Early on, when the Bum Juggler was at its peak, Jennings thought it would be scraping the bottom of the barrel to work schools. It meant long car rides to one horse towns, constant travel and bad weather. Yet times changed the entertainment world, and Jennings embraced the new reality. With Carol at his side, the steering wheel of a Cadillac in his hands and a new Airstream trailer hitched behind, he felt the freedom of the road. His agency, National Assemblies, sent him to all 36 of its states to work everything from town theatres to colleges and all levels of schools. 

The Happy Dayze act was about 50 minutes long, with the juggling and unicycling restricted to the final 10 minutes. By this time Jennings had entertaining down to a science. "I started static, standing still, and ended up using the whole space, so that my action curve countered the audience fatigue curve," he said. "It was all done mathematically" 

He analyzed his own act and maintained a card file of 450 magic and juggling tricks he could perform, listing the props needed and time required for each. The file represented a total of more than four hours of material. He maintained mix-and-match formulas for openings, middles and closings to best suit different types of audiences. He says his most technically demanding trick was juggling on the slack wire. But he was better known for comic bits such as his "chapeaugraphy" (folding a piece of felt into different styles of hats), parasol and ball manipulations, a wide variety of comic magic effects, five ball juggling and juggling on the unicycle. 

He always worked with the house lights on because he wanted to make eye contact with everyone. "If someone came back after the show I could tell them where they were sitting," he said. " I had learned the importance of 'seeking out the one disbeliever in the audience and working to him or her,' because if you lost one person you were on your way to losing more." 

One day he spotted a professional-looking man in the audience for three shows in a row, and was surprised when the gentleman finally approached him. It was Jack West, the president of National Assemblies, who said he had come to see for himself why his agency's new entertainer was getting such rave reviews. They renegotiated Jenning's original 13-week contract on the spot and began a professional relationship that lasted 17 straight years, with at least 39 weeks of shows per year and 15 shows per week. None of National's other acts - and it handled about 50 at a time - endured so long. 

Because of the travel, he didn't meet too many other jugglers during those years. But many had heard of his reputation. At the IJA festival in Burlington juggler Steve Mills, who had also working school shows for National, introduced himself to Art. "He said he wanted to meet me because the first picture you saw in the National Assemblies office in Hollywood was mine," Jennings recalled. 

He was having a wonderful time seeing the country and told his agent, "Send me where no one else will go." He sought bookings, among other places, at Indian reservations to pursue his love of Native American culture, and learn jewelry making techniques from their masters. He worked in Gooding, Idaho, and Santa Fe, N.M., in schools where half the student body was blind and half was deaf, and got called back. He worked a school for students with IQs from 0-25, and worked maximum security prisons throughout the West. "I wanted to work everywhere," he said "I loved it because it was a challenge. To me it was the closest thing to heaven." 

In 1989 in Baltimore, Jennings (c) gathers with fellow IJA founders Bernard Joyce (l) and George Barvine (r)

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