From Uncle Vellanoff's Journal

Funny How That Worked Out

     The troupe played the Old Majestic Theater in Fort Worth, Texas, for three weeks. Shortly after we moved on, that theater burned to the ground. I’m almost positive that there was no connection between that event and our having been there.

    Just after we started in Fort Worth we begin missing equipment. Nothing that was of much value, but it was irritating to come up to a performance and find that a prop was missing. For example, the show had a juggling act, and one night just before he went on, instead of having five pins to juggle he only had four. The act was sort of lame without that fifth pin.

    Nearly every night it was the same. After four performances got messed up, several of us decided to do something about it. The police weren’t interested in pursuing our problem as there was nothing missing that had much value.

    One evening after our performance, three of us stayed in the prop room. Jack was in a closet, I was behind a rack of costumes, and Jerry was inside a wardrobe trunk.

    About three in the morning we heard the prop room door open and a shadowy form came creeping in. It was a man, or at least someone dressed in trousers and a jacket. The individual rummaged around the room some, and then picked up an elaborate headdress one of our dancers used for one of her numbers, put it in a big bag, and headed for the door.

    He had to come past me to get out of the room, so I jumped out and yelled, “What are you doing?”

    He was obviously startled, especially when Jack and Jerry came out of hiding. The intruder dropped the headdress, and made a dash for the door. Since I was in the way he knocked me on my backside and ran out. The three of us were right behind him.

He dashed out onto the stage, stumbled over a prop, and went head first into the orchestra pit. When we got down to him, he was on his feet, but just barely. He obviously had a broken arm, and was bleeding from a cut on his head, where he had used it to smash up a music stand.

We helped him out of the orchestra pit up onto the stage, and started toward the back door where we had a car. On the way off the stage he caught his foot in a coil of rope used to raise and lower a stage light. This pulled the rope loose, which released the heavy light. Just before it hit the stage the light clipped him on the side of the head and shoulder. It didn’t cut his ear clear off, but close enough to start more blood flowing from his head, then it dislocated his shoulder.

By this time, he was screaming with the pain. We tore off his shirt and had him hold it to his ear and the other cut on his head to help control the bleeding. He was a mess.

Once out the back door, we were going down the three steps to the parking lot. Our intruder tripped and fell down the steps landing on one knee, which nearly tore off one pant leg. The knee was bleeding and he was limping.

Nothing more happened besides the intruder getting his hand caught in the door as we were putting him in the car. He swore like a sailor. We thought it was an overreaction, but later found out that the door broke three of his fingers.

Luckily, the police station was only a block away. Otherwise, the guy could really have gotten injured, being so clumsy and all.

Word got around that it was not a good idea to mess with our troupe, so we had no further trouble with missing props, or come to think about it, anything else. Funny how that worked out.