AdVENTures in Blogging

       
 Is anyone wondering why the letters V-E-N-T are uppercase in the middle of a word?  (See the word AdVENTures.)  Well, in case you're wondering, VENT refers to ventriloquism. Since ventriloquism has been an important part of my life, I chose to emphasize the letters VENT.  My paternal grandfather, Howard A Olson, was a ventriloquist in Vaudeville.  His stage name was The Great Chesterfield. To me he was known as Gramps.  I was exposed to the world of ventriloquism quite a bit in my early years because my parents and I lived with Gramps when I was a child.  Gramps raised me after my mom left and my dad got sick.  He was a good soul, and I'm fortunate he was a big part of my early years.

Gramps introduced my Uncle Howie to ventriloquism as well.  Early on Howie’s stage name was Chester LeRoy.  Later he was better known as Howie Olson.  His figure, Cowboy Eddie, was well known to some because Howie and Eddie spent a number of years on TV in Madison Wisconsin.  Uncle Howie spent his entire adult life as a ventriloquist and figure maker.  Gramps, however, had to get a real job to support his family.  

In recent years I searched for information about Gramps and Uncle Howie.  At first there was very little information about either of them.  I stuck with it though, and I eventually began to find sites dedicated to ventriloquism.  In fact, earlier this month, I went to the Ventriloquist ConVENTion in Hebron Kentucky.  That trip deserves its own post so I’ll end this post here.