The Sid Saga Part 1

• Watchlist

Spurred by house guests Bob Sandstrom and Karlene Sandstrom leafing through his scrap book and asking about photographs in it, Sid Laverents begins to tell his life story. He begins with the emigration of his British maternal grandparents and Danish paternal grandparents to the United States in the late nineteenth century. He learned later in life that his paternal grandparents took the last name Laverents solely because they didn't like their own family name - which Sid does not know - and liked the way Laverents sounded. Both the Laverents and Davis clans eventually settled in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Sid's parents, Paul Laverents and Edith Laverents née Davis, met, married, and in 1908 had their first child who would be Sid. Sid and his family moved often in his early years - from Cheyenne, to Willows, California, to Pocatello, Idaho, to Indian River City, Florida, to various locales in Colorado, to Tampa, Florida - as Paul and his brother, Art, chased various business dreams, some with success, some with utter failure. In Tampa with Sid now in his late teens, Sid would enter vaudeville using his father's new business, a theater, and Sid's one man band which he had developed over the years, as the springboards into this venture. Traveling through Florida performing his act, he would meet a slightly older woman named Eleanor, but who preferred to go by the name Sue. She, who was also a novelty act vaudeviller, would become an important part of his life. Sid's story is continued in The Sid Saga Part 2 (1987).