Modern Screen magazine	May,1962

MY SON HAS THREE FATHERS

By Joan Reynolds as told to Helen Weller

Lots of people think we should have our heads examined because we cart our child with us wherever we go. Since his pop is Nick Reynolds, on eof the Kingston Trio who make music all over the country, there's a lot of go in our lives.

Josh, the apple our collective eye, is twenty-one months old and so far he's racked up something like 80,000 miles of cross-country travel, so you can imagine how many people have told us we're crazy.

This doesn't bother us. Nick says, "I dig my kid. I want to have him with me. I don't want to be a father, courtesy of A.T&T. I want to raise my child myself, not through long distance calls. And I also happen to love my wife, too."

So who am I to complain? And there's not a peep of complaint out of Josh. But no wonder -- with the other Trio members, Bob Shane and John Stewart, often getting into the act, my lucky little son has three "fathers" to make a fuss over him!

I began to go on the road with Nick as soon as we were married. The boys play in nightclubs, auditoriums and college towns all over the country. The first year, we were on tour ten months out of twelve, and it was a ball.

But when I learned I was going to have a baby, that was something else. Nick and I had to sit down and talk over some important facts of life. What to do after the baby came? The thought of remaining e with the baby while Nick traveled threw me. I loved my husband too mush for that. And the thought of leaving the baby home while I traveled with Nick was just as bad. Nick has a rational mind. "Look," he said, "I don't want to live like a lot of other guys in show business who are married but live like bachelors. I want a family life, even if my work does take me away from home most of the time. If I have a kid and travel without him, I'll end up hating my work. If I have to give up my work in order to stay home with my kid, maybe I'll end up hating the kid. And if we're going to travel together and leave the baby home with a nurse, why have a baby in the first place? The solution's simple. We'll take the baby with us.

It seemed simple to Nick, because he's so full of love for his baby that nothing is too difficult, ridiculous or unusual, provided it will keep his family by his side.

We started taking the baby with us when lie was only six weeks old, and now-some twenty-one months and 80,000 miles later-Josh shows he is thriving on it. He may not be sleeping in his own crib every night, but he's always got Ills very own set of parents with him. That's more security than a fixed. address, we think.

Nevertheless, we were apprehensive the first time we took the baby with us on what we called the trial run. Josh was still an infant, and the boys were due to play a date in Fresno, California. If the trial run worked, we'd put our baby on a portable basis from then on. I felt it just had to work. I was a lucky girl to have a husband who wanted to have his wife and baby with him.

I loaded up on paraphernalia for the baby so that the trip would be a success. I loaded our station wagon with a car bed, collapsible buggy, portable crib, and three suitcases filled with enough little kimonos, diapers, shirts and baby food to take care of quintuplets. I had a few qualms: How in heaven's name would our precious little baby react to a strange hotel room, to a strange crib.

Josh turned out to be a little cherub. He ate on time, burped on time. cooed on time, cried for his food on time and slept around the clock, He was so comfortable in the car bed that we never bothered to set up anything else for him. And we left most of the baby stuff in the station wagon. Operation Baby was such a success, Nick and I blithely made plans for the next trip, which was to Wke place something like one week later. Only this time I left most of the paraphernalia at home.

n Babies seem to adjust better to changes than grown people. When we were about to leave for New York, where the Trio had an engagement, I thought, "Oh, now we're heading for trouble. The three-hour change in time will throw the baby right off his schedule.

Nick and I are confused for days trying to adjust to the new hours, but not the baby. The baby, we discovered, follows the sun and the moon, not the clock. He slept when it was dark, awoke when it was light, and his tummy went right on Eastern Standard Time.

He's put a lot of our worries to rest. En route to one of the boys' engagements, I gave Josh, still an infant, some cold milk on the plane, for lack of warm, amid the, alarmed looks of the passengers who thought I should be reported to the SPCC for cruelly to my baby. Josh didn't get colicky, he didn't get sick, he didn't get anything as a result of the cold milk. He just kicked up his plump little legs And gurgled. He goes through all the inconveniences of traveling like a champ. Because he doesn't have a permanent set of little friends, he's learned to play with hotel elevator operators, and is very happy.

Nick is happy, too-by far, one of the happiest fathers alive, I think he's happier than most fathers because he realizes what we have to go through in order for him to be with his son. Nick has to improvise, as the baby does, in order to have a normal relationship with his little son. At the Ambassador Hotel, where the boys regularly play in the hotel's Coconut Grove, Nick takes Josh out on the sedate hotel lawns to play. Nick climbs the palm trees and pulls Josh up after him, both raising a whoop and a holler, much to the annoyance of the guests whose quiet is disturbed.

n While Nick climbs trees with Josh on the lawns of the various hotels, Bob Shane and John Stewart, the other Trioites, go even farther. They play tag with Josh in hotel corridors, and either Bob or John has kept Josh amused many a rainy afternoon by taking him to the main lobby of the hotel where he can play with the automatic doors. Josh's squeals of wonder and delight, as the doors open and close without being touch d, can be heard all around the lobby, and John or bob -- whichever one is watching him, that afternoon -- sits back calmly amid the stares of everyone else in the lobby.

