Mammon walks besides the Saints

2 Nephi 24:32 -- "What shall then answer the messengers of the nations? That the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people shall trust in it."

Poverty's a gamble, and our wealth is but a dreaming;
vaults are full of nothing with the power of redeeming.
Mammon walks beside the Saints in Zion as reminders
that too much treasure acts upon a man as shabby blinders.

Our debt to God and Christ keeps us beholden evermore;
Bill Gates with all his gold could never even up the score.
I'll give away my sins, O Lord; but give away my wealth?
The law has taken it amain, with very little stealth . . . 

Why I went to Clown College . . . Sort of.

The summer before I left home to attend the Ringling Clown College in Florida I rebelled against going to Mass on Sunday. I told my mother it was all a meaningless rigmarole in Latin. She gave me a glare that would've bored a hole through duranium, but didn't insist on my attendance. She must have realized that at 17 I was ready to make up my own mind about such things.

So every Sunday that summer I took a stack of books, a pitcher of lemonade, and some sandwiches out into the backyard, where I could lay in a hammock made of green canvas with dull brown tassels down each side and read to my heart's content.

Despite hormones, acne, angst, and bone-deep intellectual laziness, reading books was my biggest ambition as a teenager. I have since been told that that ain't right -- being a bookworm is a very unhealthy career choice for a strapping young man.

Faen du si, as they say in Norwegian.

A day spent in reading was a day spent in bliss. Now that I'm retired and in my own little apartment that is only four blocks away from the Provo Public Library that same happy obsession seems to be overtaking me once again.

I started my Sunday summer reading spree with Dickens' Pickwick Papers. I relished each page of sprawling nonsense and came to love the beautiful fools Dickens led about on an affectionate leash.

I positioned the hammock under our weeping willow for shade, where I constantly battled the wasps that liked to crawl mindlessly up and down the drooping willow branches and fall into my lemonade pitcher. Instead of being rendered speechless with joy at finding an ocean of sweet stuff to guzzle, the wasps would hum angrily while crawling out and then make a murderous attempt on my bare arms and legs. I kept an old splintered ping pong paddle handy for these attacks, sending the brutes off into left field (and kingdom come).

Next I almost got a hernia from trying to hold up and read The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was about as big and heavy as the telephone directory. And that is where I got my first taste of Mormonism, from A Study in Scarlet -- wherein the brainy Holmes attempts to foil the sinister machinations of some Latter Day Saint vigilantes from Salt Lake City.

How well I remember starting a paperback copy of Cervantes' rollicking Don Quixote! Sometimes you can just feel the awesome imagination inside a book, even a shabby paperback like I had, and you can't wait to dive in. That first Sunday with the knight of the woeful countenance was all I had hoped for -- I wriggled with glee in my hammock.

But storm clouds were gathering about my literary Shangri-la. It started with a casual remark from my mother as I carried out a tray of pimento loaf sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade to begin my second Sunday with Cervantes:

"Why don't you take an hour to mow the lawn first?"
  
I silently shook my head no; I was in a fever to find out what happened next to Quixote and his stooge Sancho Panza.

And so it began.

Mothers, I have since learned, are congenitally hostile to their offspring taking it easy in a hammock on a peaceful Sunday afternoon. They don't like it, and they intend to put a stop to it. And Catholics have no compunction about mowing lawns and painting fences and such like on Sundays. I imagine the Pope weeds his garden on Sundays over there in the Vatican.

My mother began to nag me every Sabbath:

"That lawn looks awful; it's an embarrassment to your father and I! The whole neighborhood's talking about it. Please, I'm begging you -- just leave those old books alone for an hour and give the lawn a quick going over. Is that too much to ask?"

"Can't it wait until tomorrow, mom? I'll do it then -- I promise!"

"Oh all right -- I'll put up with the humiliation one more day . . . somehow." This statement was followed by a martyred sigh that would have won her an Academy Award if we had lived in Hollywood.

One Sunday she actually came out and started doing the lawn herself, on the theory that it would shame me into taking over. It didn't. I simply waved my book at her in serene greeting.

Not a smart move on my part. She put the mower away with the lawn half-done and stomped back into the house, where I could hear her expostulating with my dad in ringing tones that shook leaves off the elm trees as far away as Como Avenue. By this time I was chuckling over the inspired inanities of P.G. Wodehouse in Carry On, Jeeves. Nothing in the world mattered to me except how Jeeves would extricate his master Bertie from the next contretemps.


Next Sunday when I went to make my sandwiches I was met with someone I dimly recognized as my so-called mother, in, as she would have put it, 'a snit', standing in front of the fridge with her arms akimbo.

"No you don't, buster!" she snarled. "First mow, then you can stuff your face."

I was stunned at her heartless determination to let her own son starve to death rather than allow him to cultivate his mind. As gracelessly as possible I slammed open the garage door, started the mower, and ran over all the lawn furniture and the little brown garden gnome statue by the rosebush in my sullen determination to get the damned work over with.

Had I been a weaker person the triumphant glare my mother gave me when I came back in to make my sandwiches would have stolen my appetite -- but the blood of a hundred blockheaded Norwegians ran thick in my veins, so I made double the amount of sandwiches and choked every last one down as I lay in the hammock, my stomach distending like a desert salt dome.

