Eavesdroppings. Bob Green

equipment suppliers advertised their wares, too. A note in the playbill for Over Niagara Falls in all versions A, B, and C reads: “Boats supplied by King Folding Canvas Boat Co. of Kalamazoo, Mich.” Another ad reads: “Pistols used in Within the Law supplied by Maxim Silent Firearms Co. of Hartford, Conn.” The whole back page of a 1904 playbill carries an invitation for anyone who can make it to the wedding of Mary Ellen Carruthers and James Robertson and the reception in Glen Morris, June 1, Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. For every performance of Ten Nights in a Bar Room, a lucky ticket holder won a ton of coal.

      The variety of entertainment was unlimited. Right after the great Ed Hoyt (who can forget Ed?) did Hamlet, Joseph Sheehan, America’s greatest tenor, starred in Salome with a cast of fifty. Next came the Tzigani Troupe of acrobats accompanied by “the world’s greatest singing chorus.” Clarence Bennett, as Native chief Tabywana in The Squawman, spoke entirely in the Ute language under the tutelage of Baco White of the Ute reservation. The audience, until informed of this, just thought he had a speech impediment. The renowned hypnotist Sevengala carried a special note in his program: “Persons who cannot be hypnotized … idiots and lunatics (except in special cases), children under the age of three and persons under the influence of alcohol.” It had to do with their attention span.

      Local talent performed at Scott’s, too. The YMCA annually staged a Grand Gymnastic Exhibition, including stunts on a real horse, a ladies’ physical culture and Morris dancing demonstration, and Sebastapol playing on a guitar. The Dumfries Foundry Benefit Society held a concert and minstrel show after which A.E. Williams, year after year, played “The Death of Nelson” on the trombone.

      A wealthy cattle drover named Scott built the opera house in 1889 because he believed the district could do with a bit of class. Scott made the ushers and orchestra members wear tuxedos and stiff white shirts, and every playbill carried the warning: “The by-law against spitting on the floor of any public building will be strictly enforced in this theatre.”

22 The Daring Hespeler Girls

      With the Great Depression ending and World War II looming, five girls who worked at Dominion Woollens in Hespeler decided to have a long-deserved fling. Ethel, Margaret, and Isabella Wilson, daughters of the chief of police, and the Prestwick sisters, Agnes and Nel, had saved $70 each and decided to blow it on two weeks in New York. It was Ethel Wilson’s idea.

      Train fare was too expensive, so Ethel did the logical thing. She phoned Hespeler’s only taxi driver, Allan Leonard, and asked what the fee to take five girls to New York for two weeks would be. He said he would have to think it over because he had been married less than a month and didn’t know how his bride would react to his running off to New York with a carload of girls. Besides, the town would have no taxi service while he was away. Allan called back in fifteen minutes. Sure, he would do it. The fee? How about $60? No, not each, but for all five.

      So off they went, three girls in the back seat and two in the front, with Leonard and luggage piled so there was just room enough to see out the windshield. It was so hot that the girls took off their stockings and hung them out the windows to air. They drove to New York nonstop, the only respite being a baseball game with American custom officers at the Roosevelt Bridge east of Brockville. The game ended when one of the girls batted the ball into the St. Lawrence River.

      New York opened its small-town heart to the girls. At the St. James Hotel where they stayed the desk clerk and resident guests were like parents, advising them where it was safe to go. They got one large room on an upper floor with five cots. There was a great view, and the girls took turns sleeping on the cot next to the window. Allan Leonard slept at the YMCA.

      The improbable kept happening. A Hespelerite, Charles Panabaker, then living in New York, chanced upon the girls on the street and took it upon himself to show them all the sights they had seen on postcards: the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Radio City Music Hall and, best of all, the New York World’s Fair, where they saw such wonders as the first television sets and the latest developments in steam locomotives. It was at Radio City Music Hall that Isabella Wilson fell under the spell of showbiz. She later returned to star on the Broadway stage.

      The girls all carried their money in little pouches on strings around their necks, dangling them down to hide in their brassieres where, according to Leonard, there was ample storage space. As their money drained away, they began to eat from vending machines at the Automat. But before leaving for home they decided to blow the bundle on one last meal in a good restaurant. They searched about and somehow wound up at a second-floor banquet hall featuring a splendid buffet. Gracious hostesses invited them to help themselves to all they might want. After unleashing their pent-up appetites, they began to worry about the bill. But there was no bill. They had wandered into a convention hall, and the staff thought they must be representatives of the sponsoring corporation.

      The girls’ money did run out on the way home, and their peerless driver, Allan Leonard, had to pay for their meals out of his taxi fare. He stopped at a vineyard in upstate New York and bought a gallon jug of grape juice that was on sale. Because the girls had brought back a lot of boxes in addition to their luggage, the only room left for the jug was on the floor between Leonard’s knees. On a bumpy road near the border the top on the jug blew off and Leonard got drenched. How a cab driver drenched in grape juice travelling with five hysterical girls got through customs is a mystery.