Dancing at Radioactive Family Theatre

Sept. 4, 2003

Dear Julie,

The burn pit at the cabin on the Castor River is the butt of jokes among the younger members of DC's family. No one knows what substances might have been incinerated there over the decades of the cabin's existence. So when DC decided the time had come to turn the pit into a theater, nobody said, "That's crazy."

Last week, she drove her pickup to a lumberyard and asked the boys working there if they knew how to build a stage. She told them it was for a summer camp. She drove away with plans and the lumber needed to build an 8-by-12-foot deck.

Gathering at the cabin during the Labor Day weekend has been a tradition ever since I joined DC's family 10 years ago. Her sister's family comes from the western part of the state, her brother, Paul, from Columbia and the rest of us drive out from Cape Girardeau for a few days of swimming, fishing and sleeping in.

The three nieces are all in college now, so attracting them to the same place at the same time is becoming more difficult. Soon enough their lives may take them far away.

DC's father is 80, and her mother just turned 75. If DC and I already are a bit nostalgic about the nieces and our weekends with them, their grandparents and their parents feel it more.

The proposition of building a theater in the middle of the woods wasn't entirely off the wall. The nieces took dance classes for 15 years. They've always performed for us. The youngest, Darci, is a freshman theater major in college.

By the time DC and I got in Saturday afternoon, the rest of the family had cleaned out the burn pit. You could almost see the theater beginning to appear.

Paul is a good carpenter. With his guidance, the 10 of us assembled the stage Sunday morning. By the afternoon the nieces were choreographing the stage's inaugural performance.

The spotlight was a high-voltage work light DC's father put in the branches of a tree above the stage. We lighted tiki torches beside the stage and waited for sundown.

Danica, Devon and Darci are in love with the film "Chicago." They lip-synched and danced to "We Both Reached for the Gun" and "I Can't Do It Alone." Their audience in the lawn chairs laughed and squealed.

They brought our male beagle, Alvie, and their family's female yellow Lab, Tang, to the stage. Alvie had spent the weekend being quite the Romeo, so they got a love song.

DC's father took the stage with a fishing pole to impersonate Cape Girardeau's mayor conducting the municipal band. You had to be there.

At the end, everyone came on stage to dance together to the old rock hit "Summer in the City." I didn't get it either.

But I did think some kind of passage occurred that night. Now that the little girls have almost grown up, we realize that they control at least a part of our destinies in a sense. We might have to learn to swim without them.

The stage has been christened the RAFT because it looks like one. The letters stand for Radioactive Family Theatre.

Paul dubbed this memorable performance "Castor Fest 2003: The Best We Could Do." All the nieces might not make it back for Castor Fest 2004. Then again, maybe their children will perform at Castor Fest 2014.

The RAFT is DC's version of the Field of Dreams. Give them a reason to rehearse, she believes, and they will come.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.