John Martin Wyatt was born in Ohio during a depression that was called The Panic in 1876. At age eight, Johnny carried a wooden box filled with shoe shine equipment. He helped make a living for his parents, grandparents, and his two sisters. His mother Nancy Margaret Frances Fitzgerald Wyatt ran a boarding house by the railroad tracks in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was Irish and her parents were born in County Cork, Ireland. Her husband Thomas Martin Wyatt was Welsh and English. Thomas was unable to work because he had painful arthritis he called rheumatism. Two daughters Sarah, (nick named Sade), and Alberta (who they called Bert) helped Nancy in the boarding house in Indianapolis. Customers for shoe shines were scarce and Johnny, the youngest of the three children, frequently played with a gang of Jewish boys. Most of the gang didn't like having a member with an Irish name, so they gave him a Jewish nick-name, Ikey Spivins. The police knew Johnny as Ikey Spivins. The gang was made up of street-wise mischievous youngsters who broke windows, stole pieces of ice out of the ice wagon and that type of behavior. They were not bad boys. When the gang did something wrong everyone ran. Little Ikey was the one who was frequently caught by the Irish cops.
The police knew Ikey's Irish mother very well. Nancy Wyatt helped the police by keeping an eye open for known criminals who occasionally stopped at her rooming house by the railroad tracks. The Pinkerton Detective Agency offered Nancy a position as a private detective, but she declined the offer. Ikey's mother was influential at the police station. Patrolmen complained, "We catch Ikey and bring him in the station front door, then he goes right out the back door with his Irish mother."
At age twelve Ikey decided to visit his oldest sister who lived and worked in Chicago. Alberta answered to the name of Bert. Without telling his folks, he climbed on the iron cow-catcher on the front of a steam engine train and rode all the way to Chicago. He arrived at Bert's doorstep bare-footed, dirty, and hungry.
Bert had a date to go to the Chicago State Fair with her boyfriend, and she was shocked to see her little brother Johnny show up. She always called Ikey by his real name John or Johnny. She could see he was dirty and hungry, so, she fed him and made him take a bath. She took him to a store and bought him clean clothes and shoes. Then she and her boyfriend took him to the fair. After phoning home to inform her parents, she sent Johnny back home by train. When he arrived home, Nancy Margaret Francis Fitzgerald Wyatt sent her son to his room where he waited for his father to whip him. This whipping did not break Johnny from riding trains. He continued to hitch rides on trains until he married Helen Avery. Johnny became a fireman working on the trains between Chicago and Indianapolis. He loved trains all his life and spent most of his adult years searching for adventure usually close to a railroad.
In 1898 John volunteered to serve under the command of Teddy Roosevelt in the seventh cavalry Rough Riders. They fought in Cuba during the Spanish American War. While in the army he became part of a troop of entertainers. The act was performed by having the soldiers line up in formation standing in front of a high portable wooden wall. Each man carried a rifle with bayonet attached. They did military drills with the rifles. Then they formed a human pyramid to reach the top and scale the high wall. John was the smallest man. He was the last to scale the wall by jumping up to grasp and climb a rifle held by men hanging from the top of the wall. The act was seen by Buffalo Bill Cody who used the same act in the Wild West Show he had created in 1883. The soldier act is preserved in a documentary movie about Buffalo Bill. I have a photo of John and the soldiers climbing the wall.
In 1916 John Martin Wyatt left Shreveport, Louisiana with his lovely blond wife Helen and four daughters. They traveled in four canvas covered wagons with John's parents and his sisters Sade and Bert. Horses pulled the wagons. On hills and other difficult places on the trail, everyone walked or pushed the wagons to help the horses. John's parents drove one wagon. His sister, Sade with her children Lloyd, and Frank O'Toole drove the second wagon. John, Helen, and their three daughters traveled in the third wagon. The forth wagon carried Bert and her husband and children.
In his late teens, in 1909, John Martin Wyatt went to work for the government. He was the first person ever hired to polish the marble statues in the city of Indianapolis. He liked seeing the marble after it was cleaned and polished. He later got a job as an artist carving marble tombstones.
