Do You Trust Your Wife

The Hula Hoop was very popular at this time and my father worked in New York. I don't know how our family got on the show, but I got to demonstrate my hula hoop abilities. I was seven years old, and it was nearing Christmas because I can recall the theater being very cold. After showing how well I hula-hooped, Johnny Carson quizzed me on some popular Holiday songs. I think I named three that the band played ( Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Here comes Santa Claus ). I won ten silver dollars which I was made to give one to a few of my sisters (mainly because they didn't get to be on stage like me ) after the show. I ended up keeping the lion's share.My mom and dad went on to unscramble letters making two words on a large board kept behind a curtain. The answer turned out to be "Adalai Stevenson" which won some fair amount of money for our family. The show appeared to be live, but I'm now certain was edited. It took two days to complete because my parents came back to the studio to participate in the final 'quiz' the next day. That was fortunate for them because I found out later that they had "peeked' at the jumbled quiz board and figured out the scrambled words before they returned to the studio. I think that Johnny even invited my folks out for dinner afterward, but they were too nervous and politely refused.