Page 69 - Reason To Sing by Kelita Haverland

Chapter Ten

But never did. There weren’t many Kelitas around in those
days. But now THIS, this was a dream come true. Miss Anne
was standing right in front of me! Turns out her children took
tap dancing lessons from Aunt Violet and the timing of my
visit to the big city could not have been more destined.
And then it got even better. As I stood there bedazzled, my
poor little self in complete shock, she asked THE question.
“Are you able to come to my show tomorrow? I would love
for you to be my special guest.”
I was overwhelmed (to say the least). Ultimately the
show itself was a complete blur. My only job was to smile and
look pretty alongside the other children. I do remember the
disgustingly warm milk we had to drink. A milk company
called “Alpha” was one of the show’s sponsors so there was no
getting out of that. I was a farm kid used to drinking the very
best milk and we never drank it warm. But I pretended to enjoy
every last drop and that, my friends, was the dawning of my
acting career.
This was perhaps the happiest day of my life (all five years
of it)! My television debut! Thank you, Miss Anne. Oh, if
Shirley could see me now!
My mother detected the performance gift in me immediately
and soon I was racking up stage credit after live show after
competition. Because of my parents’ heavy involvement in the
Charolais cattle business, at age 12 I was invited to fill the
after-dinner entertainment slot at one of their shindigs. I had
fun impersonating Lily Tomlin’s popular character, Ernestine,
the telephone operator from the hit TV show “Laugh In.”
The laughter had now grown beyond just my mother. There
I was in a room full of half-intoxicated, ritzy cattle-owning
delegates, dripping in snakeskin boots, sequinned dresses and
rhinestone earrings, and they were all laughing at ME!

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