The Magic Telescope

In preparation for a podcast interview on Laura Ingalls Wilder, I consulted my first diary to double-check the date of my first visit to Rocky Ridge Farm.  It was in May 1965, and I was eleven.  As an afterthought, I decided to see what I was up to sixty years ago on this date.  Most of my entries were unenlightening, like this one:  “Went to school.  Played ball.”  But on October 29, 1965, my entry was somewhat more interesting:  “We went to school.  Sixth grade had play.  I was speaker.”

            What my diary left unsaid:  I was one of three featured narrators in this sixth- grade play—a pageant, really—for the entire student body at Hickory Hills Elementary in Springfield, Missouri.    Two boys and I sat on the side of the stage, and introduced a pivotal moment from American history, starting with Christopher Columbus.   Then a group of sixth graders would sing a relevant song, deliver a choral reading, or strike a historical pose. Afterwards, the boys and I would narrate the next introduction to the next scene. 

Landing A Starring Role

            The boys and I didn’t audition for our narrator roles.  Instead, Mrs. Gifford, my sixth-grade teacher, asked a few of us to read aloud in front of the class.  We had no idea why.  Only later, the boys and I learned we’d landed starring roles.  I remember Mrs. Gifford said I’d been chosen because I read well and my voice carried.  

            None of these details appear in my diary. I didn’t even record when I’d landed the role as girl narrator, or how that made me feel.  My diary refers only to two rehearsals, just days before our performance, and is completely silent about my feelings before and after the play.  Was I nervous up there on stage?  Did the play come off without a hitch?  Was I relieved when it was over?  Were we a success?   My eleven-year-old self wasn’t especially introspective. 

            Still, that diary entry triggered one hazy memory after another.  One of the boys had an unusual name starting with a T.  Terrill or Terrell?  But was that his first or last name?  I could see him clearly in my mind’s eye.  Bigger than the other sixth graders, slightly overweight, a little awkward.  As for the other boy?  Maybe he was in Mr. Sawyer’s sixth grade class—because I remembered nothing about him, except that onstage, I sat between him and Terrill/Terrell.

            That’s when I remembered Mom had kept a “School Days” scrapbook for me.  Maybe, just maybe it included a memento from my sixth-grade play.  Maybe, just maybe it would reveal the names of the boys who’d shared the spotlight with me.

The School Days Scrapbook

The scrapbook was in my basement tucked inside a packing box labeled “Pam’s Kid Stuff.”  Carefully, I opened the scrapbook to “Sixth Grade,” and took out the contents inside a slightly oversized envelope.  There were birthday cards, Christmas cards, my sixth-grade report card, a penciled invitation to Janet Bowman’s birthday party, the program from my spring piano recital, and three sheets of notebook paper, neatly folded in half with my name written in cursive on the outside page. 

I unfolded the papers, and written across the top on the first page were the words, “The Magic Telescope.”  It was the script for the sixth-grade play, and my lines were penned in red ink.  Sixty years ago, Mom had slipped it into this envelope and saved it for my future self.  Who could have guessed I would rediscover it on precisely this date? 

The Script

As I remembered, the play opened with Christopher Columbus peering through his telescope, thinking he’d discovered India—that was one of my lines.  The script filled five pages, written in flawless cursive on both sides of the paper, and included segments on “Spanish Explorers,” “Indian Children,” “Pilgrims,” “The Revolution,” “The Pioneers,” “The Campfire,” “Square Dance,” and finally “Lincoln.”  I had the play’s last line:  “Abraham Lincoln was the president and he was determined to keep America free and strong.”  The boys who shared the stage with me were Robert and Terrell.

Finding the script today feels like a gift—a gift from Mom, a gift from the past.  So is my old diary.   It’s a gift from my sixth-grade self, who couldn’t have imagined the future we live in now, even with a magic telescope.  

Now parents record their children’s sixth-grade plays and recitals on their cell phones.  They document every extracurricular activity, every achievement electronically.   But in another sixty years, will their children have access to what will then be outdated technology?  It seems doubtful.  

So I’m especially grateful for these tangible, handwritten missives from the past.  They are fragile, fragmentary, imperfect, and yet they reveal so much about who we were and sometimes, who we have become.