21. It was a long winter. 1900 Farmer’s Almanac.
22. The raffle put Jonathan a few dollars closer. Some sources say the raffle raised a little over $60. Other sources put the figure closer to $70. A third source inexplicably converts this amount to yen.
23. The circus troop was never at a loss for entertainment. Performers all, Jonathan’s circus family found imaginative ways to entertain one another during the long, dark nights of their Midwestern winter encampment. (Grund discouraged his performers and roustabouts from venturing into town for their diversions due to the risk of altercations with local rubes.) For many of Jonathan’s colleagues these vaudeville-like romps offered the opportunity to exercise talents that weren’t being tapped by Grund who preferred to pigeonhole his performers by their physical defects and/or bigtop performance skills. A sample “programme,” which I discovered among Jonathan’s papers, follows. Apparently, the boy played the role of mere audience member that night.
The Programme
Flora Dora Galora Our very own Gibsonian delights will entertain you with a high-kicking, toe-tapping musical medley of madcap merriment. This will be followed by a heart-stopping bottle-washing competition.
Lee and Lipner Move aside Weber and Fields! Lee and Lipner are rip-roaringly funny and gay. They throw barbs while folding newspaper into oriental oragami, then engage in a madcap bottle-washing competition.
The Man of 1000 Responses Jinks Nyberg will offer bare-tongued rebuttal and rejoinder to all comers. Then he will do some long division.
Our Pint-sized Sarah Bernhardt Wee Clarissa McGill will play Lady Macbeth as we have never seen her before — only 27 inches tall! Miss McGill will then weave a small bath mat.
Husky Henry Holton delights and confounds with his perorations on the excesses of capitalism while whittling wooden fruit.
The Norwegian Songbird Who needs Jenny Lind when our very own Jean Norvist will stand before you and sing your tear ducts dry with her heart-wrenching ballads of love and loss and incontinence. She will then circulate through the audience, sniffing proffered objects and telling where they have been.
The Goony Goofballs will pound your funny bones with verbal ballpeen hammers, they are that funny. A madcap diversion that will have you howling, but then weeping your tear ducts dry over tales of personal loss through government-sanctioned deprivation.
The evening will close with a Sousa march in a high-flying patriotic tribute to our fallen American heroes in the War to Suppress Arrogant Philippine Self-determination.
Afterwards Mr. & Mrs. Grund will offer punch and pastry in the foyer.
24. Jinks Nyberg’s career was long and varied. Among the many stops made by Jinks in his peripatetic performing career was a brief stint on the vaudeville stage as half of the comic duo of Jinks & Skinks. The two comedians were best known for their send-up of one of the first transcontinental telephone conversations — a party line involving Alexander Graham Bell from the New York City offices of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, his assistant Thomas A. Watson from San Francisco, and others, held on January 25, 1915. One of the more sanitized versions of the sketch survives. Nyberg Collection, Mid South Community College Theatre Archives.
BELL: Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.
WATSON: I cannot do that, Professor Graham Bell.
BELL: And why is that, Mr. Watson?
WATSON: Because you are in New York City and I am in San Francisco. We are 2,572 miles apart.
BELL: And yet we are talking to one another by way of this miracle of science and industry at this very moment, and with no delay whatsoever.
WATSON: Yes! Yes! It is a wonder and a miracle!
(At this point the conversation is joined by Theodore Vail, president of American Telephone and Telegraph, speaking via a spur line to Jekyll Island, Georgia.)
VAIL: Hello! Hello!
BELL: Mr. Watson, your voice has changed.
VAIL: It is not Mr. Watson. It is I, Theodore Vail, speaking to you from the Goober State.
BELL: And what has happened to Mr. Watson?
WATSON: I am still here. I understand there is someone else who wishes to join the conversation.
BELL: Ahoy! Who is there?
O. W. HOLMES: It is I, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Junior. In our nation’s capital. I have President Woodrow Wilson seated next to me. He is eager to speak to all of you.
BELL: By all means, ask him to join us.
O. W. HOLMES: (muffled) Take the mouthpiece from your ear, Mr. President. You have reversed the apparatus in a comical manner.
WILSON: (muffled) Dear me. Yes, I see.
O. W. HOLMES: One moment, gentlemen. It appears that the president is having another little stroke.
(Momentarily, President Woodrow Wilson joins the conversation.)
PRESIDENT WILSON: Good afternoon, good afternoon. What a miracle of science to be having a conversation from points far flung!
BELL: Ahoy, Mr. President! It is indeed an honor and a privilege to be speaking to you across such a distance.
PRESIDENT WILSON: May I say it?
BELL: Say what, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT WILSON: Tee hee. Come here, Watson, I need you.
BELL: Not need you, Mr. President. I want you.
PRESIDENT WILSON: Well, I want you too, sugar. Tee hee. Oh dear, I just made a monkey of myself there, didn’t I?
WATSON: It’s all the same to me.
VAIL: Mr. Watson! Come here! I want you! Ho ho!
PRESIDENT WILSON: Yes, come here this instant, you servile little man. Tee hee.
WATSON: I’m hanging up.
(A silence)
BELL: I believe we have offended Mr. Watson. (Another moment of silence.) This, gentlemen, concludes our demonstration of long distance communication. Please help yourselves to wine and cucumber sandwiches. What a day. What a day.
25. Jonathan’s legal fees were paid by a mysterious benefactor. There is a difference of opinion as to the true identity of this benefactor. Some say that it was Pettiville merchant J.P. Morgen. Morgen was occasionally confused with millionaire financier J.P. Morgan. The two did resemble one another, even down to their bulbous noses and rosaceous complexions. However, Morgen rarely left Pettiville, and Morgan rarely came to Arkansas. Additionally, Morgen hailed from the rural Ozarks and took no pains to change his accent or retire his overalls or fix his teeth or divorce his sister.