Driving through a little bitty town in Kentucky, we passed a place billing itself as the Pioneer Playhouse.
Without a lick of research into what actually happens there, my mind started writing a script for a show I imagined I might see at the Pioneer Playhouse and Campground.
Let’s begin with a local couple trying to entertain their neighbors on a warm Friday evening.
Most of the entire town is in attendance, having gotten their ice cream cones or popcorn and settled into their lawn chairs.
Now in order for this to have a chance to work, imagine Virgil and Joyce standing in front of their fellow Bluegrass townfolk, about to present this little skit they wrote the other night after a fine meal of chicken fried steak, pole beans and biscuits.
Virgil and Joyce are not great actors, but this ain’t Hollywood. They speak their lines in a memorized, staccato fashion. Every word is enunciated.
*lights down, spotlight on*
Virgil: Welcome to the Pioneer Playhouse. Tonight, we’re going to do a play called ‘Daniel Boone Comes Home Then Leaves Again.’ I’ll play the part of Daniel Boone. Joyce here will play the part of Rebecca. We hope you enjoy the show.
*curtain opens/light up*
Daniel: Hello, Rebecca. I’m home from killin’ b’ars. What’s for supper?
Rebecca: Unless you bought one of them bears home, I reckon it’s racoon. I caught one of them varmints in the chicken pen this morning.
Daniel: Mm-mm! I love me some stewed racoon, especially warshed down with some good ol’ stump water. Did you save that ‘coon skin? I need me a new hat.
Rebecca: I shore did, Dan’l. I was gonna make me a new potholder out of it, but you can take it.
Daniel: Did you save the tail?
Rebecca: I shore did. I used it to dust around the place today, but if’n you take it down to the crick and warsh it off, it’ll be a good as it was afore I took a hatchet to that ‘coon’s butt this morning.
Daniel: I think I’m a-gonna pin it to the front of my new hat. It can hang down and camouflage my face. That way, when I sneak up on a b’ar, I’ll look like a raccoon backin’ up on ‘im. Plus, it’ll keep my nose warm. Wha’d’ya think about that, Becca?
Rebecca: I think that’s just plain silly. When was the last time you saw a raccoon sneakin’ up on something with its hiney? Here’s what you orta do. Pin it to the back of your hat. That’ll look good! Why, in years to come, people might think back about how ole Dan’l looked with that ‘coon’s tail hangin’ down his back, and they might want to do it something like it, too. Maybe with a rat’s tail or something.
Daniel: That’s a mighty fine idea, Becca. You’re a good woman. Now, let’s git some shut-eye. I got go tussle with some Injuns tomorrow and try to get them off this frontier I’m discoverin’.
*curtains close/crowd goes wild (probably because it was short)*
Your takeaway from this story: Actually, I snuck a little history lesson in on you. Billy Ray Cyrus may be a native Kentuckian, but he did not invent the mullet.