They found Britain much changed. Anticipation of war preoccupied the country, and money for entertainment was scarce. What little work my parents were able to get did not involve the Globe of Death. Instead they found themselves riding in dromes owned by others. Engagements were sporadic and pay was paltry. For long spells they could get no work at all. At one point they were even reduced to selling cough drops to put food on the table.
Glory days were behind them. They were celebrities no more. Later, both Mom and Dad referred to this as the worst time in their lives.
It seemed a gift from heaven when at last Patty Conklin, of Conklin Bros. Shows, offered to pay their fare to Canada — and, more importantly, the fare of the globe — if they would join one of his cross-Canada carnivals. Dad would happily have worked anywhere, but to be back in his birth country was wonderful. He came over, signed the papers, then sent for my mother and me.
I had been born in England and was left in the care of a nurse in England while Mom and Dad went about their work in Germany. When they returned to Britain for good, the three of us travelled together, towing a tiny house trailer. By the time Mom and I boarded the SS York to follow Dad to Canada, I was two and a half years old.
The Conklin Bros. carnival consisted of rides, games, food concessions, and various shows, such as the girlie show, the Wild West show, the swim show, and the Ten-in-One (the carnival name for what some people call a freak show). The carnival played in cities across Canada for spots of from four days to ten days, with show people living on the show train throughout the season and equipment travelling in box cars at the back of the train.
I travelled with the show for a couple of years. When the show was set up, it was like living in a village. You knew everyone. Then suddenly everybody would pack up and move on to a new place where the village would reappear, but now the streets were in different locations. You had to search for your friends, but they were there.
When I was four, Dad and Mom and I went to Hawaii for nearly six months. They rode motorcycles as a free act in a drome in an amusement park. There was no tent, and no tickets were sold. People came down to see the free show and stayed to enjoy the paid attractions.
With only two shows a day, and none on Sunday, Mom and Dad had plenty of leisure time. Although I was only four, I have many fond memories of Hawaii. Among them are Dad patiently painting a big red toe in each of my sandals so I would know which shoe to put on which foot, and on another day in a seaside park showing me how the banyan tree puts down roots and becomes a totally new tree wherever its branches touch the ground. I can remember sitting with Mom, examining the intricate detail of the flower garden portrayed on her beautiful new cream and mauve Japanese silk kimono. While we were in Hawaii, she took lessons in dancing the hula, and then taught me the dance through a little Hawaiian song called “Manuella Boy.”
When we returned to Canada, Mom hired five or six young women and trained them in the art of the hula. She created an authentic Hawaiian show to tour the carnival circuit along with the globe. The Hawaiian show presented, through dance, all of the moods of Hawaii, from the vigorous Hawaiian War Chant to the sensuous Aloha Oi. People of all ages enjoyed it.
Dressed in a green floral floor-length sarong, wearing a cluster of leis, Mom joined the Hawaiian show announcer inside the tent and, sharing the microphone, the two of them talked their way through a little skit that cast them as tour guides on a cruise ship that was bringing the “passengers,” the audience, to Hawaii. Then, as the dancers began to weave their magic and the announcer guided the audience through the rest of the journey, Mom crept away to the small tent behind the shows, changed into her shirt and jodhpurs, and stepped on to the stage of the Globe of Death just in time to rev her motorcycle and do her loops. She dashed back and forth all afternoon and evening between the two shows.
Incidentally, while on the road Mom watched over her girls with laser-beam scrutiny, which, undoubtedly, she had learned from her own chaperone many years before.
Dancers in the Hawaiian show usually wore long grass skirts in a natural straw colour, although for some numbers their skirts were made of orange cellophane. You couldn’t see through them, of course, as the skirts were densely packed with strands of cellophane, but each strand caught the light and shimmered as the dancers moved across the stage. Lelani, the star of the show, who really looked Hawaiian with her long, lustrous black hair and slow, smooth, undulating hula, wore a dark green cellophane skirt for her solo. She was magnificent.
I was part of the Hawaiian show until I realized that the laughter erupting from the audience each time we ended a particular dance was directed at me. Far too vain to be the butt of a joke, I walked away from my show business career forever.
The Hawaiian show lasted only one year. Not surprisingly, appearing in both the Hawaiian show and the Globe of Death was simply too much work for Mom.
Erecting and dismantling the globe at the beginning and end of every spot was extremely hard, heavy work. A crew of strong young men travelled with us, helping with set-up and tear-down, helping to maintain the motorcycles, and appearing on the Front. Some did solo rides inside the Globe of Death. Some of them remained life-long friends.
In 1941, when Bobby was born (and I was six years old), Mom and Dad decided that carnival life was not for their children. After that, we all lived together in a house in Hamilton, Ontario, in the off-season, and, in spring, when the carnival started up, Bobby and I were sent to live with Aunt Net, Uncle Bill, and Uncle George, Dad’s uncles and aunt, in a grand three-storey house on Silverbirch Avenue in Toronto, two blocks from Balmy Beach. There, for four months of each year, Bobby and I immersed ourselves in the activities of our Toronto pals while Mom and Dad worked the carnival circuit by themselves.
Logical Connections
CHAPTER 2
Some find it difficult to imagine how my parents, who lived the carnival life and rode motorcycles, could end up digging for treasure. Yet it was a logical progression. Everything about them — their values, their skills, their strengths, and even their weaknesses — made them just the right candidates for the big adventure of Oak Island.
Let me give a clearer picture of our off-the-road life. My parents went with the carnival each spring, but in the fall, they came back, flush with money and eager to set about their other, very different lives.
In those days, the carnival was open from ten in the morning to after midnight six days a week. On Sundays the show train wound its way from city to city, while performers caught a break. But for the most part, travelling with the carnival meant four or five months of a relentless grind in sweltering heat, stormy wind, soaking rain, or cold so intense that fingers fumbled with tickets and money.
After the Canadian National Exhibition, which, except for Sundays, was a two-week stretch of eighteen-hour days, the show travelled through a series of fall fairs in towns such as Leamington, Ontario, or Trois-Rivières, Quebec, until heavy rain and bitter cold, the harbingers of winter, kept spectators away. Then the show wound its way back to storage in Brantford to hibernate until the following spring. Performers and concessionaires were exhausted. Many would head south for the winter or go to home bases across Canada.
Mom and Dad would come back from a summer on the road, tired and very thin, the result of having shaken pounds off all summer racing their motorcycles round and round inside the Globe of Death. For their efforts they would have a few extra thousand dollars to pay some bills and buy a big-ticket item or two, like a sewing machine, refrigerator, or new furnace. But no holiday was on their agenda. Instead, Dad immediately went to work as a plumber/steamfitter for Stelco, Hamilton’s mammoth steel plant.
Our summer lives consisted of Mom and Dad on the road