John called himself a Jack-of-all-trades, but he was not good at farming. They stopped about half way to Colorado in Oklahoma. John tilled some fields and planted corn near the farm where his brothers lived. The rows of corn were not straight. The rows were so crooked that his brothers laughed at his efforts to farm. John packed up and took his family back on the road going westward. He was a good singer, dancer, comedian, and musician. He played the harmonica, spoons, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and Jews-harp. He did slight of hand magic acts. John used his family in his shows when they performed in schools, taverns, barns, or on the trail using a wagon bed for a stage.
People on the trail west were starved for entertainment in 1916. John worked up three complete shows his family performed on successive nights. Often the towns people begged the Wyatts to stay and repeat the shows over and over again. John was a great comic. His wife Helen sang like an angel. She was beautiful with light colored hair that hung below her hips. The whole family performed including John's sisters Sade and Bert. Others who performed were his gray haired mother and full bearded father. John's four beautiful daughters had sweet voices when they sang. John made money putting on the shows as they traveled. He also sold goods to farmers or to people in the remote towns. He sold things that were easy to carry. He sold medicines, buttons, needles and thread he carried in the wagon. The family had invested all their money on supplies to make the long journey, so they had to make stops along the way to earn money for food. It took more than a year to reach the homestead in Colorado. They had crossed mountains, deserts, and rivers. John 's hair fell out and he took the nick-name Baldy.
Thelma Wyatt was the baby when the Wyatts arrived in Colorado in the covered wagons. The family homesteaded four adjoining ranch properties located thirty miles north of Trinidad, Colorado. John was frequently off the place to earn money and often worked in carnivals or as a brakeman on the railroad. Thelma remembers the alligators he bought to show people in many towns of Colorado and Northern New Mexico.
My Aunt Thelma said, "The beasts were from one to two feet long. Daddy had bought a bunch of them and he brought them home. Sometimes he would take me with him to different carnivals. Daddy was a barker and he stood on a bally (carnival platform) to ballyhoo the customers, and have them pay to see the baby alligators. He had me stand next to him, and I would hold up an alligator to show the people. I was five years old and wasn't scared of reptiles yet like I am now. Daddy would turn a gator over on it's back and hypnotize it by gently stroking it's abdomen, and the alligator would always go to sleep. Daddy would sometimes hypnotise a rooster. First he drew a straight line in the dirt. Then he pushed the rooster's head down to the line and made the rooster look down the line. The rooster always stood there with his head down looking at it, and he wouldn't move or run away. People thought that was amazing. You can hypnotize a lizard or horned toad the same way you do gators by stroking their bellies. In those days people didn't have television and they saw alligators for the very first time when we showed them. I was never bitten."
"Daddy went out on the desert and used a forked stick to catch rattle snakes and all kinds of snakes. He put them in boxes and sold a lot of them. Sometimes he had a snake pit at a carnival. He never stayed in the pit because he would get my sister Sarah or Edith to stay in the pit. They would sit still down there in the snake pit. People would pay to look down at them with all the snakes crawling around."
"Dad liked selling his hamburgers. When he didn't have a lot of customers standing by, Daddy threw a handful of chopped onions on the grill. The smell of grilled onions could be sensed for several hundred yards around. People followed their noses to find Daddy's hamburgers. He made up songs and sang to the people as they walked by. He would get their interest and make them hungry and they would pay twice as much for his delicious hamburgers."
My mother Alberta had a very close relationship with her father John Wyatt. When she was a kid she had three sisters but no brother yet. John chose Alberta to act as his son. He taught her how to patch the roof when it rained and how to play catch with a ball. He encouraged her in everything boys do, and he taught her adult poems and songs. He taught her to sing and to play the guitar and mandolin. My mother Alberta told me some of the patter and songs her father sang.
