Again my parents made their headquarters in Chicago, while accepting bookings in vaudeville.
They rented a house on Euclid Avenue in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, where Mom and the children stayed while Pop toured with his company.
Pop was playing in Boston on Christmas Day, 1918, when he received a telegram that he had another daughter, Mary Elizabeth.
This was one of the rare times when the children had an opportunity to go to school. Just a month before I was born, Mom was upset to see Al come home with a few scrapes and bruises. After questioning him she learned that as he had to pass a parochial school some bullies were always waiting for him. So one morning she sent him off to school but followed a block behind. Sure enough these two boys were waiting to waylay him and started to shove him around. Mom ran and grabbed the boys pulling them into their school. When the sisters saw what had happened they were very alarmed, seeing Mom’s condition. The bullies were taken care of.
Christmas the year before had been a very abundant one, plenty of everything, especially toys for the children. But with America getting involved in the war, the past year brought hardships.
Mom’s brother Ray was conscripted and while he was in training camp he got the [Spanish] flu. Many lives were lost during that epidemic. Uncle Ray was so ill he was finally discharged and sent home.
Mom said the Christmas I was born was the only one that they could not afford a tree. She did a lot of painting and repairing of last year’s toys to supplement the few things she had been able to buy.
Mom told me, “The snow was very late that year and I had gone out to look at Christmas trees but even a very small one was five dollars. When I came home Alvin helped me hang tinsel and tree ornaments around the living room and we put the children’s presents on the table. It was late when I called Mrs. Bunce to get the doctor. At four o’clock in the morning you were born, with hair that looked like sealskin!”
The children didn’t know anything unusual had happened and in the morning when Al came downstairs, still half asleep, he bumped into Mrs. Bunce. She pointed to a clothes basket and said, “Look inside.”
“I don’t see anything,” Al muttered.
“Look again – it’s your new baby sister,” she said.
Dolly, who was eight, thought the new baby was hers. Before Christmas when her parents had asked her what she most wanted Santa Claus to bring her, she said, “A real live baby doll?” But she was very worried because two young ladies who lived next door insisted that there was a mistake, the baby should have been delivered to their house.
I marvel at how sheltered and naive we all were. Just weeks before I was born, Mom was sitting down combing Bill’s hair, he was almost seven and he patted her stomach and said, “Momma, you’re getting so fat!” I guess it did not seem so strange for Santa Claus to bring a baby if the stork could.
There was one occasion when my parents had bought a special large doll for Dolly and it was in this three foot long box. She was told it was a clarinet for Alvin. A conductor on a train said, “I bet I know what that is!” Dolly shushed him and whispered, “That’s a clarinet for my brother.” This went on for several weeks before Christmas.
When Pop came home he brought Sport, a beautiful Irish Setter. It seems his former owner was walking to the outskirts of town and carrying a rifle when Pop met him. When Pop admired the dog he explained that someone claimed to have been attacked by Sport and he was going to have to destroy him. It did not seem possible, the dog was so gentle and affectionate. Pop offered to take the dog and said he would have him out of the state by the next day. One of the first things Pop did when he came home, was to build a small wagon with a harness attached and Sport would pull the wagon.
We made our headquarters in New York for awhile and Alvin worked as a bellhop at the Pennsylvania Hotel. He was able to earn enough money to buy musical instruments for himself and the other children and taught them to play. On some of our tours we added a musical act to the show. Mom on piano, Al on saxophone [alto], Lee on bass sax or trombone, Dolly on banjo or sax and Bill on drums. Al could also play clarinet and piccolo. They all dressed as clowns.
I was about four when I made my first stage appearance singing “I Wonder What Became of Sally?” and dressed in overalls and a cap like “The Kid” (Jackie Coogan in the Charlie Chaplin movie) and with the bobbed hair, I could have won a most look-alike contest.
Before the show would open, we sometimes had a band on parade and marched around with placards. Sousa’s “Star Spangled Banner” was always played before the show, all over the world.
If pictures were taken of the company, in front of the theatre, Pop said “spread out” trying to make it look bigger, there were twelve in the company.
We traveled with “Johnny Jones Circus” for a few months, which was an experience the children all enjoyed. Dolly always carrying me straddled on her hip would delight the people in the side show, with our frequent visits. Daisy and Violet Hilton were the Siamese twins and were two of our best friends, as well as the midgets and the “Monkey” girl. Leon decided to cook something in our train car one time and set the car on fire!
Bill fell out of his upper bunk bed and injured his neck. He didn’t tell anyone until Mom was scrubbing his neck and he couldn’t turn his head. She took him to a chiropractor who was able to correct the problem. We really had very few accidents considering the opportunities.
A tutor, Doc Brown, traveled with the show for awhile. Which was probably Mom’s doing. Pop had quit school after the fourth grade and always said the best education was travel.
The show continued in vaudeville, with yearly trips to the Pacific Coast until 1920.
In the early years in Vaudeville, “Jansen and Herr” were doing an act along with probably seven other acts. But in the later years, the ones I remember, we did the last half of the show. Sometimes the full show. By then it was usually a week’s engagement instead of the split week. Dante was the “Head-Liner.”
As vaudeville grew in popularity other circuits opened up such as Pantages, Orpheum and Western Vaudeville. But Keith had the best reputation. The theatres were very nice, the audiences always very receptive. They knew the entertainment would be suitable for families.