After that confrontation my Sunday reading marathons didn't have the same charm as before. The last book I read that summer of scintillating Sundays was John McCabe's Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy. 

It gave me very definite ideas -- and a few weeks later I was on my way to Venice, Florida to try my luck as a circus buffoon . . .

The Flame of Faith

2 Nephi 20:17 -- "And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame, and shall burn and shall devour his thorns and his briers in one day . . . " 

Some fires you don't want to douse or stop their spreading far;
the flame of faith a roaring blaze should reach each distant star.
Yet not by sword nor censure should the conflagration grow,
but by example we must kindle blazes here below.
He whose right it is to reign may physic fire send,
but you and I are not to judge, but try to be a friend.
We all have thorns and briers that delay our path to God,
and should pray that when they're burnt a better path can trod!

The Longest Come In: Memories of Tim Holst.

As the only two Mormons on the Blue Unit in 1971, Tim Holst and I made a pact with each other that we would faithfully attend morning services each Sunday, no matter where we were or how tired we felt.
And we felt mighty tired after three shows on a Saturday; we never seemed to get to bed before one or two in the morning.  And Sunday was usually move out night, when we had to pack everything up so it could be put on the train for the next town.  Holst also helped roll up the two miles of green rubber matting for an extra $25.00 per week. He built up some good muscles that way, which is why we nicknamed him 'Bear'. 
 LDS Services generally started at seven in the morning on Sunday.  So the routine was either I would be banging at Bear’s door at 6am or he would be banging on my door at 6am, so we could get shaved, find some breakfast, and either call the local Mormon chapel to see if we could get a ride, or call a taxi to take us to services.
I remember in Baltimore, Maryland, we couldn’t raise anyone at the local chapel and we were too broke to afford a taxi.  I was all for giving up and going back to bed, but Bear insisted we board a local bus and see if it took us near the chapel.  The surly bus driver was of no help, so we sat, the only two on the bus, scanning each side of the street for the familiar LDS chapel outline.  Miraculously, we DID pass right by the chapel, and got off the bus just in time to attend Sacrament Meeting.  Afterwards I asked Bear if he had had a ‘revelation’ about taking the bus.  He thought a moment and then replied that no, not a revelation, but rather just a feeling that the chapel would be on a major bus line and if we just took the bus we stood a fair chance of finding it.  He was always that way – pragmatic and unemotional; he thought that if he could figure out a sensible plan, it stood a fair chance of working.  That’s why he never felt completely comfortable in clown alley.  The majority of clowns, like me, didn’t believe in a structured, sane universe; we felt in our bones that total chaos was only a stone’s throw away, and acted accordingly.  I guess that’s why Bear went up the corporate ladder so easily at Ringling.  He had a serene sense of the basic rightness of things, while I stayed a clown, which is the only thing I ever wanted, because I believed that there was very little to plan for beyond the next pie in the face.
Once we got to church it was no problem getting a ride back to the show in time to get made up for come in.  There was always an LDS family delighted to drive us right up to the back door of the arena, where Charlie Baumann would inevitably be waiting for us.  How he hungered to see us late, so he could fine us!  He did not approve of clowns going to church, and I suspect he had already guessed that Bear had his sights on Charlie’s job as Performance Director.  We got the better of him each week, and he would glance at his watch, then glare at us balefully while intoning:  “Okay, funnymen, be funny.”
The only time we came close to being late was up in Montreal, Canada.  We were there late in the fall.  Too late, as it turned out.  That icy Sunday morning Bear and I managed to get a ride to church from a local member who only spoke French.  Services were in French.  I started to get worried while the service was going on, because huge snowflakes were coming down thick and fast outside the chapel window.  By the time our new French-Canadian friend was ready to take us to the arena there was a full-blown blizzard going on.  Being a true Quebecois, this did not bother our driver.  He got us back to the building in time for the matinee.
But no one else was at the arena!  The show bus, and all private transportation at the circus train, was snowed in.  But the Quebecois audience showed up on time for the matinee, which meant that Bear and I had to slap on our makeup and do an hour-long come in, playing for time until some of the other clowns and cast could dig out and get to the arena.  We must have done Bigger and Bigger, and the Broom Jump, about twenty times.  Plus I got to try out my musical saw for the first time.
The show finally got started about an hour late.
By hook or by crook Tim Holst and I managed to make it to church every Sunday that season.  It’s a record I still look back on with pride, and amazement.  
The very last day of that season, as the clowns were shaking hands with each other after the last show, Swede Johnson sidled up to me with a wad of bills in his hand.  With a lopsided grin the old reprobate explained to me that at the beginning of that season the word had gone out that two First of Mays (Holst and I) had decided to go to church every Sunday, without fail.  No one believed we’d do it, except Swede.  So he started a betting pool, with odds three to one against us, and began taking in money.  We had been watched with keen interest every Sunday that season, to see if we would slack off.
Since we never did, Swede had collected a handsome bundle of mazuma.  In gratitude, Swede had already offered Tim Holst a slice of the winnings, but Bear had imperiously told him to take his filthy lucre and begone; he had not struggled all season just to satisfy some lurid betting instinct.  So Swede next came to me, offering me a sheaf of greenbacks as a way to say thanks for the killing he had made off of our piety.  
I glared at Swede; did he think I would stoop to taking his tainted cash, which looked to be about a hundred bucks?
You bet I would!

