that this citizen had “gone to America.” Andre was now removed from the family record and, in effect, written out of their lives.
The van Kuijks never stopped searching for answers. During World War II, Andre’s sister Johanna carried his picture, showing it to American soldiers when they reached Holland, pathetically
hoping they might know him, or perhaps had seen him somewhere and could report that he was all right.
After the war, when they had still heard nothing, Maria van Kuijk tried to remain optimistic about his return. But when another decade passed in which she waited in vain for a letter, she
figured her son was dead. Still, she lit candles for him at church, prayed for his safekeeping, and whispered the secret language that exists between extraordinarymothers and
extraordinary sons. When she died in 1958, the same year as the death of the mother of another famous man—a singer whose name would always be linked with that of her son—it was without
the knowledge of Andre’s remarkable life in America.
“She was for me a very kind, easygoing woman,” remembers her granddaughter Mieke Dons-Maas. “But she had a sadness pain because of Andre. And it never went away.”
Unless Andre had, indeed, died, the family couldn’t conceive of such cruelty, especially since Andre and his mother had once been so close. But for reasons of shame, or confusion, or the
continuing effects of his illness, perhaps, Andre van Kuijk had no grieving mother in Holland. For that matter, Andre van Kuijk did not exist at all. Tom Parker, an orphan from Huntington, West
Virginia, had taken his place. And Tom Parker, lost and alone, grew almost frantic to find his place in America.
5
TURNING THE DUKE
B Y 1933, just as Tom Parker joined the Johnny J. Jones ranks, the future of “the Mighty Monarch of the
Tented World” was in grave doubt. At the end of the 1930 season, with the Depression signaling a steady decline of customers, Jones, who had been regarded as a genius, found himself heavily
in debt. Then on Christmas Day, he unexpectedly died of uremia at the age of fifty-six, leaving his thirty-one-year-old wife, Hody Hurd, to carry on. Now Hurd had suffered a nervous breakdown, and
with her finances equally exhausted, she would sell the once-great carnival to E. Lawrence Phillips at the end of the disastrous 1933 season.
If the majority of the Johnny J. Jones troupers were downhearted, Tom Parker couldn’t have been happier to be among them. And while showing Bert Slover’s ponies at a Tampa movie
theater was a natural assignment for him, he was willing to get up at 5:30 A.M .—which became his lifelong habit to be part of the action.
From the beginning on Johnny J. Jones (where he was an independent contractor and not a salaried member of the staff), Parker set his sights on making the most money, just as he had as a young
dockhand in Rotterdam. That meant working the front end of the lot, or concessions, a broad-based term that covered food, merchandise, and gaming booths, but with one important difference:
merchandise and game operators bought their booth space by the foot; food worked on a percentage basis.
“He started out in a candy stand, making candy apples and popcorn,” says Larry Davis, owner of California’s largest outfit, Carnival Time Shows, who came to know Parker well in
the early ’70s through the - Showmen’s League of America, the venerable outdoor fraternal organization. From there, Parker told Davis, he floated throughout the carnival, doing whatever
he could—shaving ice for snow cones, running the merry-go-round, anything—trying to stay alive.
“I knew him as a concessionnaire,” says Joe McKennon, a carnival historian who worked on the shows. By the time McKennon met him, Parker had several small
concessions, adding a game or two to his food stand, which immediately made him suspect to the other showmen. Concessionaires who ran games were often crooks specializing in
The van Kuijks never stopped searching for answers. During World War II, Andre’s sister Johanna carried his picture, showing it to American soldiers when they reached Holland, pathetically
hoping they might know him, or perhaps had seen him somewhere and could report that he was all right.
After the war, when they had still heard nothing, Maria van Kuijk tried to remain optimistic about his return. But when another decade passed in which she waited in vain for a letter, she
figured her son was dead. Still, she lit candles for him at church, prayed for his safekeeping, and whispered the secret language that exists between extraordinarymothers and
extraordinary sons. When she died in 1958, the same year as the death of the mother of another famous man—a singer whose name would always be linked with that of her son—it was without
the knowledge of Andre’s remarkable life in America.
“She was for me a very kind, easygoing woman,” remembers her granddaughter Mieke Dons-Maas. “But she had a sadness pain because of Andre. And it never went away.”
Unless Andre had, indeed, died, the family couldn’t conceive of such cruelty, especially since Andre and his mother had once been so close. But for reasons of shame, or confusion, or the
continuing effects of his illness, perhaps, Andre van Kuijk had no grieving mother in Holland. For that matter, Andre van Kuijk did not exist at all. Tom Parker, an orphan from Huntington, West
Virginia, had taken his place. And Tom Parker, lost and alone, grew almost frantic to find his place in America.
5
TURNING THE DUKE
B Y 1933, just as Tom Parker joined the Johnny J. Jones ranks, the future of “the Mighty Monarch of the
Tented World” was in grave doubt. At the end of the 1930 season, with the Depression signaling a steady decline of customers, Jones, who had been regarded as a genius, found himself heavily
in debt. Then on Christmas Day, he unexpectedly died of uremia at the age of fifty-six, leaving his thirty-one-year-old wife, Hody Hurd, to carry on. Now Hurd had suffered a nervous breakdown, and
with her finances equally exhausted, she would sell the once-great carnival to E. Lawrence Phillips at the end of the disastrous 1933 season.
If the majority of the Johnny J. Jones troupers were downhearted, Tom Parker couldn’t have been happier to be among them. And while showing Bert Slover’s ponies at a Tampa movie
theater was a natural assignment for him, he was willing to get up at 5:30 A.M .—which became his lifelong habit to be part of the action.
From the beginning on Johnny J. Jones (where he was an independent contractor and not a salaried member of the staff), Parker set his sights on making the most money, just as he had as a young
dockhand in Rotterdam. That meant working the front end of the lot, or concessions, a broad-based term that covered food, merchandise, and gaming booths, but with one important difference:
merchandise and game operators bought their booth space by the foot; food worked on a percentage basis.
“He started out in a candy stand, making candy apples and popcorn,” says Larry Davis, owner of California’s largest outfit, Carnival Time Shows, who came to know Parker well in
the early ’70s through the - Showmen’s League of America, the venerable outdoor fraternal organization. From there, Parker told Davis, he floated throughout the carnival, doing whatever
he could—shaving ice for snow cones, running the merry-go-round, anything—trying to stay alive.
“I knew him as a concessionnaire,” says Joe McKennon, a carnival historian who worked on the shows. By the time McKennon met him, Parker had several small
concessions, adding a game or two to his food stand, which immediately made him suspect to the other showmen. Concessionaires who ran games were often crooks specializing in
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