by Rocky Macy
Road Warrior
It’s Thursday, April 29th, and several family members and I are starting out on a two-day road trip to Goldsboro, North Carolina, where we will see the world premier of a two-act historical drama play entitled “Crimes in Desolation.” The play is being performed by the Spotlight Theatre Group of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base Friday and Saturday evenings. As the person who wrote this play, I am most anxious to see characters that I created on paper come to life on the stage.
This play takes place in a fictional Oklahoma panhandle town that is struggling through dust storms and the Great Depression. It is the fall of 1932 with most of the action occurring just a few days before Halloween and the presidential election of 1932.
The following “back story” sets the opening scene and introduces some of the main characters.
Crimes in Desolation
Back Story:
Times were already tough in the Oklahoma panhandle community of Willoughby Station in 1932, but they became much more desperate when Ralph Willoughby, the president of the Willoughby Station Bank and Trust, announced that the town's little bank had gone bust - another victim of the Great Depression. Many local people lost their life savings when the bank shut down, and they were angry - so angry, in fact, that the town council bowed to community pressure and officially changed the name of their hard luck community to “Desolation.”
Dalton Willoughby, the banker's estranged, ne'er-do-well son, returned to town in October of 1932 after years of living on the road. Dalton, an itinerant saxophone player and chronic drunk, was eager to show off his pretty fiancee, Miss Calpurnia, to his hometown and introduce her to his family. They were accompanied into town by a carload of Calpurnia's less-than-stellar relatives. Within a week, Calpurnia had managed to end her engagement to Dalton and become engaged to his father, the former bank president.
There was a party at the Willoughby home on Friday evening, October 28th, 1932, to celebrate the engagement of Ralph and Calpurnia. Before the evening was over, Ralph had been murdered, a large amount of money that possibly belonged to the citizens of Desolation had been stolen from the Willoughby home, an automobile had been vandalized, and much of the town had burned to the ground in an arson fire. It was a small town crime spree of epic proportions!
As the play opens, Sheriff Tom Rogers has arrested a young con-artist by the name of Trent Clovis for the murder of Ralph Willoughby, Miss Roberta Willoughby, Ralph's spinster sister, is hopping mad about the money stolen from her home, and Ralph's youngest son, Jerry, has just returned to Desolation from a boarding school in Kansas City. Jerry Willoughby has aspirations of becoming a private detective, and he is soon involved in trying to solve the crimes that have beset his family and hometown.
This is a very big moment in my life, and I am grateful to the acting troupe at Seymour Johnson AFB for accepting the challenge of producing an unpublished work. Those brave thespians are hitting the boards without any prior productions of this material to guide their efforts. You guys are superstars in my book, and I salute you one and all!
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