Not Around Gordie

AKA "In Our Green Youth"

 

 

by George Savage Jr.

  

 

"It's different for other people, but we in our green youth have to settle eternal questions first of all."

 

-The Brothers Karamazov

 

    The copy I'm typing was dittoed with blue ink.  We've come a long way from turning a handle and cranking out pages.  I'm not changing much or trying to make it politically correct. 1961 was the beginning of the sixties and the play shows how it was then and reflects the beginnings of many of the trends the country has gone in for since then.

 

 

 

CAST:

GORDIE HUMMER (GORD)

TOM SANCHEZ (SANCH)

ROY HUMMER

FLOYD HUMMER

PANDORA PRIOR

GEORGE ISHIHARA

MARILY HUMMER (MAR'LY)

LOIS RYDELL

KENNETH CAESAR*

WILLIAM CAESAR* (nonspeaking)

HENRY CAESAR* (nonspeaking)

 

*  These three characters are only briefly in one scene and can easily be cut.

 

 

TIME:

July, 1961.

 

 

PLACE:

An old established gas station in Santa Monica, California.

 

 

ACTION:

Act I    Friday, Early Evening ……….……..1

 

Act II   Saturday

Scene 1: Morning …………………...….….45

Scene 2: Early Evening …………..........….67

Scene 3: Late the same Evening …….…....82

 

Act III  Sunday, Morning ………….....…..87

 

 

SET:

There is a waiting room DL and an entrance to the waiting room DLC.  There is a whitewashed wall of a building UC.  A door ULC leads into the garage.  A door URC leads to the Men's Room.  UR is a small corner of the front office.  The lower portion of a flagpole is visible DR.  UC stands an inverted oil drum used for a trash barrel, a shelf with orange rags on it, and a trough of water.

 

The garage wall the waiting room still reflect the Presidential election of 1960.  There are an equal number of bumper sticker for each side: No Kennedy, Lawford, Sinatra, Nix on Nixon, Viva Kennedy, Nation Needs Nixon, A time for Greatness, A Man for a Man's Job.  New Frontier, Experience.

 

 

 

BACKGROUND

 

    I completed high school at University High near Santa Monica and later moved to Ocean Park, south of Santa Monica, with my wife. I drove her to work in an old Plymouth Cranbrook which continually needed repairs.  I took it to a Santa Monica gas station and hung out while they worked on my car.

    At the time I was writing with my father who taught playwrighting at U.C.L.A. Theatre Arts.  He had started a Sunday night program of readings of original plays and GORDIE was given about a dozen readings by good student actors and some professional actors.

    In the mid-sixties we had a non-equity production with student actors at The Santa Monica Playhouse and a community theatre production in Alaska.  In 1975 I produced the play in California Gold Rush Country.

    The play was written at the time it happened. President John Kennedy was alive. There was a new amusement park, Pacific Ocean Park, built partly over the water.  No one could find it and it eventually went bankrupt. The Santa Monica Freeway hadn't been completed.  When the Santa Monica Freeway reached Santa Monica the station I had used, being in it's path, was demolished too.

 

George Savage Jr.

Colfax, California

June  1996

 

 

 

For more information contact :  Jorj@zipcon.net