The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 21

THE SUN Tuesday, October 22, 1974 Entertainment Trends Slili Jit Kv 1 j-s- vjr Smith Island students unload from bus at Tangier Sound lo Crisfield High island. The state has contracted with Mr. Tyler, as with the owner of any other school bus, for the daily run. According to Jack B. Kussmaul, who was among the guest passengers for the maiden voyage, the state will pay about $22,000 a year for the Smith Island bus run.

This is the same sum the state paid last year for the weekly run plus the allowance for board and room that counted as transportation cost. The new run means more for the island than reduced time and convenience. "It will, 1 hope, reduce the drop-" out problem," said William Dykes, supervisor of transportation for Somerset county. There used to be 35 or 40 Smith Island students attending high school in Crisfield, he said. But it has been getting harder and harder in the past few years to find homes for them.

The group Busing by way of boat By MARY CORDDRY Salisbury Bureau of The Sun Bl Sunpupcis prnxos waller M. Mccardeil School. commuting from the island has dwindled to about 15 this year. There are 10 to 15 students in the Classes coming along in the junior high school in Ewell and more of them are likely to continue on with the advent of daily transportation. For Janet Evans, one of only two high school age students in the isolated village of Tylerton, its still a long journey.

She gets up at 6 A.M., she said yesterday, crosses Tylerton Creek by boat to Rhodes Point, boards a school bus for a 3-mile ride across the marsh to Ewell and boards the new boat there for the ride across Tangier Sound. Smith Island's population is all-white and all Methodist. So far, said Dr. Kussmaul, federal authorities have not recommended busing for its two elementary school and one junior high. They even, he pointed out, still have a school prayer.

GARDNER Yourself," the last of which is sung by Baltimore-born Andre De Shields, who plays the wizard. The performances, as indicated, are consistently good especially Stephanie Mills's as Dorothy; Stu Gilliam's, as the Scarecrow; Tiger Haynes, as the Tin Woodman, and Ted Ross's, as the Cowardly Lion, who in this version is consulting an owl psychiatrist because when he was a cub his mother always was after him to lick behind his ears. Clarice Taylor and Butterfly McQueen also contribute humorous bits, as a good witch and Queen of the Field Mice, respec-" lively. Why then, with all these assets, does the show seem so long, so meandering and, at times, so dull? What does it lack? The main thing it lacks is a point of view a framework that would pump new life and meaning into the familiar old fairy tale and give it significance in. terms of the contemporay world.

William F. Brown, who wrote the book, has tried to do this by presenting much of it in the black argot of today, but it is not enough. The same is true of the production numbers. Though choreographer George Faison has staged them with commendable energy and the imaginative touches already remarked upon, none of them ever quite comes to a boil. Despite these crucial flaws, "The Wiz" still has enough going for it to entertain a not-too-demanding audience much of the while.

Children, I'm sure, will like it; and, with adroit doctoring and tightening (director Gilbert Moses 3d could help hero, it might still go. It will continue at the Mechanic through next week. I said simply, "and it brought tears to his eyes." My son looked at his watch, "Hey, Mom, if you want io.borrow a couple of bucks till the end of the week, why didn't you say so." I was still sitting at the table when my husband walked in and threw down the coin, "A penny for your thoughts," he said. "That's an insulting offer," I said, "At today's prices, they'll cost you $2.34," Comics I 'Wiz fun at times but doesnt whiz A shocking fact of road building that lakes them 12 miles across winds blowing across the sound yesterdayit has heat. The waves were high but the ride was smoother than a ride on a conventional school bus, said one experienced passenger, Morris W.

Rannels, state coordinator of transportation for the state Department of Education. Mr. Tyler's whole family was aboard the new boat yesterday morning. The Betty Jo is named for his 10-year-old daughter, who smashed a bottle of champagne across its prow for an official christening at Somers Cove. Alan Wade, Mr.

