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A
memory of chipped Kewpie dolls and other chalk figures comes to me when I recall
the Arthurs’ farm house. My parents, my brother and I used to visit the Arthurs
on occasion when I was a child. They lived two miles south of Saltillo
near the site of the original town. On those evenings while the adults talked,
I wandered from one table or shelf to another in the sitting room where many of
the ornamental dolls and chalk animals were located. Almost every vacant space
on a table or a what-not shelf held two or three of the dolls. Even in the dim
light of a kerosene lamp the dolls showed signs of age. Hands were missing from
some of the human figures, but they fascinated me nevertheless. I associated these
figures with the carnivals where my parents had taken my brother and me two or
three times. The figures were similar to the prizes available to those who could
toss a ring over a stake from a certain distance or throw a baseball through a
small space in a designated target. They reminded me of an exotic life into which
I had only glimpsed.
Before Johnnie was born, Charles Caudle, Johnnie
Arthur’s father, took his wife and infant daughter, Georgia, with him in a covered
wagon drawn by oxen and began stopping in towns to perform his one-man show. According
to Georgia, in 1894 the troupe left from Bowie,
Texas, to begin a circuit. Over the next several years five other daughters
and one son were added to the family, among them Johnnie.
Caudle, a ventriloquist,
performed in country schoolhouses
with his wooden doll named Tommy. Georgia began to perform when she was two and
one-half years old, singing and dancing for the audiences. As she and her sister
Mary grew older, one accompanied on the piano while both sang. In 1984 Georgia
wrote that she remembered handling snakes in order to amaze an audience. As each
Caudle became old enough to sing a melody or dance a step, the child began to
perform.
Caudle began to hire clowns and other performers, and as the
troupe grew, it was transformed into a circus. Sixteen wagons were required to
transport the crew from town to town. In 1913 the Charles Caudle Show merged with
Lockman and Lewis. After that merger, the Caudles traveled by train.
Shortly
after Johnnie married Dow Arthur, one of her father’s employees, the pair left
the troupe and settled on the farm near Saltillo.
Georgia also married and moved to Raymondville.
On
those evenings after we had visited the Arthurs, my parents would tell my brother
and me about the performances of the Caudle troupe they had seen before I was
born. My father said that Johnnie could play not only a piano but also an accordion
and a violin. I tried to imagine the grandmother of my brother’s classmate as
one who had been in show business. Motion pictures and radio replaced the Caudles’
traveling show and the others like it, but one wonders whether there ever will
be a valid substitute for live performances.
© Robert
G. Cowser
"They
shoe horses, don't they?"
Guest Column, March 29, 2011
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