B149. The Blue Overalls Angel

JEANIE: Did you say you have never seen an angel?
SCOTTY: I didn't exactly say that. I said I haven't seen any here tonight.Would ye know an angel if ye saw one, Jeanie?
JEANIE: Oh, yes, indeed!
SCOTTY: How would ye tell, pray?
JEANIE: Why, it's simple as simple! An angel wears a shining robe, and when she sings, her song is the sweetest thing you have ever heard.
SCOTTY: That's what the book told ye?
JEANIE: Yes, and there was a picture in the book too.
(Scotty gets up again and goes over to the rock. He picks up a hammer lying there and takes nails from his pocket. Jeanie follows him.)
SCOTTY:I wouldn't be the one to contradict the book, but I'm thinkin', Jeanie, that a body has to have the right kind of eyes to see angels, and the right kind of heart to hear their song.*

My family and his were fixtures in our small country church and must have seen each other at least weekly throughout my childhood. Yet it was one special shared memory that would continue to light up his eyes and mine, every time I would go back there to visit, even to 40+ years later. "Do you remember that time . . .?" he would always begin. "I remember," I would say, and our hearts would share a smile, over and over again.

I think it was December 1972. I had just turned 11, and he was maybe 37, when we shared the stage in the church Christmas play. He played the church janitor in blue overalls, and I played a liitle girl who wandered into the church looking for an angel. By the end of the play it was understood that the janitor and his wife would adopt the child, and my character recognized that he was her angel.

Today, 10/25/2018, the blue overalls angel received his wings.

Fly freely, Kenneth Reece. With prayers for peace for all his family.





*excerpt from "The Blue Overalls Angel: A Christmas Play in One Act," by Anne Coulter Martans, 1937