Not only was I intent on continuing the line of William Foster Hayeses, but you’ve got to remember all those times I stood at the side of the stage in Carousel and thrilled to those words Billy Bigelow sings in his “Soliloquy:”

 “My boy Bill, I will see that he’s named after me, I will!
 My boy Bill, he’ll be tall and as tough as a tree, will Bill!”

Now having two children to care for, Mary and I looked for a small house we could buy.  We found one in Jackson Heights, Queens, on Long Island (price: $9,500), and moved from our furnished “railroad apartment” on Washington Square in Manhattan.  As a “new baby” gift, Chic Johnson presented us with a prop from Hellzapoppin, an oversized white wicker perambulator/crib which had been used in a sketch where a bratty baby was played by Andy Ratousheff, one of the little people.  So at least Billy had a place to sleep.

JACKSON HEIGHTS (1949-1951)
Having borrowed the down-payment from my dad and Mary’s dad (Harley Hobbs), we now were the proud owners of a six-room two-story attached house.  But our furniture, collected in Indiana and Illinois over the past two and a half years was sparse.  When it arrived we spread it around the house: sofa, easy chair and upright piano in the living room, dining table and four chairs in the dining room, the one chest of drawers in our bedroom, and the baby-bed in Carrie’s room.  For weeks Mary and I slept on the floor.

We scrounged the neighborhood for orange crates.  Those things saved our hides.  All the rest of our furniture was orange crates.  We used them for book cases, music cases, kitchen pantry, shelves for dishes, diaper-holders, night (bedside) tables, dressers for Carrie and Billy, writing table, etc.

To get to work I walked six blocks, took a bus and then rode the subway into Manhattan.  That commuting time may have been a drag for most people, but it was really when I memorized my songs and lines.  Mary, of course, had all the challenges of being a new parent and housewife.  We were several blocks from the grocery store, so she wrestled the HUGE crib down the front steps, put Billy and Carrie both in the crib and push-pulled it downhill to the store.  After making her few purchases, she put the groceries in the crib along with the babies and grunted her way back up to the house.  Wedge the wheels, carry the babies up one at a time, then the groceries, and finally muscle that HUGE prop/crib back up the steps.

Our next-door neighbor was a man who made fir coats.  At home.  And he worked hard!  All day and much of the night you could hear his sewing machine chugging away: arrrrrrrrrrrarrrrrrrrrrarrrrrrr, arrrrrrrarrrrrrrrrarrrrrrrrr.  But the area was a bedroom community for working people, not much of a neighborhood.  In the year and a half we lived there we didn’t get to know people.  Outside of the two infants, Mary was alone all day all week.  I at least came in contact with the other Olsen and Johnson cast members.