She said, "At fairs, after getting a few peoples attention with the delicious aroma of out-door cooking, and his burning onions trick, dad would get attention from the milling people. My mother Helen would be standing right there behind him as he sang about her running away. She always laughed and so would all the customers waiting for their hamburgers. He'd play his guitar, then work like mad to make the best sandwiches on the circuit. He always charged ten cents because he used the best meat, buns and salad. Other stands sold them for a nickel but not dad. The people would line up to buy them. He made a cabbage slaw for topping and it was delicious! He'd say, 'Ladies, gentlemen, and discombobulated citizens. Come closer. Step right up and refresh yourselves. You over there. Come here! Gather round me ladies. I want you to listen to every word I have to say and govern yourselves accordingly.'"
"Daddy liked to use big words he learned in the dictionary, and some, he just made up. He'd say, 'This is Uncle John's store, this is Honest John's stand. That old bald-headed rascal, the hamburger man. He'll try and he'll please you the best that he can. Ol' bald-headed John the hamburger man.'"
"He made some hamburgers for a while, then he would start up again. 'My wife, she's gone, and she's left me. She's gone, far away. She left me selling hamburgers and hot dogs all the long day. She's gone away with another man, over this country to roam. That's the reason I'm selling hamburgers and hot dogs all alone.' Mamma was standing right beside him laughing because she thought he was so cute, and the crowd would be lined up for a block waiting for a double priced, delicious hamburger. The price was ten cents, while others sold them for a nickle. Daddy used fresh meat and fresh buns and the best relish in the country. He had his own secret recipe."
"Then he'd say, 'Step right up, folks. Sit down. Make yourself at home. Say, Uncle John, I've come home to eat. What's that? [pause] Where's the table, where's the chair? Christian Science, imagine they're there. Sit down and help yourself. What's that? You don't know where to sit? Sit down on your finger and lean back on your thumb. You ask. What am I making? Cat's fur to make a pair of kitten's breeches. Are you thirsty? Step right up. Ice cold lemonade, five cents a glass. Freeze your teeth and give your tongue a sleigh ride.'"
"His patter had little stories about having black children and working them to death in his kitchen. In those days everybody seemed accustomed to hearing racial kidding. He said, 'Yes, they are in the back cutting the eyes out of potatoes. They are crying their own eyes out while they chop up the onions. You should see the floor. It is wet from their tears. You shoud have a little bite to eat. Come on, help a child keep his job. Buy a hot dog with chopped onions on it.' "
Alberta my mother remembered her grandfather Thomas Martin Wyatt. Thomas had arthritis and pure white hair. Thomas held little Alberta on his lap and educated her in folklore. Sometimes she washed his beard and made it shiny white. She learned about fairies and leprechauns. He taught her to have faith that a butterfly could be coaxed to land on her finger. I have watched her call out, "Come on little butterfly. Come and rest on my finger. I won't let anyone hurt you." I have watched in wonder to see a big yellow butterfly come land on her finger. She used to have red ladybugs land on her finger too, and they never bit her. But sometimes they bit me when one landed on my bare skin.
My mom, Alberta Brown said, "I remember two of my Dad's little acts we performed traveling west. He blackened his face and he dressed as a young black kid. My mom would be on stage seated at a table. Dad knocked on a door and was asked to come on in and take a chair. People laughed as he walked in and picked up a chair to carry off stage. Mom made him put the chair down and told him his early morning chores. The chores included feeding and milking a bunch of cows. Then she said, 'Come inside after working and have some breakfast.' Then dad asked what she ate for breakfast and mother described a fabulous tasty breakfast. Dad indicated he would be hungry from all the chores. Then Mom said,'Oh, I just told you what I eat. You get to have boiled mush. After breakfast you go out and plow twenty acres, then you come in for lunch.'"
"Dad asked what she ate for lunch, and Momma described a swell lunch she would eat, but that her farm hand would only get mush. She told about a lot of work to do after his lunch, then described a swell dinner she would eat, but that his dinner would be fried mush. Dad's closing line was, 'Don't you think you are giving me too mush, mush?'"
My Mom said, "Dad would have me play a statue while he played a colored janitor who was dusting me off with a feather duster. When he wasn't looking I changed positions and bonked him on the head with my hand. This act went on, and the audience always laughed at Dad's shenanigans."
