Autobiography of a Maquoketa Boy-2.pdf - Microelectronics ...

Autobiography of a Maquoketa Boy
Richard B. Wells
The kids who built the sets and made the costumes and did the makeup work were just amazing. They
certainly rose to meet Mr. Railsbach’s exacting standards. I mean, there just wasn’t anything amateur
about any of it. For the first full dress rehearsal, the girls who put the makeup on me outfitted me with a
long white beard, sprayed stuff in my hair that turned it snowy white, and put makeup on my face that
made me really look like I was about two hundred years old. Looking in the mirror, I couldn’t recognize
me, so I knew nobody in the audience was going to recognize me either. I had a perfect disguise, and that
made me a lot less nervous about the looming prospect of standing up there in front of the whole town. I
was jittery enough about that as it was, and when the play went on I tried very hard to ignore all those
people sitting out there in the dark and just focused on what I was doing.
One thing nearly did go wrong, though. Larry, the Russian Spy, has an attack of conscience during the
play and becomes a monk. During my first appearance, he shows up walking on his knees behind me and
lifting this enormous cape I was wearing. The cape was sprinkled with thousands and thousands of these
tiny little paper glitter things. At one point where I’m talking to the General – who is astonished to see the
Spy now serving as one of my monks – I’m telling him about what a good monk Larry is. I even hint that
I think he could be the next Archbishop. At my big line, “Maybe, when I am gone . . .” Larry was
supposed to cry out, “Oh, no!” and kiss that cape. He did, and he got about a hundred of those little glitter
things in his mouth. Through the rest of the scene I could hear him quietly going, “ptui, ptui” as he tried
to spit them out. It was so funny the General and I had all we could do to keep from laughing out loud,
but somehow we managed it and got through the scene.
Backstage right after the last act and before curtain call, ‘Juliet’ came rushing up to me all happy and
smiling and telling me how wonderfully I’d done. She gave me a giant hug and a great big kiss on the
cheek that made me blush cherry-red. I felt thrilled right down to my toes.
This acting stuff was alright. Definitely.
Cadets Wells (left) and Tim Schroeder (right) at
a monument near Kirtland AFB (1969)
For CAP encampment in the summer of ’69 the
Iowa wing went to Kirtland Air Force Base near
Albuquerque, New Mexico. KAFB was home to the
377th Air Base Wing as well as to the 150th Fighter
Wing of the New Mexico Air National Guard. As
such, it was an all around cooler place than Chanute
had been and New Mexico was definitely a cooler
place to visit than Illinois. It was my first trip out
west and I loved every minute of it.
The training program they had for us at KAFB
was better organized and more comprehensive than
the previous year’s program at Chanute had been. We
all had classes in The United States Air Force, Civil
Air Patrol and the United States Air Force, Moral
Leadership Lectures, Small Arms Firing, and a
Leadership Laboratory. I also signed up for two elective courses, the B-52 Laboratory and Weather
Squadron. In addition, we had numerous physical activities, marching, and parade to keep us busy.
They housed us guys in a couple of two-story barracks on the base. One very nice addition to the
encampment that summer was a squadron of female CAP cadets. Unfortunately, they were housed in a
third nearby barracks and cadet sentries were posted at night to see to it the girls’ barracks did not find a
way to go co-ed after dark. Similar sentries were posted outside the boys’ barracks for pretty much the
same reason. Naturally, this was not the reason given for our having to pull sentry duty. In fact, no reason
was ever actually given to any of us who weren’t cadet officers. But I figured the odds were heavily
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