The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

by Maria Augusta Trapp

  When we arrived in New York at Pennsylvania Station, a redcap came running over and said:

  “And how is Johannes? I saw his picture in Life.”

  That would accompany us this whole trip. Once out in Ohio, we somehow had managed to lose our railroad tickets, but that copy of Life, which we had with us, served as identification.

  In New York we received at the office a thick manila envelope with long strips of green and red railroad tickets and an itinerary the size of a little booklet, saying:

  Leave New York, Pennsylvania Station…

  Arrive Haverford………….

  Leave Haverford……………

  Arrive Pittsburgh……………

  Leave Pittsburgh by bus……………

  Arrive Dayton……………

  and so on. Between “leave” and “arrive” there were hours of time. Sometimes they were filled with a concert; sometimes we would just have to wait at a bus terminal or a railroad station. It was all new to us, as we knew American railroads only from Philadelphia to New York. It was 1943, our sixth American concert tour, and the war was at its height. The whole nation seemed under arms; on the streets, in the dining rooms, in the hotels, and on the railroads, one saw only men and women in uniform; very few civilians.

  A few weeks later we felt ourselves—uniform or no uniform—members of the home front. To give our concerts was a part of the program to keep up morale, and with the very type of our music—soothing, consoling, uplifting—it had become a rather important part of that program, as dozens and dozens of letters from Army and Navy camps and all types of audiences assured us. To fulfill the assignment, by which I mean merely to move ourselves across the country, turned out to be a minor battle each day, which could be won or lost, depending on whether you made the connection between train and bus, whether you got all the members of your family in one train or, which was not less important, all the luggage. The daily battle started at the hotel with the fight for taxis. For us ten people we needed two cabs with a third one for the luggage. Although each one of us had only one medium-sized bag, there was still the spinet and three large suitcases with concert luggage and the Mass kit; in all, fifteen pieces. When we had succeeded in obtaining the taxis and landed at the station, we usually had to take the bags ourselves and ask our way through to the right platform. Although it was way ahead of train time, a huge crowd would already be assembled.

  The mere looks of our costumes made somebody invariably say:

  “I don’t want to be inquisitive, but would you mind telling me what organization that is?”

  After the mention of the Trapp Family, very often he’d say:

  “Oh, I remember now. Didn’t I see your pictures in Life?”

  Other people would come over, too, and a friendly chat would take place for half an hour, an hour, or more, until we all heard the distant rumble of the approaching train. Instantly all friendly relations ceased. Everyone looked concentratedly straight ahead, his mind set on one thing only: to get into that train at any cost. While the train was slowly rolling into the station, car after car passing by, we saw with sinking hope that people were already standing in the aisles.

  “Don’t forget to get out at…” and Georg would give the name of our destination.

  These were the famous last words of a father who wasn’t sure whether he would meet his family soon again. The next minutes were chaos. Everyone pushed his way individually into one of the cars with one or two bags, waiting expectantly to see whether the minor miracle, a vacant seat, would happen to him. Minutes after the train had left that station and everyone had disposed of his bags somewhere, somehow, the trips of reconnaissance began, and lonesome members of the Trapp Family met in corridors and related happily whom else they had seen.

  “Father is two cars to the rear with Johannes. Martina and Johanna are standing with Illi and Lorli in the ladies’ room, which is jammed full. Father Wasner is four cars ahead, right behind the dining car, and the others we don’t know.” About the luggage no questions were asked. One just hoped. And so we hoped our way through from day to day, from train to bus and from bus to train; and after two long concert tours all over Canada and the United States, it seems almost incredible that we always arrived at the same time—all of us, family and bags.

  Rosmarie and Lorli now took an important part in the instrumental section, both playing the recorders very nicely; and little Johannes was with us, too. He was just starting out to learn to play the recorder, and this important musical education would not be interrupted for six months every year. He had his lesson every day with Maria. Now he was four and a half years old. There were hours and hours of train riding at a time, and you can’t tell stories forever, so Johannes had to learn to entertain himself. That way he asked his way through the numbers and letters. Once we stopped for a concert in a convent school somewhere in the Maritime Provinces in north-eastern Canada. A darling Reverend Mother occupied herself quite a bit with the little boy, and afterwards she said very pointedly:

  “He is a very gifted child, and you should write down everything he says and does. Who knows what will become of him some day! Notice which word he reads first, for instance. Grace sometimes announces itself in such incidents.”

  A few days later I was holding Johannes on my lap, and we were looking out the window. The train had stopped in a little country town, and our particular car was standing on a street crossing. It was dusk, and the neon signs began to flicker.

  Johannes’ attention was caught, and slowly and solemnly the promising little child spelled his first word:

  “T—A—V—E—R—N.”

  I didn’t have the heart to let the Reverend Mother know this.

