OPINION: Potpourri: Good times at Old Abilene Opera House

Jul. 27—I truly believe that people in the 1970s were a whole lot easier to entertain.

Summer nights in Abilene were spent at the Plaza Theatre, the Trails End Drive In, the ballpark, climbing on the playground equipment in Eisenhower Park, hanging out at the pool or even attending melodramas at Old Abilene Town.

What's that? Melodramas you say?

Although you don't see them very often anymore, the melodramas I'm referring to usually have an evil, corrupt villain sporting a handlebar mustache which he twirls, clad in a black cape and top hat; a fair young maiden or heroine — beautiful, innocent, kind, courageous and needing to be saved; and a hero — moral, handsome, manly and the one who will save the heroine and vanquish the villain.

Old movies (and Dudley Do-Right cartoons) often show the heroine tied to a railroad track, waiting for the hero to arrive on his white horse and save her.

So, where is the perfect place to watch a melodrama? Naturally, in a rustic theatre.

In 1969, a Kansas Pacific Railroad Station built in 1870 in Chapman, was moved to Old Abilene Town, according to the playbill of a 1974 melodrama pasted into one of my scrapbooks. The building was placed on a slab east of the Merchant Hotel, converted into a nostalgic theatre and dubbed the Old Abilene Opera House.

The converted train depot had a stage, a couple dressing rooms, hard wooden seats for the audience to sit on and fans set up wherever there was an electric outlet in a valiant attempt to create some air flow. The Old Abilene Opera House was not air conditioned, but nobody cared (well, some probably did, but either they left or kept quiet).

The first play I saw at the Opera House was an original music comedy presented by the Sunflower Summer Stock Theatre hailing from Marymount College in Salina (which closed in June 1989), according to an undated Salina Journal article from that previously mentioned scrapbook. Sunflower Summer Stock actors performed in both Abilene and Salina that summer. When the play was shown in Abilene it was called "Buckeye Bill," and when it played in Salina it was called "Santa Fe Sam," (referring to the predominant street in each city at the time).

Written by Marymount graduate Joe Bachefor with music by Mrs. Robert (Charlotte) Dahl of Abilene, the play was based on actual events in Wild Bill Hickok's life while serving as Abilene's marshal.

The melodrama was one of six shows scheduled to alternate between cities that summer.

Another play I remember very well was performed in July 1974 at the Opera House. Called "Blazing Guns at Roaring Gulch" or "The Perfumed Badge," the melodrama was presented by the Abilene Community Theatre which had been established in the intervening years.

With aspirations to be the Second Lady of the American Theatre (Helen Hayes already had the title of First Lady), I was anxious to try out for a part. Because I was too much of a chicken to go alone, I persuaded my friend Cindy — who had no desire to be in a play— to go with me for moral support. Naturally, she got a part — chosen while sitting in the seats without auditioning; I got bupkis.

However, Cindy didn't want to be in the play if I wasn't going to be there (moral support goes both ways) so the director, Doris Mulanax, let me be in charge of props. That didn't mean much because the Abilene Community Theatre adults already had most of the big stuff covered. However, the setting of the melodrama was in a hotel lobby so I needed to find as many skeleton keys as I could. That turned out to be easy because my grandma was born in 1900 and had lived in old houses all her life.

Anyhow, participating in that play was one of the most enjoyable events of my life. And as I went through Abilene High School I ended up being cast in a number of productions and learned a lot of information about theatre in general.

As the years passed, life happened and the old depot was something I never thought about. But when I moved back to Abilene with my own family years later, I was saddened to see the building's deterioration and the overall dilapidated condition of Old Abilene Town.

However, as we know, through the work of dozens of dedicated volunteers over the past 20 years, Old Abilene Town has risen like a Phoenix from the ashes. Sadly, the restoration efforts came too late for the depot theatre, which collapsed a number of years ago.

It may not have been the most glamorous place, but it gave me plenty of memories for a lifetime.