Traveling with the whole Kingston Trio can be quite an experience for a fun-loving little boy. Let fans all over the country buy tickets to hear the Trio make wonderful music; to Josh, the Trio has another purpose. They make a wonderful circle with which to toss him around, from one to the other like a rubber ball.

In a way, Josh travels with his own built-in sitters and playmates. When people wonder if Josh is ever lonely on the road, since he has no other children with him. I reply, "Not a bit, How can he be when he has a couple of grown-up children like Bob and John to play with?"

Josh doesn't remember the tirne when he didn't have John and Bob around. They're buddies of his. In fact, he calls John "Buddy " -- a nickname John loves. Although John is the new member of the Trio, he's Josh's closest pal.

John had been a rock 'n' roll singer at the Los Angeles County Fair when the original Kingston Trio first heard him several years ago. The boys and John clicked, and they kept in touch with each other.

When Dave Guard left the Trio last Summer, there was an important void to fill. Only a young man of a certain personality and talent could slip into the spot as the new third member of the Kingston Trio. Nick and Bob remembered John -- they liked his voice, the way he played the guitar, his clean-cut looks. He seemed heaven-sent to replace Dave, and John accepted eagerly.

However, there had to be a lot of rehearsing, first day and night. Since John's wife, Julie, was pregnant, they decided it would be best if Julie remained with her folks in Los Angeles, and he would go to San Francisco alone.

We knew John didn't have much money, and we liked him a lot besides. So we asked him to move in with us.

n From that time on, in Josh's eyes John has always been a member of the family. While he lived with us, John insisted upon staying with the baby so that Nick and I could get out more often. He and Josh struck up a delightful friendship that even now, when we're on tour, John will automatically take over and baby-sit.

One night, when the boys were through with the late show in a hotel, there was a big press party tossed in their honor. Every few minutes, John kept disappearing , much to the annoyance of the photographers who wanted to catch the three Kingstons together. John didn't care. He kept popping out of the room all night. "Where'd you go?" we asked him later. "Why, to look in on Josh," hr replied simply.

Not only are we delighted by all this, but Julie is delightful too. "Just imagine," she told me, just before her own baby was born, "when our baby comes, John is going to be a very experienced young father -- thanks to the training he's had with Josh."

There's another baby in the Kingston Trio -- Bob Shane's adorable baby girl, Jody. Jody's only eight-months old and Louise, Bob's wife, prefers to have Jody remain in the security of their beautiful, large home which has a sweeping view of San Francisco Bay.

I don't blame her. Louise is from Atlanta and Bob was born and raised in Hawaii. He came to California to join Nick and the group that was to become the Kingston Trio. Their home is roots to them, and I would hardly expect any mother and baby to be quite as footloose as I am with my baby. I can see Louise's point of view, and she can see mine. Louise frequently brings Jody down to Las Angeles not too far from home, when the boys play there. Although Bob misses his baby when he's on the road, he agrees that she's better off at home.

n However, Nick is of a different pattern. There are times -- even if it's only for hours -- when he feels absolutely deprived if he feels absolutely deprived if he doesn't have his son with him. Such a time occurred recently when the boys were asked to make a TV pilot at Paramount Studios while they were in L.A.

Nick asked me to come along with Josh, so that when the show was over we could all hop into our convertible and take a spin out to the beach.

Ordinarily, we don't let Josh sit in on things when the boys are working. Nick thinks that's unprofessional, and so do I. I used to be in show business before I married Nick. I was a night club comedienne in San Francisco -- in fact that's how I met Nick. Much as we both love our child, we wouldn't dream of letting him sit in on a session and disrupt their work.

So Josh and I waited in the dressing room. When there is a break, Nick came in and asked me to bring Josh on the set. Josh was so happy to be on the stage, he was remarkably well-behaved. Then rehearsals resumed. As soon as the boys began to sing, Josh began to howl. There was just no stopping him. I gathered up Josh, and started to carry him back to the dressing room, but he cried louder and squirmed out of my arms, running to the boys.