The Wizards That Peep and Mutter

2 Nephi 18:19 -- "And when they shall say unto you: Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter—should not a people seek unto their God for the living to hear from the dead?"

The wizards that peep and mutter, the sages of wealth and prestige;
the counselors deep in delusion, the scribe that rejects his own liege.
These are the advocates paltry that all the world runs off to hear;
 back of them spirits indiff'rent, full of cheap thought and small beer.

Come to the mainspring of reason, enter the halls of the just;
quench all your doubts with the treasure that never reverts back to dust.
Flee not from Majesty awful, dare to look to the living Yahweh;
His counsel cannot be confounded, He'll befriend even those that do stray.

His waters are spacious and placid; they'll take you where you want to go.
So jettison wizards and mages; allow God your barky to tow! 

A Clown in Thailand

(Author's note: Prince Paul used to say "He who toots his own horn shall be tooted!" I am probably tooting my own horn here, and perhaps someone will be able to contradict me about this, but I believe I am the only RBBB clown to ever perform in Thailand. Here are some of my memories of that time that I wrote up for my grandchildren a few months ago.)

During the 1973 season Steve Smith and I were teamed as the Advance Clowns for the Blue Unit of Ringling Brothers Circus; we were billed as Dusty & TJ Tatters. The circus provided us with our own motorhome, with which we traveled the length and breadth of the country, having a blast.
I carried a secret with me on that wonderful tour; a secret which I shared only with Smith. I had decided to send in my papers to Salt Lake to volunteer for a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as a proselytizing missionary. No one else knew of my decision.
As that season came to a riotous end, with audiences giving us standing ovations more often than not, Smith asked me to reconsider my decision. We were working so well together, being compared to Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers in the press; it would be foolish to throw away the momentum we were building. But I was adamant. I felt a higher, spiritual, call, which I was bound and determined to answer. I had put it off long enough.
So when old man Feld invited us into his office in Washington, DC, to offer us a new contract as Advance Clowns for the ‘74 season, he met with a surprise. Which he didn’t care for. He, too, urged me to consider how popular we had become as a team, and mentioned a possible Broadway show for us in a few years. I was polite, but firm. I had promised myself, and the Lord, I would do this thing, now and not later. (I don’t want to appear too holier-than-thou in this narrative, so I’ll just add that Irvin Feld did not try to bribe me to stay with a larger salary; if he had, I may have caved in and stayed – I like money just as much as the next sinner!)
With a short bark of laughter, Irvin Feld shook my hand, admired my commitment to my faith, and cynically said I was probably cutting my own throat, career-wise. I could only answer that he was probably right, but I was leaving his employ for two years no matter what. We didn’t part the best of friends, but he did say to give him a call when I got back from my mission.
Smith took on the role of Advance Clown all by himself for the ’74 season, as I went back to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to prepare for my calling.
The long grey envelope from Salt Lake City arrived that winter, signed by Spencer W. Kimball, the President of the LDS Church. I was called by inspiration to serve my two years in the Kingdom of Thailand. I would begin in March. I was to pay my own way with the money I had saved up during the past few years.
Most, if not all of you, are familiar with the pair of white-shirted young men who ride bicycles or walk down the street together, knocking on doors, and holding street meetings. They wear neckties and are always polite and obliging – and get the door slammed in their face most of the time. That is what I was about to become.
Serving a foreign mission involved mountains of paperwork, which I diligently filled out. One of the forms asked me what my former occupation had been. I wrote down “circus clown.” A week later another long grey envelope came from Salt Lake, this time requesting that I please bring my clown equipment with me to Thailand.
Which I did.
The President of the Bangkok, Thailand, Mission, President Morris, wasted no time when I arrived at the Mission Home in sweltering Bangkok. Mormons had a bad reputation in Thailand at the time. Members could not work for the government and were being forced out of the Thai Armed Services. Many large Thai companies refused to hire anyone with an LDS affiliation. The Thai government was on the verge of expelling all non-native LDS missionaries from the country, and we were constantly harassed with long, inconvenient trips to Malaysia in order to renew our temporary visas. President Morris wanted me to start an immediate Good Will Tour of Thailand, as a clown, visiting hospitals, schools, prisons, libraries, ANYWHERE that I could get into, to put on a free show in an effort to lift some of the prejudice against the LDS Church.
So began a long journey through the Kingdom of Thailand, unique in the annals of LDS proselyting. I dressed in the regular garb of a missionary when arranging shows, and then would return as Dusty the Clown – stark white face with just a touch of red and black, baggy, checkered pants, and large, shuffling clown shoes. My stage was anything from an elaborate theater in Bangkok to the back of a flatbed truck out in the rice fields of Khon Kaen. And in between shows I was expected to go out proselyting with my companion, knocking on doors and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ, just like any regular Mormon missionary
I cobbled together a show featuring most of the schtick I had learned from great clowns like Prince Paul, Otto Griebling, Mark Anthony, Dougie Ashton, and my pantomime mentor Sigfrido Aguilar.
To start my one-clown show I brought out my musical saw in a trombone case, indicating to the expectant audience that a trombone solo was imminent, only to become bemused by pulling out a saw and a violin bow instead – which eventually led to me playing some Thai folk songs on it. I fooled around with pencil balloons. I did Bigger and Bigger with a volunteer from the audience. If I happened to spot a pretty girl in the audience I immediately jumped down and started to flirt with her, making her a balloon poodle and producing a bouquet of magician’s feather flowers, then puckering my lips in expectation of a kiss. The Thais always roared at that one. The show was pretty much improvised from start to finish; sometimes I’d go thirty minutes, sometimes, if the crowd was with me, I’d do a whole hour in the blistering heat. By the time I was done my makeup had literally begun to melt off my face. It was exhausting, but I never felt the pull of zany inspiration more!
President Morris also created a singing group to tour Thailand, called The Latter Day Saints. I became part of that group, providing the comedy relief at intermission.
I don’t know if my efforts ever had any effect on moderating the prejudice against Mormons in Thailand. President Morris never congratulated me for lessening it, so I am left to wonder if I did any good as an itinerant buffoon/missionary. I went back to Thailand to teach English for several years, and it seems as if the Thais, while still the friendliest of people to me individually, are not yet enamored with the LDS Church.
What I do know is that I had a heckuva good time, and I’d do it all over again at the drop of a rubber chicken!