Tyler's 14-year old son, will be one of the boat's regular daily passengers. The two children are adopted, said Mr. Tyler's wife, Dixie. Young Alan, she said, wants to work with his father on the boats when he finishes school. The Betty Jo Tyler will be used in the summer to carry tourists to the bay speak 'I' I' tr I TJn 'uk'J sraw Ewell and board new school boat carries the island's freight and mail.

They departed on Monday mornings with suitcases as well as books and boarded in Crisfield homes until their return after school on Friday. The 12-mile trip on the Island Star took about IV2 hours. On the new Betty Jo Tyler it takes about 30 minutes. They have been making the long daily journey on the Island Star since school opened in September while Alan Tyler, the owner of both boats, awaited the delayed completion of the new boat in New Orleans. The new boat was especially designed as a floating school bus by Frank Scariano who described it as "the finest school bus in the United States.

It has two rows of red and white plastic seats, wide windows, bright red shag carpeting wall to wall, and a teakwood and white formica ceiling. Most important because of the chilly British novelist to By ERMA BOMBECK While sitting, at the breakfast table yesterday, a shiny object in the carpet caught my eye. J'What is I asked kicked it with his foot, "A ny," he said and kept walking. My daughter came through and I said, "There's a penny in the she said, "So who's the heavy tipper?" iffTTTF 111 II I Jr mm ll 1 (I Angus will the be at S. visiting term, many At wit9 Ewell, 15 Smith Island high school students, starting this week, "busing" means a daily 24-mile round trip to Crisfield High School in a 49-foot boat.

In a mood of festivity at 7.30 A.M. yesterday, students from the three island villages gathered at the dock in Ewell to board the state's plushest school bus for its maiden voyage across Tangier Sound. To add to the spirit of celebration, they discovered on arriving at the So-mer's Cove Dock in Crisfield that school was called off for the day because of a faulty furnace and no heat. The first day's journey ended with an early return while the Smith Island teenagers explored the new high speed boat that has replaced, for them, the old Island Star. Until this year, their journey to school was a weekly one in the boat that REHERT We could tell by the foundations that used to hold the tanks.

"And up there used to be an ice plant. We didn't know for sure, but an old-timer came by and watched us uncover it, and he remembered when it used to be a working ice plant." Most of the excavating now taking place is for the massive concrete pillars that will hold up the new road. A "pad" or foundation for a pillar is from 4 feet 3 inches to 6 feet deep, takes 35 to 75 cubic yards of concrete and will weigh up to 150 tons, if anybody ever cared to weigh one. Pillars will be 18 to 22 feet high, 5 to 6 feet in diameter, and the plans call for 64 of them in the short span between Centre and Gay streets, which Mr. Penny's company, Rummel, Klepper and Kahl, have contracted to build.

Everything is laid out in charts, so It should all be predictable-except that the underground electric lines, water mains and sewers don't always follow the courses they are supposed to. "Fairly close," Mr. Penny described it, "but as much as 15 to 20 feet off." Sometimes hitting into the unpredicted results in more than just water or sparks. "Couple of weeks ago we dug up an old sewer line that didn't even show on the plans. An old one, abandoned long ago.

When the crane lifted the pipe in the air, a whole pile of coins came pouring out. Along with a lot of mud, of course. "Stuff must've washed in through a sewer long ago. "There were some old pennies and nickles and dimes. Two or 3 rings.

One old gold watch. "When treasure like that turns up, everybody quits and dives In, Rule is 'finders keepers'. I got me an 1892 dime out of it." Mr. Penny commutes a long way to his work 187 miles each way. He leaves home at 2 A.M.

Monday, spends the evenings of the week in a motel and heads back home after work on Friday. "I got this place on the Chickahominy River and I can stand on my dock and see across into the James. I like it there. "My wife stays home and looks after the place, I guess she's got used to the notion of having just a weekend husband. "No problem about what to.

do with evenings. At my age, after working out here on the job all day, you're mighty happy when you get back to your room, get something to eat and go to bed." By R. H. "The Wiz," the new black musical based on "The Wonderful Wizard pf Oz" which had its world premiere at the Mechanic last night, has so many good things it's a share it doesn't have the two or three necessary to make it click. And, on the grounds that it isn't always good policy to save the best till last, I'll mention a few.

