The Royal Court Performers put on a show Saturday at the annual fund-raiser for Butchie's Pool.

RCP are young people who won tiaras and medals at the Yuba-Sutter County Fair to become the bi-community's princesses and ambassadors at large.

Butchie's Pool is one of those personal missions and community achievements that speak well of community leaders. In this case Larry Montna.

Montna's son was tragically killed way back when. As I understand it, Butchie was a likable kid with special needs, which made it all the more tragic.

Montna, now a former Sutter County supervisor, decided to build a swimming pool where people with permanent disabilities of any age could come for therapy and socialization.

It was a simple, but profound idea. Montna, himself no Croesus, and others worked hard to raise the money to building the enclosed pool and succeeded.

"It opened in 1980," said Montna, who on Saturday and this a quarter of century after the fact, was still flipping burgers in a streaming sweat over a smoky barbecue.

He was still out there gamely helping fund the pool, which now gets about 1,500 uses a month by clients ranging in age from 2 to 92 years old. Really.

Anyway, the RCP were there doing their part which mostly consisted of reprising the acts that won them distinction as Mini Miss, Junior Ambassador, First-runner up, etc.
A pleasant surprise was Rebecca Clayton, 2003 Mini-Miss winner.

This is a kid to grow on you. Contrary to most other young people in the competitions, she did not, dance, or sing, or play a musical instrument. She did a couple of dramatic readings, one involving a diatribe against Cinderella-types borrowed from some source and one a freelance speech written by herself and her mother.

Clayton is proving to be a pretty good emcee for a little girl of, what? 12?

Junior Ambassador Alex Cesena, sang two songs, including a shot at "Sitting on a Dock in the Bay," an old Otis Redding number that requires a considerable about of sole to do right. Cesena was relaxed, confident and produced a passable rendition, though he may have set the bar a little high for himself. I mean, how much soul can a 13-year-old have accumulated in Yuba City?

The other Alex, Alex Mazerolle, this one 12-year-old runner-up in the Mini-Miss competition did two songs.

At least, I saw two songs and heard one. Mazerolle was first out of the chute for the day and she was drowned out by the silly volume settings engineered by the man running the sound system. But that was a good thing, as they says.

She and/or mother paid a "make-him-an-offer-he-can't-refuse visit to the man on the sound board and the volume came down for everyone after that, including for Alex Mazerolle, who did a selection from "Bugsy Malone Jr." -- "I'm Feeling Fine."

What's good about it all is that Mazerolle, and by extension, the other kids learbed, or we hope they learned, to always make sure the technical parts of the show are straight before going on. After all that's why stars have warm-up acts. To suffer whatever guinea pig glitches are going to occur in advance, so they can be corrected for the money act.

Another kid to be watched is Adrianna Hernandez. This slight, supple lyric dancer can't be more than 11, and she is already showing considerable grace in her lyric dancing. Still, she should add tap to her repertoire (if she hasn't already), if she expects to rise in show business.

Then there was Sara Guerrero, Miss Yuba-Sutter, 2003. Now there is a conundrum.

Guerrero is a tall, leggy, star-quality young lady of commanding good looks and presence. In her performance as "Marty" in Grease she did "Freddy My Love," a double entendre novelty song while attired in a fetching Scarlet Letter teddy. Memorable.

In the Miss Y-S competition she then announced her hopes of following a career in the entertainment industry.

Then Saturday at the Butchie's Pool find-raiser it was announced for her that she now plans to pursue a career as a "Christian Contemporary singer." She then sang two slow and ponderous songs heavily freighted with words like "heaven," "Jesus," and "salvation."

Yikes! Images of a tall, brunette Tammy Bakker flooded my reeling mind. A cold shiver of unrepentance raced down my spine.

Ah, well, to each his/her own, and all the best to Sara Guerrero in her (apparently) chosen direction. But what a disappointment that announcement was for all of us lovers of secular music.

Why, with only a few more years' of experience -- she's only 20 -- she would have made a fine cabaret singer. It's not hard to imagine her in bsic black sequins doing throaty versions of jazz standards like "How Long Has This Been Going On," "Am I Blue" and "Our Love is Here to Stay" for silver-haired millionaires at the Rainbow Room or, better yet, writers and artists at the Algonquin.

That future vision seems unlikely now, but who knows? With a little luck, perhaps, she will one day realize the correctness of her ways and change for the worse.

One can only hope.