A Cookie and a Kiss

" . . . two essential ingredients to a successful marriage are a cookie and a kiss."  Boyd K. Packer.

Psychologists may quibble and the experts disagree,
but a smooch and homemade goodies are quite good enough for me.
Let the complicated things stay outside of my roost;
at home it's Betty Crocker by whom I am most seduced.
As for osculation -- it's a two-way street, you know;
and the grass is always greener where you do not have to mow. 

The Blind Children and the Clown

I returned from my LDS mission in Thailand I was stony broke. I called old man Feld at Ringling Brothers, and he gave me a job back in clown alley. I was hoping he'd reinstate me as an advance clown, but no -- I was to be one of the faceless funny faces.

On top of that, there were now dancers in clown alley, for the love of Mike! They spent patient hours of their free time showing me the new, intricate steps that the clowns had to perform during Opening, Spec, and Manage. I repaid their kindness with cold stares and a nose completely up in the stratosphere.

The whole atmosphere of clown alley had grown seedier in the 3 years I was gone. A pall of cigarette smoke hung over the place as if someone were filming a 1940's film noir. Beer cans clattered to the floor and were kicked through the blue curtains out into the public hallways. The boss clown was busy chasing showgirls, even though he was married. And the old stalwarts like Prince Paul and Mark Anthony were decaying before my eyes; growing into slippered pantaloons, only interested in counting their money and their days until retirement.

Several weeks after reenlisting in this dissolute buffoonery brigade I decided to save my pennies and seek further light and knowledge by going to Paris to study with Marcel Marceau. I applied to his pantomime school and was accepted; now I needed to come up with the 25-hundred dollar tuition.

I applied myself to the arts of miserliness and cadging.

I attended every press party, in makeup, to fill my ample pockets, ala Harpo Marx, with any loose comestibles. I ate only chili at the pie car -- 95 cents a bowl, and so swimming in rendered bovine tallow that I began to develop an udder.

I forsook Stein's Clown White for the detestable Nye's Liquid Clown White to save a dollar or two each week. It streaked horribly, leaving me looking like The Mummy's Revenge by the end of the day.

I refused outright to purchase a clown wig, and styled my own mousy brown hair, with minimal success, to stand up straight like Stan Laurel's.

My costumes came straight from Goodwill -- baggy golf pants and pregnant women's blouses. Luckily, while I was in Thailand I had a Parsi tailor in Bangkok make me a huge orange overcoat with yellow piping and giant green buttons. It now covered a multitude of shabby sins.

I would not contribute to the coffee fund. Or to the beer fund. I never went halves on a pizza delivery, but hung about the periphery of the feasters, ready to swoop in like a vulture and devour the discarded crusts. I did not go to the movies or hang out in bars with my fellow joeys.

And I'm afraid my plans for imminent departure, along with my disdain for their riotous and prodigal ways, were all too clear to my colleagues. I was about as popular as a dirty diaper in a bowl of punch.

Halfway through the season I attained my coveted goal -- the 25-hundred was securely deposited in the bank.

I confided to my old pal Tim Holst, who was ringmaster that season, that I was going to jump ship as soon as my confirmation letter arrived from Paris. A travel agency in New York was handling my sojourn -- a tramp steamer left from the Jersey side every Wednesday, and I could book passage to La Havre for a measly two-hundred bucks. Holst wished me good luck, saying "You don't belong in this hellhole anymore."

But before my letter arrived, the terrible Charlie Baumann came into clown alley just before a matinee, peering gloomily around at us. He was the Performance Director, a Teutonic tyrant who hated clowns. He was also the tiger trainer, and carried around a whip like it was a crozier.

His glare settled on me. I fell back, cowering, before his far-from-benevolent gaze.