First of all is its good-humored unpre-tentiousness. It doesn't take itself too seriously, the performers all of whom are first rate giving the impression that they are there mainly to enjoy themselves, and their enjoyment is contagious. It abounds with imaginative touches. The cyclone that carries Dorothy from Kansas to Oz is staged as a ballet, with streamer-trailing dancers whirling her and her front porch about the stage. The yellow brick road consists of a chorus of "yellow brick" men who, to the tune of "Ease on Down The Road," escort Dorothy on her episodic journey to see the wizard.

The Wicked Witch of the West, played like an overblown Hattie McDaniel by Mable King, sits on a throne, hung with plucked chickens, piglets and T-bone steaks, which she throws as payment for ghastly deeds committed to her cringing Lord High Underling (Ralph Wilcox). The sets and costumes have been conceived and executed with the same imagination by John and Geoffrey Holder, respectively. Though not outstanding, the score, by Charlie Smalls, is always agreeable and at times yields a song that sounds as if it might, under favorable circumstances, become memorable, I particularly liked "Home," "I Was Born on the Day Before Yesterday" and "Believe in "And when he got up there was a bright, shiny, new, penny, right?" interrupted my "And when he got.up Christmas morning," I continued slowly, ''His stocking looked empty until, he sraw something sticking in the toe. Do you have any idea what it was?" "A BRIGHT, SHINY, NEW PENNY!" they yelled in unison. "It was a bright, shiny, new penny," By ISAAC A couple of cement-finishers were standing deep down in a hole in the ground, smoothing a huge slab of concrete; and Mr.

Penny, holding his unlit pipe in his left hand while his right slipped back the hard hat on his white hair, was watching. The concrete was part of a utilities pit at the site, of the Jones Falls expressway extension, near Guilford avenue at Bath street, under the Orleans street viaduct. Alton S. Penny, 60 years old a few weeks ago and a resident of near Wil-lamsburg, is an assistant project engineer for one of the engineering companies on the project. He makes it sound as if building an expressway, although it takes mountains of money and hard work, provides at least the builders with a few molehills of romance and adventure.

Adventure? Well, nothing spectacular, unless you call it spectacular' when you dig up a major electric cable that is carrying 13,000 volts. That's what they did dug it up with the claw of a back hoe. "Sparks? I'll say it made sparks," he said. "Big blue hissing flame is what it made." The accent is unmistakably Southern; the voice is unruffled and calm. Thirty five years in the construction business have him to take big blue hissing flames in stride.

"Nobody was hurt," he said. "Would've been if the man wasn't grounded. Might've killed him. But he knew where he was supposed to be and that's where he was. Just one of those things that happen." In the background, a pile driver was hammering againt the end of a long steel upright girder, wheeling with each upward stroke and sneezing hard as it dropped with a clunk, the up-and-down strokes regular.

The noise made discussion difficult, but Mr. Penny hardly noticed. "See that pipe there?" He pointed in to a far corner of the pit? "That's a water main. We dug one of them up too. Broke it." What happened then? "We got us a bath, that's what." He recalled other experiences not predicted in the construction script as the buildiers proceeded with digging the foundations for an expressway.

"Over there," he pointed into the distance along the Falls way, "over there we dug out the foundations of an old gas plant. From the days when they used to distill coal in order lo manufacture gas. Wilson, British novelist and critic, will give a talk today on Charles Dickens at Johns Hopkins University. The lecture will 4 P.M. in the Garrett Room of the Milton Eisenhower Library.

Mr, Wilson, who Is a professor at Johns Hopkins for the fall has written seven popular novels and critical studies for British journals. end A penny for your thoughts When my younger son came by I said, "Hey, reach down and pick up that penny." "That's not my job," he said, "Let the sweeper do it." "So this is what we have come to," I "addressing the group. I continued with a story. "When your-grandfather was a little boy and lived on a farm they were so poor they couldn't afford Christmas but they hung their stockings up anyway.