Dateline July 5, 2018, A Roosevelt Salute and the Medora Musical
Roosevelt comes to life. The Old Town Hall Theater is a small and venerable place, and we filed in with everyone else to find a bare little stage holding a single chair. Then in walked a man who was, to the life, Teddy Roosevelt, and took the stage and introduced himself as just that, Theodore Roosevelt. We had no notion of what was coming. For the next while Joe Wiegand told us his story as though he truly were the man, and we sat there feeling we had slipped back in time, hearing it firsthand: his boyhood and his New York, the Dakota Territory, the charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba, the presidency, and a hundred smaller things besides.
It happens that John's family lived just a few miles from Roosevelt's home at Sagamore Hill, out in Oyster Bay, so it was a pleasure to catch the actor afterward; he has done a good deal of his Roosevelt work at Sagamore Hill itself. It was a marvelous show, one of the high points of our whole stay. We walked over to the Rough Rider Hotel to have a Maker's Mark on the rocks, since a man ought to take his drink in the hotel that renamed itself for Teddy's visit back in 1903.
The teddy bear. One of the tales he told was how the teddy bear came to be, and it is a good one. In 1902, Roosevelt was off hunting bear in Mississippi and having no luck, when his guides ran down a worn-out old black bear, injured, and tied it to a tree so the president could have his shot. He would not take it; it was no sport to shoot a thing tied up and helpless. But the animal was hurt and suffering, so he asked them to put it out of its misery. The papers carried the story, and a cartoonist named Clifford Berryman drew Roosevelt turning his back on the roped bear; other cartoonists took it up, the bear growing smaller and more frightened in each drawing, and Berryman kept a little bear in his Roosevelt cartoons for years.
The toy itself came of a Brooklyn candy-shop man, Morris Michtom, who saw Berryman's cartoon and set two stuffed bears his wife had sewn in his shop window. He wrote to ask the president's leave to call them "Teddy's bears," and when they sold he made more and more, and out of it grew the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company. More than a hundred years on, we are all still fond of our teddy bears. As Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story.
Pitchfork fondue. The Pitchfork Fondue is a steak buffet, and quite the production. A country band plays in a big open space looking out over the badlands, and the long covered tables fill up with folks waiting on supper. The trick of it is that the cooks lower the steaks into vats of hot oil on the tines of actual pitchforks, which is a sight, though it does mean you take your steak well done whether you like it that way or not; we do not. We went down the buffet line for the sides and by the cooking station for the beef. It was an experience, but the pitchfork dinner is not one we would press on anyone.
The Medora Musical. From there it was on to the outdoor theater for the musical, the stage dressed up like an old western town.
When the host and co-host came out to open the show, the master of ceremonies, Bill Sorensen, who has been with it since the very beginning, had hard news to share. One of their own, an actor who rode the lone horse near the end of the show and had been with it more than thirty years, had died suddenly the night before. They played the national anthem and held a moment of silence, and Bill, with tears in his eyes, told us a little of their friendship and how he would be missed. Then he gathered himself and said that, sad as the whole company was, the show must go on. There was not a dry eye in the place.
And on it went, corny in the best way and a real treat, singing and dancing, a fellow making balloon animals, horses, and a brief staged skirmish between the cavalry and the Indians.
We loved every minute, and if you ever get to Medora, do not miss either the musical or the Roosevelt play. Then it was back to the park for a good night's sleep, with the road east and our next adventure waiting in the morning.