"You!" he said thickly, in his Katzenjammer accent. "You kommen vit me!"

He gestured imperiously for me to follow him as he strode out of clown alley, much like the Kaiser in World War One must have ordered his troops to the front.

I meekly obeyed. Once outside the alley he turned on me, and I don't mind telling you I flinched like an owl blinking in the sunlight. But he merely said "Dere iss ein boonch uff kits in da front section. You are excuzzed from da show to sit mit dem und narrate da show for dem. Dey are blind. Verstehst du? Blind." He dragged me through the auditorium entrance to point them out to me. Then left.

Being in makeup, I usually feel invulnerable in front of a crowd. But not that day. Not at first. I sidled slowly over to the kids; about 2 dozen of them, all chattering excitedly and making strange gestures with their hands. I sat down on an elephant tub in front of their seats, cleared my throat, and shouted "Hi kids!" They immediately went silent, their hands falling to their sides as if tied to lead weights. I tried again, softer.

"Hi kids. I'm Dusty the Clown."

"Hi Dusty!" they chorused back enthusiastically.

After that, it was a cinch.

As the show progressed I described the costumes and animals to them, giving them the inside info on the performers they'd never get from a program.

"Here comes Anna Bornholm, our famous Princess of the Spanish Web -- that's not green lipstick she's wearing -- she eats so many pistachios that she doesn't NEED lipstick!"

"And there goes Stancho Sandor, our world-famous Bulgarian acrobat. He can hold ten men on his burly shoulders. He's in love with a lady pig farmer he met back in Iowa, and he has me write all his love letters for him!"

"Watch out, kids! Those crazy clowns are coming out again. This time they've got ladders and buckets of white paint. Get ready to duck! That little guy is Prince Paul -- he's only four and a half feet tall, but he can throw the most paint of anyone in clown alley. That's because he practices throwing pop bottles at the rats that come sniffing around our trunks."

By the end of the show I had nothing but a hoarse croak left for a voice.

I used it to thank the children for coming, and to ask if there was anything else I could tell them about the show.

One little girl spoke up quickly.

"We want to feel your face" she shouted. The rest of the children echoed her request, so I climbed over the railing and let them come up and lay their fingers gently on my face.

And a strange thing happened.

"Oh" said one child, "this part is white."

Another one giggled and said "He's got blue eyebrows!"

"His nose is all red!" said a boy, who not only couldn't see but was in a wheelchair.

"Why are you crying, Dusty?" one girl asked.

"Oh, I ain't crying" I told her. "That's just sweat -- being funny all the time is hard work!"

After they had all felt my face, and commented on the different colors it contained, their teacher got them ready to go back on the bus. I managed to take her aside for a second to ask how they could tell what color my makeup was.

"I don't know" she said simply. "But they always know the colors of the things they love the most."

A few days later my letter came from Paris. I put it in my clown trunk and didn't get around to replying for quite a while. Seems like every time I got ready to reply, another group of Special kids came to the show and Baumann always picked me talk to them.

