How the Appendix Historical Society got started and how Red found a sudden passion for basketball

When Ed Reynolds sat across from Red Wilson and started complaining about how the carnivals had gone to seed, he had a ready audience. Red nodded glumly in deep agreement. Then somewhere in the midst of this conversation, Ed said, “you know Red these kids today don’t have any idea what it was like back then, and their parents ain’t going to tell them.”
Red merely nodded in glum agreement, and he thought of his grandson Quin. Suddenly he was seized by the idea that Quin must someday know about the magic of the carnivals when Red was eighteen. He said with a sudden burst of energy that startled Ed, “So we’ve got to tell them, Ed,” and in that flash of passion and inspiration the Appendix Historical Preservation society was born.
They ran one advertisement in the local paper:
Anyone interested in preserving and documenting the history of our fine town and
the carnivals of the 1940’s is invited to the first meeting of the Appendix Historical Preservation Society. Tuesday, September First. We will meet at seven in the basement of the First Methodist Church.
There were twenty people at the first meeting, and Red was elected president of the society. Red’s wife said he was forming the society just so he could reminisce about the Chinese Acrobat. Red lied and said that that could not be farther from the truth, and that he wanted people in the town to understand their heritage and know about the good times they had had as they were kids.
Some of the members had wanted to create a complete history of the town, but most wanted to talk about the old carnivals they had snuck into. So eventually the society focused almost exclusively on the old carnivals and the founder of the carnivals, Wondermaker.
The committee still met in the basement of the First Methodist Church of Appendix. Red was still the president.
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The society never learned that much amount the end of Wondermaker’s life. He had sort of faded away. All the members and Red in particular did know that he had had one daughter later in life. There were many in the community who whispered that the child must have been someone else’s. Red’s dad in particular had participated in this gossip.
Wondermaker’s daughter did not attend Appendix Schools until her freshman year. When she did arrive her freshman year, she had an immediate impact. Her name was Grace, and as a freshman she became a member of the Fighting Carny Cheer team. She had been trained since her youth to be a performer, and beyond that she was a natural. Suddenly men, including Red, who had not been to a football game since his graduation were showing up to the games and joining loudly in the cheers. Meanwhile on the field the Fighting Carnies took even more drubbings than usual.
The basketball games in particular, where the crowd is right up close to the cheerleaders were all sellouts. Red did not miss a home game and even found a way to make it to the road games. His wife of five years (along with many other wives in town) accused Red of going to the games “So that you can gawk at Wondermaker’s daughter, while she does all those flips and twists. You just think she is so pretty, don’t you?” Red always told some bland lie about showing team spirit. They did not miss a game.
After Grace Wondermaker graduated from Appendix High School, attendance fell off considerably. The one exception that year was the homecoming game. The tradition at homecoming is for the homecoming queen from last year to return to crown the new queen. Grace Wondermaker had been the previous year’s queen. The game sold out, and though the Wilson’s had not made a game that year, they were there for homecoming. Red told his wife, “It just doesn’t seem right not to cheer the team on at homecoming. We haven’t been to a game all year, because you complained so much last year, but we have to go to homecoming.” A bunch of other families in Appendix must felt the same way, because it was standing room only around the old Appendix field. No one went to the concession stand at halftime and when Grace Wondermaker was introduced as the previous year’s Queen, the crown including Red burst into loud applause.