  This kind of traveling proved to be extremely strenuous, especially with young children. If, for instance, we had to take a train after a concert in order to reach a certain town in time for the next performance, it meant standing around on a cold, draughty platform, waiting for a train which was late, sometimes way beyond midnight. Once this happened in Illinois, and when the train finally came, it was one o’clock. Each one of us had his ticket with a Pullman reservation for his berth, and we said good-night before we entered the different sleepers, everyone set on still catching as much sleep as possible. Mine was Lower 8. I opened the curtain, took my heavy bag, swung it once, up and down, aimed, and threw it on the bed. At the same instant I heard a low moan, and out came the upper part of a man, eyes rolling wildly. His ticket also read “Lower 8” for the same car. It had been sold twice.

  Another time we were heading for Scott’s Bluff, Nebraska, and it was getting late, way past midnight. Everybody was tired. By-and-by we all had managed to get seats, except Father Wasner, when in a station suddenly my neighbor left, and Father Wasner sank in his place and immediately closed his eyes. At the next station there entered a little company, four soldiers and a girl, and they all must have had a lovely time together; they were in high spirits. They chuckled and giggled, and wanted us all to share their happiness; their hilarious laughter resounded in the car, little appreciated by the rest of us, who wanted to do only one thing: sleep. Fate would have it that two of the soldiers got a seat behind Father Wasner and me, and the one behind Father Wasner invited the girl to sit on his lap. I tried several times, turning around and looking pleadingly at the young lady, to check her outward cheerfulness somewhat, but had little success. Finally I gave up, snapped my seat, in which I had been reclining, upright, and grew angrier and angrier by the minute.

  “Just in case I should like her to know what I think,” I mused to myself, “what would I say?” and I discovered with grief that I didn’t command one single strong word in this English language which would even faintly give her an idea of my sentiments.

  While I was resolving to get hold of some useful expressions, I saw out of the corner of my eye that she had started playing with Father Wasner’s longish hair, as if she wanted to make a braid. Now this was too much. Before I could even think,
I had gotten up and straightened myself to my full height of five-foot-seven, turned, and looked at her; oh, looked—! By then our co-travelers had awakened to the fact that they were witnessing a historic moment. All talking stopped. Everyone, rapt in attention, looked at us.

  And I said—searching, hunting up and down my vocabulary for the worst, the most killing word I could find:

  “You—you—you—bedbug!”

  This word can be recommended. It did the trick perfectly.

  After a concert in Oklahoma a Colonel came backstage, almost moved to tears, With outstretched arms he congratulated us on the performance. Born in Hungary, he felt himself a close countryman to us. He took us all with him, and we had a lovely evening together. He and Georg discovered mutual friends and acquaintances, and when we finally, very, very late, said good-night, he had become “Uncle Ferdinand.” Next day he came to the train, and just before the last good-bye, he took one of the eagles from his uniform and pinned it on little Johannes’ soldier’s cap, a gift from brother Rupert. Half an hour later some soldiers passed through our car on the way to the dining car. The first one, especially friendly-looking, wanting to please that little boy, stepped up before Johannes, saluted, and said:

  “Colonel, may I request a furlough?”

  Johannes fixed his big blue eyes on the soldier and said:

  “Yes, thirty days.”

  The lucky soldier fished into his pocket and counted out thirty pennies for the gracious little Colonel. I went on reading in my book; then I suddenly discovered there was no Johannes next to me any longer. Alarmed, I got up and looked all over the car, ladies’ room, men’s room, the next car, and finally found him in the third car, busily selling furloughs all around a crowd of highly-amused privates, his little pockets full of pennies.

  The train pulled into a small town in Kansas, where we were to give a concert that night. The local manager, Mr. Sullivan, was at the station with a number of strong high school boys. The hotel was just across the street, and they carried the luggage over for us. After the concert Mr. Sullivan just happened to ask:

  “Where are you going next?”

  “We are taking the ten-thirty bus tomorrow for Wichita, where we have to catch an express train for Colorado.”

  “There is no ten-thirty bus,” Mr. Sullivan interrupted me.

  “Oh, yes, there must be. It says so on our schedule.”

  “No, that has been discontinued since the war.”

  “But we have to catch the train in Wichita.” That was all I could think of. “Then we have to take a taxi.”

  “There is no taxi in this town. That’s why we carried your luggage to the hotel ourselves.”

  “Mr. Sullivan,” I said, “I don’t care in what we go, but please have some vehicle, whatever it is, at ten-thirty tomorrow at the hotel. Whatever it costs, we have to make that train.”

  And Mr. Sullivan, a typical Community Concert man—helpful, cheerful, and a good sport, said he would.

  Next morning Agathe and I went shopping. When we came back from Main Street, there was one single vehicle in front of the hotel. Of course, that couldn’t be it, but it was almost ten-thirty, and there—the bellboys were carrying out the spinet and putting it right into what was unmistakably nothing but a hearse. Bag after bag went in, then came nine chairs.

  Mr. Sullivan’s voice said apologetically: “That’s all I could find, for an open truck would be too cold for you.”