John walked over, took Josh in his arms patted him tenderly on the head and said, "Come on, buddy. We'll play later." Josh shut up promptly, and a big smile filled his face. There wasn't a peep out of him after that.

n However, being on a constant move with a lively little boy isn't all a picnic, either. Young children have a way of coming down with all kinds of illnesses at the most unexpected times, and the Kingston Trio has a rigid schedule of dates which must be met. Sometimes the two occasions don't jell. Like the time we were to leave New York in October. Nick had just gotten out of the hospital after a minor operation, and was still wobbly. He was well enough to go, but I had to take care of him. Came takeoff time and Josh's little face was red with fever. I couldn't let Nick travel alone, because of his semi-weak condition, and I couldn't very well put a baby with a raging temperature on a plane either.

The doctor came over and gave the baby an injection. So help me, just hours before the Trio was to leave, Josh looked up at us and cooed happily, his face as cool as an autumn leaf, his temperature gone. We were off en famille.

It's as though the baby wants to cooperate with us to prove to everybody that pouf, it's nothing for someone in the swaddlers' set to zigzag all over the map and be cozy as a child who travels from home to nursery school . He eats out of baby food jars which we keep in the hotel room, he plays tag with the maids in the hotel and it doesn't phase him one bit that he may be playing in Central Park one day and in the Sioux City Zoo grounds the next. It's his daddy who's romping on the grass with him -- wherever it is -- and that's all that counts.

Nick is so delightful to have his child with him that he's always thinking of ways to help Josh feel at home, wherever we are. Whenever we move into a new hotel room, Nick gets on his hands and knees and plays hide-and-seek with Josh. Through the game, Josh gets to peek into every nook and cranny in the room, he gets to know all the doors and where they lead to, and when the game is over the room is home to Josh.

Of course, sometimes my husband carries the togetherness too far. There was a time when he insisted that we take Sam with us on tour. Sam is a dog. He is not only a dog, he is a white Husky. A full-grown Husky is about the closest thing to a full-grown bear I've ever seen. However, Sam was a roly-poly little puppy when we first got him, during one of our rare stopovers at home. Josh took to Sam like an old pal and the two rolled over the floor in bubbling high spirits, joined, I might add, by Nick.

As we prepared to go on the road again, I made plans to leave Sam with one of Nick's sisters. Nick was appalled. "You can't do that. We've got to take Sam with us." "Sam?" I said weakly. "With us? You forget, honey, we're going to New York. To a hotel room. Hotels don't like dogs. Especially in New York. And we're taking a baby. Don't you think that's enough?"

But Nick wanted Sam. "I want Josh and Sam to grow up together," he said, rather plaintively. How he did it, I don't know, but he got the hotel to agree to accommodate Sam.

The engagement in New York lasted four weeks. Somehow, in those four weeks Sam grew from a rollicking little puppy to a full-grown Husky the size of a pony. We had to take a larger suite so that he could bound from one room to the other. He cost us a fortune in broken furniture, and another fortune in bellboy tips. And the hotel read the riot act. That was the end of Sam's travels with the Kingston Trio.

But not of Josh's. If we needed to know whether we were doing the right thing in taking Josh with us, we found out lastsummer when we had our first long separation.

n The Kingston Trio was invited to play in the Far East. Eagerly, I was set to go with the baby (we were such veterans now that traveling to the Far East with the baby held no problems). But when I learned that the boys had been asked to make certain tours in the Far East for the State Department, we decided it was not a good idea for Josh and me to go.

After six weeks, Nick came home.Bounding into the living room, he called, "Let's see the baby, Where is he?"

Josh toddled into the room, his chubby little legs walking very uncertainly. When Nick had left, Josh was still in the crawling stage, and I thought he would be thrilled to see his little son walking. Instead, Nicks face fell. "He walked," he mumbled sadly, "My little son took his first step and I wasn't here to see it. I'll never be away from my son that long again."
So we go blithely on, the three of us together. It means making arrangements with sitters in each city; it means losing sleep for Nick; it means lots of packing, unpacking and picking up for me; it means sometimes, rearranging the Trio's bookings for Josh's comfort.

And as Josh gets older, he becomes more of a handful. Since he's learned how to climb out of a crib, he comes into our bedroom at the most ungodly hours and tugs at our blankets. Nick wakes up (I'm good a faking sleep), and although he may have gone to bed only a few hours before, after a long night's work on the stage, Nick hops out of bead and sits on the floor playing with his son.

Out of one half-opened eye I see father and son together, expressions of total bliss on Josh's face and Nick's, as they have these mornings of companionship together and I think, "No matter how hard it may be, it's worth taking our child with us just so there can be mornings like this."

By Joan Reynolds
as told to Helen Weller
Rhe Kingston Trio's later album is The Kingston Trio Close-Up for Capitol Records.

Last revised: February 23, 2006.