The Carson & Barnes Cook Tent

In 2005 I was 'between engagements', as we say in the Business. Ringling Brothers was no longer interested in my services, but I still hungered for life on the road. So I began contacting all the smaller shows to see if they needed a middle-aged clown. They didn't.
But, much to my surprise, I heard back from Barbara Byrd, the matriarch of the mighty Carson & Barnes Five Ring Circus, out of Hugo, Oklahoma.
She wasn't interested in my clowning abilities either. But since I had listed radio announcing as one of my many talents she asked if I would consider being their ringmaster that season.
You could have knocked me over with a croissant. I had never considered such a career shift.
But needs must when the devil drives; so I graciously accepted.
How I fared in tailcoat and top hat is not to be told in this story. Instead, as a dedicated foodie long before that word was even recognized by Webster's, I wish to dwell for a moment on the Carson & Barnes cook tent.
 The cook tent's blue and white stripped siding was attached to a roach coach type truck that prepared and dispensed 2 meals each day; lunch and dinner. Since the show moved every single morning at 5:30 a.m., there was no breakfast as such. The cooking staff, which doubled as trash pickup and truck drivers, merely set out stale donuts and instant coffee on several rickety card tables. Biting into one of those ancient crullers was like chewing on cardboard sprinkled with powdered sugar. However, I rarely had any appetite to speak of that early in the morning -- so I did not feel impelled to grumble.
Luncheon was served promptly at 12, or as soon as the big top was up and the rigging set inside.
Initially I thought my status as the ringmaster would allow me to step up front for my meal.
How wrong I was!
The roustabouts, those unappreciated drudges who put up the tent each morning and tore it down again each night, had first call at the cook tent. I was politely told to step aside until they had all been served.
After they had been served I once again stepped up for my meal, only to be told once more to cool my heels.
Now the clowns, already in makeup, were to be fed, since they had to go out well before the show started to sell coloring books.
Then it was my turn, along with the rest of the no-accounts.
Since most of the workers and most of the acts were Hispanic, lunch leaned heavily towards beans, corn, and tortillas. There was also a generous tub of pickled jalapeno peppers, sliced carrots in vinegar, and fresh radishes with the stalks still on. I learned quickly that radish leaves are just as good to eat as the radish itself -- something Latinos have known all along but we gringos have yet to learn.
Meat empanadas were also a mainstay of lunch. I had never eaten one prior to working at Carson & Barnes, although I smugly considered myself a world traveler. The cooks did 'em up right. The crust was light and flaky and they didn't skimp on the savory pork or beef filling.
The rule on Seconds was simple; when the cook yelled "Que quiere mas?" there was a mass stampede up the metal steps to the truck window for the leftovers. It was not unlike a soccer riot, and I did not wish to risk being trampled to death -- so I usually had some beef jerky or beer nuts stashed away in my little room in the back of the electricity truck if I still felt peckish.
I also functioned as the on-lot publicity man, so whenever a newspaper reporter came to do a story I would give them a tour of the circus lot, including the cook tent. This turned out to be a good deal, because the cooks were instructed by Barbara Byrd herself that any time a reporter visited the cook tent she wanted lots of green salad to be served as well as the regular starchy provender. I took advantage of this ukase by casually informing the cooks almost every day that I expected a reporter from the Times Picayune to pop up during the lunch hour. This got me some much-needed greenery in my diet, although eventually the cooks caught on to my stratagem and started demanding the name of the so-called reporter that was coming over to sample their wares.
Dinner was much the same as lunch, served between the matinee and evening performances. The big difference being there would also be a hearty soup or stew and cake and pie for desert. All meals were served on metal trays, the same kind the military uses, and after you were done you took your tray and utensils behind the truck and slid them into a large soapy trough for later washing.
No one ever went hungry who worked for Carson & Barnes.
Dining al fresco under the blue and white stripes held vast charms for me most of the time. I could look out past the tent flaps onto the circus lot, where elephants swayed, tigers snarled in their cages, and the pennants at the top of the main tent snapped in the breeze. And I always found the combined smell of manure, cotton candy, straw, and cumin to be exhilarating.
 The only hair in the soup, so to speak, was when it rained hard and blew fast -- at those times the cook tent was a leaky, soggy hellhole. The food turned cold as fast as it was served out, and there were boggy holes to circumvent on your way to your table if you wished to avoid sodden feet and a sprained ankle.
And of course, in the great tradition of mud shows everywhere, during the last few weeks of the season, when the cooks finally realized that they would be unemployed pretty soon, they began to skimp on everything so they could feather their nests for the winter. That's when the food became all canned, all beans, and practically inedible. I had been forewarned that this would happen, so I always located the nearest Subway and began getting most of my meals there.
I was ringmaster on Carson & Barnes for only one season -- a Byrd family nephew had been groomed to supplant me. But that didn't dismay me; at least I'd eaten well. And with the circus, that's about all you can ever hope for.

Take heed and be quiet

2 Nephi 17:4;  ". . . take heed, and be quiet . . . "

The day ends with no bang and with no whimper for the meek,
but thoughts grow long and silent as they wisdom humbly seek.
Through prayer and scripture study, not the cut and thrust of talk,
I hope to know my Savior and in felicity with him walk.
In stillness I will take all heed to gather scattered thought,
and learn from him who such great things so silently has wrought. 

Another Otto Griebling Story.

The story is probably apocryphal. Otto wrote it down in one of my conversation notebooks in a telegraphic style, and when he handed it over to me to read it was with a wink as broad as the Mississippi at flood tide. But it's been told dozens of times since it first appeared in print in 1951 in the New York Daily Mirror:

In his early days with the circus in America, Otto was apprenticed to the Hodgini riding act. Old man Hodgini taught Griebling how to ride bareback while juggling, and how to take a fall off a galloping horse, and other needful things a bareback comedy rider should know.
But Otto grew tired of the peripatetic existence of a circus performer. One day in Rochester, Minnesota, old man Hodgini gave Otto 5 dollars, telling him to go into town to get some bread and milk.
Otto took the money, hopped a train, and went to Wisconsin to work as a logger and farmhand. He stuck it out for two years before realizing that circus performing was a better career than pulling splinters out of your hind end every night or trying to wash the smell of manure out of your clothes. So when he read in the local paper that the Hodgini troupe would be playing with a circus in a nearby town, he gathered up his meager belongings, bought a loaf of bread and a quart of milk, and quietly walked onto the circus lot to hand the long-delayed comestibles to old man Hodgini -- who, it is claimed, did not blink an eye but simply told Griebling to "get back to work."
Otto never left the tanbark circuit again . . .

A Memory of Otto Griebling . . .

(Twenty-five years ago I fancied myself as a writer of novels and biographies. I wrote several long works, which I desktop published to immediate, yawning obscurity. They have long been out of print and unavailable, and until a few days ago I was sure even I myself didn’t possess a copy of any of my own prosy drek anymore. But recently, having moved into a Senior Apartment, I discovered in a moldy old suitcase some manuscript pages of the biography I had written long ago about the clown nonpareil, Otto Griebling. My biography was based on a conversation notebook I had kept in 1971, which allowed Otto to write down his part of the conversation he was having with me – since he had lost his voice to cancer a few years earlier. Here, then, is one particular story from his youth that he shared with me, and which I now happily share with you, from my original manuscript.)

