Tom Rhoads

Ned the Impresario of Columbus, Kansas Tom Rhoads

The novel is based on an embarrassing, but actual, event. In 1915, Ned Aitchison, then a senior at Cherokee County (Kansas) High School, produced a student play that was condemned for being "one of those risqué girly shows"; a hootchie-choochie burlesque romp complete with chorus lines, ribald jokes, saucy music, and costumes no decent person would have worn to an orgy. The school expelled him. Six decades later, the elderly Judge Aitchison sits down in his favorite, form-fitting parlor chair, sips a libation, daydreams of what might have been, and reconstructs the events that swirled around that infamous incident. Ned's memories of the episode are as clear as the days he had lived them. They lay bare every nuance of the affair, all the relevant, convoluted, and, by 1915 standards, sordid details, including the hundreds of people involved, his arch enemies, his best friends, his accidental engagement, Pink's chicken and, the goddess who was Eva Tanguay.