A Lantern Lit Evening
Pegeen Fitzgerald, Age 15
The Odd Fellows Hall in Minden, Nebraska, did not look like itself on the night of May 6, 1920. Crepe paper streamers in cerise, blue, and white hung from the lights. Japanese lanterns cast a rosy glow over ninety guests seated at long tables set with candles, pink roses, and daffodils. At the center of the room stood a rustic bridge, festooned with evergreens and hung with lanterns, while the Axtell Orchestra played from one corner.
Ninth and tenth graders served a four-course dinner — fricasseed chicken, pineapple salad, grape sherbet, angel food cake — to the assembled Junior and Senior class members and guests. The program that followed was built around a series of theatrical toasts called “The Passing Show of 1920,” with fifteen-year-old Margaret Worrall (Pegeen Fitzgerald), President of the Junior Class, serving as toastmistress.
The Juniors had planned to perform a Japanese-themed play, but one of the students fell ill and the performance was canceled. The closing piece, however, went forward as scheduled: Margaret recited an original poem, one clearly written to close out the night’s entertainment. The Minden Courier printed it in its entirety the following week:
The play is done; the curtain drops
Slow falling to the prompter’s bell,
The actors get a moment’s stop
To bid it all a fond farewell.
‘Tis an irksome task in word and deed,
This closing of our play.
And unmasking shows hearts quite sad
As well as hearts quite gay.
A moment more ‘ere evening ends
Let’s close it with a parting rhyme,
And pledge a hand to Senior friends
As fits this merry festival time,
In life’s broad scene we too have parts
Which fate ‘ere long will bid us play,
Good night! With honest gentle heart
A kindly greet go alway.
The paper noted the guests lingered late into the evening, certain it was “an occasion to be long remembered by all present.” They had no way of knowing what was coming. Margaret would spend decades filling homes with just her voice. Radio listeners would come to know her as Pegeen.
This was fun, and yes, I enjoyed it :)