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| B: Garry, Clyde F: Leon, Jeri-Lynn |
In the summer of 1975 three
Portrait Players came back later in the summer to go to St. Louis and represent
Canadian Bible College at LIFE ’75. It was a unique opportunity. All Alliance
colleges had historically sent music groups and we knew we would be different.
I don’t believe we ever got onto the main stage like the music groups did, but
each college was given their own room to “entertain” after the evening service.
We packed the room out every time. Leon Throness, Garry Tollefson and Jeri-Lynn
Hougstol teamed up to do all our short skits and rocked the place with Rinse
the Blood of My Toga. Steve Town, CBC student, was at LIFE and filled in on
many of the bit parts. It was good to have him. I felt sorry for Simpson
College. They sent a choir with the boys in suits and the girls in formals.
Good singers, but hey just did not relate.
LIFE ’75 was in a very large hotel
in St. Louis. The contract had been signed 2-3 years earlier and they wanted
more money after pricing information had been published. The C&MA Youth
Director held them to the contract. The hotel got even by serving the worst
food possible. Every meal was Swanson’s frozen TV dinners served along with
some strange number three-dye thing in a plastic container that was called a
drink. It was tolerable it you did not suck into the bottom third of the
container. That tasted like pure plastic. Delegates mocked the company’s
promotional tag line “Swanson’s makes it good.” By repeatedly chanting
“Swanson’s makes it yuck.” It could not be stopped.
On the second day of the
conference hotel management mentioned to conference leaders that while their
pop machines were being empties several times a day, there were no empty pop
cans anywhere. I think it was Steve Town who told the leaders that the cans
were going to the rooms on the top floor with plans to dump them out the
windows the last night all at the same time. I don’t know if this little stunt
was the delegates getting even with the hotel, but it did sound like fun. However,
the possible damage to people and property could be high and cleanup would be a
challenge. Then there was also the possibility of legal action. Some personnel
from college tour groups were asked to help empty those rooms of pop cans.
Hotel personnel each took a few people with them and they checked every room
dragging out huge bags of pop cans from every room. I ran the service elevator
from top to bottom filling that large elevator to the ceiling on every trip.
There were so many cans they had to have a crew in the basement to unload the elevator
so I could get back to the top to reload as fast as possible. I made dozens of
trips. I was counting trips for a while until I lost count. Typically about four rooms worth of
cans filled the elevator.
The workers were laughing because
the number of cans was so enormous it was hard to believe they could collect
that much in one day. On the other hand, there were over 4000 delegates and
kids were passing it on to delegates on the top floor and kids on the top floor
were regularly empting the recycle containers. You had to hand it to the group
that organized the plan. It was well organized.
When the pop can clean out deed
was done we all wished we could see the faces of the kids when they returned to
their rooms and found all the cans gone, our team went to my room and laughed,
and ate snacks until the wee hours of the morning. No one was concerned about
making it to breakfast for “Swanson’s TV scrambled eggs and soggy hash browns.
At our first meeting of the
conference, everyone was warned about walking in the park across the street
from the hotel. It was not safe. That was the last trip to the center of the
USA. No more St. Louis.
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