  I got the best seat, next to the driver, the family got in, the double door was closed from the outside, and half the town assembled. Laughing and waving, we took off for Wichita. The unusual situation had put everybody in an unusually jolly mood. We started singing and yodeling, and kept on for the entire forty-minute drive. When we came to the outskirts of Wichita, we had to stop for a red light, cars stopping left and right of our hearse. After a second’s standing there together, windows were pulled down, heads appeared, no one, obviously, had ever met the phenomenon of a singing hearse before. I tried my hardest to look straight ahead, unapproachable to questions. Just before they all burst with curiosity, the light changed, and off we went, only to repeat the same performance at the next light. So we wound our way through Wichita, and arrived at the railroad station. The large door was flanked by two tall Negro porters who, hands in pockets, stood and idly looked nowhere. In an elegant curve the driver swept around the square and landed right at their feet. He got out, opened the double door while I anxiously watched their faces. What else could they have expected to come out of a hearse but a coffin; and now there hopped out in rapid succession one—two—three—six—seven girls—the porters were almost petrified.

  The concerts went very well indeed. Not that we didn’t miss the boys, or that the audience didn’t miss them; but we had to do without gasoline, without tires, without sugar—so we also had to do without the boys. It was a necessary lack, which would help to final victory. It would almost have been awkward to have them with us. One would have felt like explaining or apologizing to the other mothers. In the letters which went to our soldiers in Camp Hale we were glad to be able to relate some hardships, too. We wouldn’t have wanted to have a high time, no complications, no deprivations, while the boys went on manoeuvres and slept in the open at thirty below, and were homesick for us, just as we were homesick for them. This way it was more just; and though we were sighing under the strain, we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

  XVI Trapp Family Music Camp

  DURING that first concert tour by railroad, we took a few weeks off around Christmas for a much-needed break, because afterwards we were to go to the West Coast and not come back until May.

  What a homecoming it was! When we left the train in Waterbury, it was thirty-six below zero, to go down to forty-five the next morning. The snow was singing under our feet when we stepped out of the taxis which had carried us up the hill. Instead of the steps which now lead to the front door, there was some kind of a broad ladder; and instead of a front door, there was a thick carpet. As no inner walls yet existed, the precious curtains from Freeman’s had come in handy. Alfred had draped them around the big living room. In the fireplace roared a blazing fire. The two sofas with the swansdown cushions for thirty-five dollars each were standing there on the rough floor covered with Freeman carpets. The statues of the Apostles on the mantelpiece—oh, how wonderful it all was! Everything seemed to fit perfectly into the new house. On a ladder one reached the second floor, which was a yawning hole—one large dormitory with a corner partitioned off for a temporary chapel for that winter. There we celebrated Christmas very happily in our new home; it was overshadowed only by the great yearning for the boys. This was the first Christmas that the family had not been together.

  Soon afterwards we were all armed with hammers and nails again, helping to erect partitions, board up walls, and lay floors. In good weather the others would go skiing. As my back bothered me a little more as the years went by, I had given up skiing for good. One morning Mr. R. brought news from the village.

  “They’re going to tear down the C.C.C. camp.”

  That was the very camp in which we had sung for the soldiers that first summer in Stowe. When I heard that that camp which had looked so different from all the other Army camps we had visited since, was to be torn down, a pang went through my heart. The mere thought disturbed me all day, and before the men went home, I said to Mr. R.:

  “Isn’t it a pity to tear down the camp? What could one do to preserve it?”

  “Oh, nobody has any use for the place. If you want it,” and he laughed, “just make an application to the State.”

  When the others came back from skiing, they brought a guest along: Mr. Burt from Stowe, the man with the straw hat. They had met him at the Toll House, and he had stayed with them the whole day, showing them trails; finally, over a cup of tea at the Octagon, Martina had said to him: “Mr. Burt, you have been just like an uncle to us”—which delighted him so much that he asked whether he couldn’t keep th
at title. So it was “Uncle Craig” from then on. I asked him to stay for supper and extend his “uncle” qualities also to me, as I had had a brainstorm. During supper I explained how much of a crime it would be, to my way of thinking, to tear down a good camp, which surely could still be used.

  Uncle Craig busied himself with his plate and seemed to be thinking. Then he looked up and said quietly:

  “The State Forester is coming to Stowe tomorrow. He is the one in charge of the camp. I might bring him up, and you can talk it over.”

  There was something so reassuring and soothing about him, the tone of his voice, the look in his eyes, something that you recognize as you get along in life as a true quality of friendship: the genuine, selfless willingness to be of service, to help. Uncle Craig became very soon a kind of encyclopedia for us. If we wanted to know: Where is there a good mason? How much does a ton of hay cost? For how much does maple syrup sell? Where does one get barbed wire when no one seems to have any? To whom should we sell Christmas trees from our farm? When were the last Indians in this region? Was Fanny Allen, Ethan Allen’s wife or sister? How did the farmers remove boulders from their fields before the times of bulldozers? How do you distinguish soft maple and hard maple in winter? What is a lumberjack? What does the expression which we heard yesterday mean: “tickled silly”?—just ask Uncle Craig! In his quiet way he’d always give you an answer which satisfied you. As a kind of exchange, he used to come in and sit at times for hours, immovable in some corner, listening to our practicing. When he left, his eyes would be bright and shining.