While he bills himself in publicity material as "The One Handed Comedian Juggler," he makes no reference to his handicap in the show; other than greeting volunteers with a left­handed handshake and the statement, "Hi, I'm Dale Jones. I shake lefty, but I'm a nice guy!"

 

He explained, "I've tried making a joke about it, but it didn't work so I stopped. In comedy shows I'm there to be funny and show people a good time. To get on a soapbox with my personal story only slows down the show. People tell me they notice my hand, but then they don't think about it. I've also had people say they didn't notice it at all."

 

He uses the one-handed reference in publicity material, and in the Yellow Pages, because other people identify him that way. "I found out early that I had to publicize myself that way because people were looking for the one-handed juggler, and I wanted them to be able to find me easily," he said.

 

Herein lies the essential personal dilemma for Jones and Boehmer. Each is left to wonder whether people respect them for the skill they have worked so hard to perfect, or whether people notice them primarily because the very idea of a one armed juggler seems impossible.

 

Jones said he has made his peace with that question. "I just finally realized that that you can't change what people write about you. For a long time I wondered if they respected the work I did, or if they thought I was just an oddity because of my hand. But I've been doing it for years now and have gotten so many good reviews that I know I'm good at it.

 

"I wouldn't have stuck with juggling if it hadn't been so interesting to me to be reinventing the way it's done. I wasn't blessed with any particularly great skills, but I had to change juggling into something I could do with it. It's not necessarily harder than regular juggling, but it is plenty hard."

 

Audiences always respond encouragingly to him, Jones said, and he concedes that his handicap sometimes is part of the reason. "Looking back to the beginning, I think I got a better response than I should have because of my one hand. It happened at my first performance in the band concert, and also when I performed in the US Nationals at the IJA festival in Cleveland in 1981. The crowd there went nuts. I did a good act, and I thought the judges should have scored me higher, but I also thought the audience shouldn't have liked me as much."

 

Jones says he's proud of Casey Boehmer, and thinks the young performer can take one armed juggling to higher levels because he is young and works hard. But he wants Boehmer to do as he has, and earn his acclaim honestly rather than sympathetically.

 

That was the basis of a comment he made to Boehmer after seeing the tape of Boehmer's third place finish in the IJA Juniors championships last summer in Burlington. "He got this huge standing ovation, but the routine didn't warrant it. He dropped a lot and never did get his finale of five clubs in one hand despite several tries. I came right out and told him he got the ovation because of his hand. It hurt him, but I wanted him to know that things like that happened. The one thing I believe in is setting high standards for yourself. Casey has got to be prepared for the times to come when everyone's used to seeing him on stage."

 

Boehmer, the second-oldest of the ten natural children of Larry and Judy Boehmer, was born with a left arm that ends at the elbow. He wore a prosthesis as a toddler to help him learn to crawl and walk, but discarded it shortly thereafter.

 

"I fit in good with the kids at school," he said. "They gave me a hard time in grade school, but once they found out I can juggle and am good at sports they accepted me. I haven't found too many things that I can't do well except learning to drive with a stick shift. I learned to do all the everyday things, like tying my shoes, a long time ago. I'm pretty co­ordinated. I can handle a football and basketball with one hand, and hunt rabbits and squirrels with a rifle."

 

He admits that juggling with one arm actually may be an advantage in marketing his skills in a competitive field. "If I had two arms I'd probably be doing what everyone else is doing. I'd rather have the challenge of just using cine arm. The audience thinks it's harder and gives me extra applause."

 

His father, an employee of Shell Oil, had learned to juggle out of boredom during breaks in his work on the Alaska pipeline. Emulating his father, Casey began juggling two balls with his right hand by age five. But that was all until Larry began putting together a family act in 1990. That summer Larry and the three oldest children - Adam, Casey and Keri - performed a 20-minute show at Arnolds Amusement Park in Arnold's Park, Iowa. Larry's career required him to move frequently, and the family act was limited for a time to occasional appearances at nursing homes and church groups.

 

But with the move to Jerseyville Larry had more time for juggling. He began taking the kids to meet with the St. Louis Jugglers, and one day Casey was astonished to meet Dale Jones there. Jones showed him how to do three balls with one hand.

 

The family briefly stopped in on the IJA festival in St. Louis that summer, and attended the Public Show where Jones performed part of his comedy act.

 

The real career acceleration came at a regional festival in Charleston, Ill., in 1991 when the family met Richard Kennison, who decided that Casey could compete in the IJA Juniors Championships. Kennison said, "I told Larry then, 'Lets take Casey to the Juniors.' Of course, there was no way at that time..."