Out of makeup, Otto Griebling looked like a dyspeptic janitor. In makeup, he became the glowering foil of an unsympathetic fate. Accoutered in hobo rags, his pudgy face lacked that treacly sentimental visage that both Charlie Chaplin and Emmett Kelly had parlayed into world-wide fame. Instead, his bindlestiff makeup displayed consistent crankiness, avarice, and suspicion.  

Otto was the only buffoon allowed complete freedom to carpet clown during the entire show. This meant he could go into the audience and interact with the crowd no matter what was going on in center ring.

He would amble slowly and sullenly through rows of circus patrons, checking a greasy clipboard from time to time, making sure everyone was in their proper seat. Somewhere along the line he would discover a miscreant who was not on his list. Subtle shades of horror, disgust, and finally grim determination would flit across his face, indicating to the haplessly seated malefactor that his or her doom would be hard. But then, looking slyly about to make sure the coast was clear, Otto would give a conniving leer and hold out his hand for a bribe. His victim would offer him popcorn, a Coke, even a hotdog, with mounting merriment – since Otto would accept whatever goodies he was offered and then daintily tie a snow white napkin around his blackened neck before partaking. When the bribes ran out, the outraged Otto would mime the immediate expulsion of his victim, only to be met with more gales of laughter, to which his only reply was a furious glare and then a fatalistic shrug of his tattered shoulders as he moved on.

Or else he would industriously be wiping down the rails and backs of seats when he chanced upon a woman whom he immediately fell in love with. His body language perfectly mimicked the swooning swain as he lowered his ludicrous face closer and closer to his beloved, who would be convulsed with embarrassed laughter. Finally puckering his lips for the expected kiss, he was nonplussed at the guffaws that burst out all around him. Sadly realizing his mistake in giving his heart away to such a hussy, he would straighten up with vast dignity, squint at his former flame, and give her a light belt across the shoulders with his cleaning rag. Then stump away in high dudgeon.

Did Otto always have this mad and daring sense of humor? I used to wonder about it as we made up next to each other in clown alley. One day between shows he told me something of his youth in Wilhelmine Germany after I had asked him if he always wanted to be a clown.

Otto grew up in Koblenz, on the Rhine River, in west central Germany. In his early teens he was apprenticed to the keeper of a medieval clock tower in the courtyard of the Elector’s Palace. The elderly timepiece needed little attention, so Otto spent a great deal of time wandering among the gears and flywheels inside the tower. The day came when his master showed him how to control the strokes for the bronze bell that tolled the hours – and Otto became inspired with an impish plan.

Like many another town in the Rhineland-Palatinate prior to the First World War, the citizens of Koblenz had not traveled very far from their superstitious peasant roots. The forests still held sprites and goblins and the mountains were home to witches and other fell folk it was best to ignore or try to placate.

Thus it was on Hexennacht, May 1^st, each year, the people of Koblenz mostly stayed indoors after dark, saying their prayers and sprinkling the lintels with holy water.  (Hexennacht means Witch’s Night.)

After midnight, it was believed, the witches were diminished in their malignant powers and it was safe to go outside again. People would wait up until the twelve strokes of their clock towers had come and gone, and then go peacefully to their beds at last.  

But that particular year when Hexennacht came around, Otto secreted himself in the clock tower during the evening and reset the bell mechanism so that when midnight came there would be 13 strikes to the bell – not twelve.

The ensuing panic and bedlam, Otto wrote in his conversation book to me, were well worth the whipping his father gave him the next day.

And when his father scolded him, calling him “eine dumme Betruger” (a foolish clown), Otto suddenly knew what his career was going to be . . .

Memories of the Circus: The Clown Casanova

A shot exploded late one night inside Ringling Train Car #19, where most of the new clowns, including myself, were domiciled. The narrow metal hallway that ran through the entire length of the Iron Lung (as we affectionately called it) magnified the echoing report until it sounded like a howitzer blast.

I was lying in my Murphy bed, reading a dog-eared Kurt Vonnegut paperback, and immediately stuck my head out the door of my roomette to find out what the ruckus might be. Dinko came flying down the hallway, yelling as he passed me, "Head for the hills -- it's another one of Bobby's castaways on the warpath!"   

I pulled my head in like an alarmed box tortoise, flipped the latch, and waited nervously for this latest of Bobby's romantic victims to cool off and exit the train before we started to move on to the next town.

Lemme see, I said to myself sourly, that makes about Lady Number Five since the season began that has tried to exterminate Bobby Dorman (not his real name).

Dorman, you see, was the clown alley Casanova. The cliche had it that sailors have a girl in every port, and Bobby had one in every town the circus played -- but he had never mastered the art of "Love 'em and Leave 'em" to any extent, so the heart-broken gals, baldly told that the grand passion was kaput, always turned on him with a fury matched only by Mount Vesuvius and the last days of Pompeii. How Bobby managed to avoid being punctured so many times is something that still keeps me awake on hot summer nights.

There were several bullet holes in the hallway to prove how inept he was at making parting a sweet sorrow.

