Character Profiles

MATT FRIEDMAN

Forty-two year-old accountant who lives and works in St. Louis.  His slight German-Jewish accent indicates his European roots and brands him as an outsider in the town of Lebanon, Missouri, where he has opted to spend a second July 4th vacation.  Although Matt is an unlikely “romantic type,” he has decided to take romantic action by formally attempting to court Sally, much to her family’s and her distress.

Matt
Because you asked me.  Why have you not married?  Where were you born?  How did you get to this stupid country?  Because I am a crazy person.  Your nurse friends all say something is wacky with Matt that he has never made a fool of himself over some woman; I said, Matt, go down, tell Sally who you are.  Once in your life risk something.  At least you will know that you did what you could.  What do you think she is going to do, bite you?

SALLY TALLEY

Thirty-one year-old nurse’s aide and resident of Lebanon, MO.  By Ozark standards, conventional wisdom circa 1944, and her family’s yardstick, Sally is a spinster, yet her attractiveness, straightforward Midwestern vivacity, and nearly-suppressed yearnings belie the stereotype.  She, too, is an outsider of sorts.

Sally
Everyone is always saying what a crazy old-maid Emma Goldman I’m becoming, I wanted to show them how conservative and ignorant I really am.

Matt
You are not conservative, you are not ignorant, and Emma Goldman, believe me, was no old maid.

THE OLD BOATHOUSE

As much a character as a setting, the old Victorian boathouse was built in 1870 by Sally’s Uncle Whistler, whom Sally remembers as a man who was happy, “got pleasure out of making things for people,” and who did “exactly what he wanted to do.”   Everyone in Lebanon thought he was crazy, but Sally considers him to have been the “healthiest member” of the Talley family.  The highly ornamental boathouse, now dilapidated, is one of the many architectural follies he built around town.  It is special to Sally.

Sally
I used to think that he made the place for me.  I was little when he died, but I thought he knew I’d come along, so he built it just the way it is—falling down—the way people used to build Roman ruins for their gardens.  That way nobody else would come here and discover the magic of the place except me.