on my hands, I checked out a synopsis of the operetta in Wikipedia, as a way of relieving boredom. I was stunned by all the irony and the class warfare themes and messages in the script that had gone completely over my junior high head. Then I searched Apple Music for “he polished up the handle of the big front door” a chorus that still came to my mind from the solo mom had pounded into it. Don’t remember if my voice had even changed yet. Sure enough, up popped the venerable 1875 operetta with all the songs and tunes still familiar in my addled 72-year old grey matter.
There we were, Miss Voss pounding out the piano part, sailors and such in make-shift striped tee shirt costumes, and me in the swashbuckling British Navy First Lord outfit, with all its medals, fake sword and bright white pants. . . with no zipper.