Grampa Thomas told my Mom she could catch birds by throwing salt on their tails. Mom tried to get me to catch them that way too, but I couldn't get close enough before they flew away. For the rest of her life Alberta believed the stories her grandfather told. She remembered how he let her wash his grey beard until it was white as snow. She remembered how he got sick and died from Bright's Disease in 1919 in Trinidad, Colorado. She was very close to her grandfather and loved him very much.
John Wyatt was called Ikey Spivins for only a short time in his youth, but I suspect it was during those years that he learned to speak dialects from talking to the new Americans living in the city of Indianapolis. In his mind he gathered a fortune of material he later used to tell stories and make people laugh. John's family put on performances in fourteen states over a period of ten years. At one time while in Texas, they performed with Buffalo Bill Cody on his Wild West Show.
The curtain opened showing a school room with a teacher and her students. They were singing, School Days, School Days, Dear Old Golden Rule Days. John's wife, Helen, played the absent minded teacher. She told familiar children's stories. She got all the stories mixed up with each other. She would have the big bad wolf sleeping in the three little pigs' beds and Goldilocks pushing Humpty Dumpty down the hill to fetch a pail of water. The whole Wyatt family was in on this act, and it was a good situation comedy. During this time they all got to know Buffalo Bill.
While living in the boarding house as a youth, Aunt Sade learned to use strong language and to be independent. She and Bert were not considered sweet young lassies by the historians probably because of Aunt Sade's swearing and her many friendships with traveling men who stayed at the boarding house. Before coming west she had known Buffalo Bill. He taught her to trick shoot with a rifle perhaps the same tricks he taught Calamity Jane. Both ladies learned to use a mirror to shoot and hit a target behind them. They used the mirror to look back over a shoulder. Aunt Sade knew Gypsies and they taught her to read palms and tea leaves to tell fortunes. Her sister-in-law, Helen was known as a sweet, gullible woman, and she begged Aunt Sade to tell her future. Aunt Sade refused many times and would never do it. She would only look at the leaves or into Helen's palm. It is interesting to note that Helen later died in a car crash at age fifty.
John loved and respected his older sister we remember as Aunt Sade McNamara. He relied on her to make important decisions. She knew home remedies and how to handle emergencies. She was brought up in the boarding house her mother Nancy Margaret Frances Fitzgerald Wyatt owned. The men taught her to swear like a man and to act like a man when the need arose. She was able to think straight and fast, and she was able to handle all emergencies. John felt lucky to have this wise sister, but his wife and children were a little afraid of Aunt Sade because of her strong language and quick temper. She helped give the red haired Irish their spicey reputation.
John Wyatt learned about magic and used it for one of his side shows called Spidora. As people looked at this attraction they would see a huge spider with legs that moved. Right in the middle of it's body they would see the live head of a beautiful girl. Usually the girl was Sarah, John's older daughter with beautiful long blond hair. The spider girl illusion was created with mirrors and she looked like a real freak. After viewing John's daughter as Spidora, a lady came up to John and said, "She looks unhappy. Why don't you put her out of her misery. Kill her!"
Ikey Spivins grew up to live a fruitful life. He raised six daughters and a son. My mother loved him very much but she was often peeved. When one of Alberta's boyfriends came to the house her dad would entertain them with magic tricks, music, jokes, and songs.
Alberta said, "Daddy was a good presto-digitator. He would show my boyfriends a coin and make it disappear before their eyes. He would take a piece of cigarette paper and tear it up into little pieces. He rolled pieces into a little ball while we watched every move he made. Then he would show us the ball of paper, unfold it, and the paper would be all in one piece. I always enjoyed having my Dad meet my boyfriends but would have preferred being the center of attention myself."
In his late fifties John Martin Wyatt died in a model T Ford accident. Many friends attended his funeral in Phoenix, Arizona. No one could remember seeing so many cars following the hearse to the cemetery where John Martin Wyatt was buried. My mother, Alberta, named me after him. She was probably the only one in my family who knew her father's childhood name, Ikey Spivins.