Vnuchka Memoirs, Part 3

Run Away with the Gypsies

I think I got an A at the end of my first year of Russian study. Even if I wasn’t that good, it was incentive to sign up for the second year as a freshman in high school. That second year was interesting for lots of reasons, but especially because it crossed another thread I’ll add when I finish this one. Anyway, Mr. Guidry decided to teach us some Russian songs. He also got the grand idea of having an international event, featuring the music, food, and culture of all the languages taught at La Porte High School that year. Our class formed a choir and we prepared our songs. We probably sang more than two, but the only ones I remember are Moscow Nights (a very well-known popular song) and Running Away with the Gypsies. I didn’t learn till many years later that this is a Russian drinking song. Everyone is progressively intoxicated and each person, in his turn, must improvise a new verse of the song. Our choir simply learned three of the most common verses. Jack and I sang a duet of the verses, then the whole choir jumped for the chorus. Since this was a fairly large event (imagine most of the students in Latin, German, Spanish, French, and Russian classes, plus all their friends, plus quite a few relatives). Plus there was food. I don’t know how Mr. Guidry and my mother were linked up for this event, but Mom was in charge of the food (she was a chef and veteran planner of food-related events). She cooked tacos and enchiladas, crepes Suzette, spaghetti, pizza, chicken Kiev, blini, schnitzel, bratwurst, and many of the side dishes associated with them. She did this with the help of an army of student volunteers and a few teachers.

I think we had the show first in the school auditorium. Mom said we had over 500 people and she should know - head counting is part of the process in food service. I don’t know if our choir went first, but that’s the only part of the show I remember. My favorite part was Running Away with the Gypsies, because it was raucous and a duet. I do remember getting pretty good applause when we were done. There was also a Russian dance segment. I think Jack or Jim did the traditional Russian squat kicks. I did the Russian splits, but dancing was never my forte. The show and all the food and the displays from each of the language classes made for quite a spectacle. To my knowledge, it was never repeated, perhaps because it was just so much work.

Mr. Guidry left that year to go to Baylor University. With that, Russian classes ended. I wanted to continue learning a language, so my sophomore year I studied Latin. That was the beginning of a years-long language diversion from Russian, but it would only be a detour.