Mom always had the right ticket: Showtime was all the time growing up

My mother took me places. Different places than my father. To the Bronx Zoo, to the planetarium, to endless screenings of not particularly appropriate movies. This was the early 1950, so inappropriate simply meant boring. The two of us also saw Mary Martin fly across the Broadway stage disguised as “Peter Pan.” Mom was right there next to me in our down front balcony seats when Peter asked kids to shout out their belief that Tinkerbell was an authentic fairy and deserved to live. I joined the chorus. I’m not sure, but I think I heard my mother whispering her own encouragement to Tink.

Mom had a spotty childhood. Her parents owned and operated a small restaurant. Operated meaning worked endlessly from early until late. While her mother and father ran the business, their three children were provided with an array of unusual distractions. This was Baltimore in the 1920s, and it was common for restaurants to display posters for theatrical events in exchange for passes to the shows. Accordingly, the kids were regular visitors to the Hippodrome, world of preeminent vaudeville stars.

My mother’s early enthusiasm for comics, dancers and musical acts, along with magicians, acrobats, dexterous vaudevillians who could spin plates, juggle cigar boxes, oversee animals — dogs, chimps, seals, through their routines, gave her an appreciation for variety entertainment that got passed along to me.

From time to time we visited Radio City Music Hall, sitting near the Wurlitzer pipe organ, one of the largest in the world. We were close enough so that I could not only watch as the organist commanded the four keyboards, but marvel, too, as his feet danced across the endless foot pedals.|

We saw the Rockettes at Christmas time, and when they were presenting various themes, especially salutes to Broadway musicals. Year after year, occasionally escorted by my father, we saw the Barnum and Bailey circus, and the Roy Rogers Rodeo, each colossal selling out Madison Square Garden.

Occasionally, I felt like a convenient excuse, a reason, an explanation, a cover that allowed my mother to visit all these venues. We sat side by side enjoying the shows, but rarely discussed them. Conversations were about tickets and seating, transportation, curtain times, souvenirs — many of the time I came home with a two-inch box turtle, solid in its match box home, only to have the poor creature pass away within days. Once my seat ticket contained all but the final number, oh so close, to my winning an authentic Roy Rogers real live actual pony. After that one, Mom decided to take charge of our tickets.

I did not have my own room. Each night the living room couch was transformed into my bed. Big stuffed pillows were removed and in their place I assembled my own pillow and my stuffed animals.

“Time to go to sleep,” Mom would say. “Close your eyes.”

And then she’d turn on the black and white TV and we’d watch Milton Berle, and Jackie Gleason, and Ed Sullivan, and George Gobel, and Bob Hope, and Jack Benny, and Sid Caesar, and Ed Wynn, “Your Hit Parade,” “The Steve Allen Show,” “The Red Skelton Show.” If I could manage, I’d still be awake when Jack Parr began his monologue on “The Tonight Show” .

Years passed. Courtesy of my mother’s “connections,” I became a comic and a magician. Eventually, she moved to an assisted living facility.

I was there one day when she participated in the monthly birthday celebration. Residents in wheelchairs and scooters formed the audience, mom and several other birthday celebrants “on stage.”

The hostess interviewed each guest of honor. How old are you? Where are you from? Would you like to tell a story, sing a song, recite a favorite poem?

I’m thinking about my mother, about what or if she’ll say when the microphone reaches her.

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Here it comes, “and how old are you?”

I can see her trying to come up with a number. Her memory is long gone.

“Well, I’ll tell you …” and in the best Mae West I’ve heard in a long time, “I ain’t getting any younger.”

She sells it, and is rewarded with a big laugh.

Tables turned. She’d launched me into show business, but now I’m the audience and she’s the performer.

I didn’t have what some would refer to as a “stage mother.” But I did have one hell of a show business enthusiast, a parent who schooled me in the particular magic that takes place between those on stage and those in the audience.

Kraus is the author of “You’ll Never Work Again In Teaneck, N.J.,” a memoir.