Ringling Brothers had always had clown alley groupies; lonely, desperate, and terrifically homely women who deluded themselves into thinking that life with a professional circus clown would be nothing but raucous hilarity. We called them 'town hounds', and they made themselves pathetically available in almost every town; hanging around clown alley, offering to do our laundry or bring us a sandwich. By humane consensus, we never gave them a tumble (at least I never saw any of my colleagues have anything to do with them).  Those clowns who were not married could always pick up one of the show dancers for the season by the simple expedient of buying them dinner and drinks after the show each night.

Me, I had a girl I'd left behind in Minnesota -- we had vowed eternal faithfulness to each other when I had been accepted into the Ringling Clown College in Venice, Florida. I wrote her almost every day, and sent her painted platters, ceramic bells, silver-plated spoons, and other gewgaws from each city we played in. That she steadily two-timed me from the moment I left does not need to enter into this narrative, except to explain why I did not take up with any of the big top chorines.

But Bobby was different. He scorned the show dancers; instead, he prowled the late night cocktail lounges and smoky coffee houses that still existed back in the early 70's for older women. Lonely women. Gullible and plaint women. Women who had steady, well-paying jobs and didn't mind blowing a wad on Bobby to keep him well-dressed at the swankiest haberdasher and well-fed on surf and turf at the local chop house. He rarely slept in his roomette on the train, and was usually incommunicado to his fellow clowns except during actual show times.

It was not hard to understand his success with his victims, for he had been blessed with those large soggy eyes made famous by Margaret Keane. One look from those fatal baby blues, and even the witch from Hansel and Gretel would give him her broom and willingly hop into her own cauldron to provide him with a good meal.

For, you see, he also had one of those torsos that appear to be in famine mode, no matter how much fodder he gobbled up.

In fine, women wanted to mother him -- and he was only too happy to oblige them, with a soupcon of carnality on the side.

At first most of the new clowns, young bucks who were out to prove to the world just how much hell they could raise, were extremely proud of his conquests, as a sort of reflection on their own devil-may-care mindset, even if it meant dodging an occasional stray pistol shot. We'd see him with his current inamorata strolling about down by the circus train or holed up in the priciest steak house in town, and growl to each other what a lucky so-and-so he was.

But eventually the repeated melodrama of Jilted Lover Seeks Revenge grew rather tedious. Believe it or not, circus clowns work very hard at their craft, and cherish the restorative power of a good night's sleep -- on move out nights we grew to resent the hullabaloo that resulted from Dorman's callous farewells.

A delegation of younger clowns, including myself, finally caught him in his roomette one night, miraculously alone for once, and delivered an ultimatum, or, as Dinko called it, an 'ultimato'. If he was going to continue his wanton ways with townie females he had better say his good-byes far away from the train, so we could all get some assured shut-eye instead of dodging bullets. Otherwise, we muttered in the sinister tones we'd learned from watching Boris Karloff movies, he might find himself red-lighted -- thrown off the train while it was moving past some dismally uninhabited swamp.

Bobby merely pooh-poohed our remonstrances and continued with his staccato romances, until the show reached New York City in May.

We played Madison Square Garden for nearly a month, and so Dorman was stuck with his temporary mistress for much longer than usual. We could see he began to tire of her puppy-like devotion to him, and cringed when he started to treat her rudely and abruptly right in front of us.

The denouement was sudden, tawdry, and mysterious.

  On move out night, with the circus train ready to head over to Philadelphia for a two week run, there was no shouting, shrieking, or shooting in or around the Iron Lung. Bobby's 'girlfriend', who I recall as rather tall with a predatory horse face, mooned about the tracks, taking long pulls from a bottle in a brown paper bag.

"That little %&##* is in for it now -- soon as my brothers get here" she kept repeating viciously to herself.  I gave her a wide berth as I pulled myself up onto the Iron Lung.

Too tired to care about any further affaires de coeur, I left her to her crapulous fulminations and went to bed. I never even heard the train lurch into motion, and I was still dead to the world when we pulled into the Philadelphia trainyard the next afternoon.

When I finally got up and got down to clown alley, it was to discover that Bobby Dorman had never made it back onto the train the night before in New York. He was AWOL, missing in action -- gone and done a bunk.

He never showed up in Philadelphia, and when the boss clown made inquiries with Dorman's family about his possible whereabouts the only reply he got, he told us, was frosty silence.

Many years later Dinko told me he'd bumped into Bobby Dorman in New York, where he was a set designer on Broadway, and married to that same horse-faced harridan. Dinko told me that Dorman seemed reasonably happy and satisfied with the way things had turned out.

But then, Dinko always did like to make things up . . .

The Lofty Looks of Man

2 Nephi 12:  "And it shall come to pass that the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."

The lofty looks of man, as he gazes into space,
do not begin to comfort the wearied human race.
For we scrutinize the stars in their cold and distant way,
looking far beyond the mark of salvation ev'ry day.

Exaltation will not come through technology, but grief -- 
if our science is not yoked to a Christ-centered belief.
Our haughtiness of mind and of heart, a cul-de-sac,
leads our wits to idols dumb and our faith to actions black. 

There is wisdom in the dust, in humility sincere,
that the mighty and the great will soon justly come to fear. 
For the heavens stoop to me and I need not fly to them
when I stay upon my knees and gaze only at God's hem. 

From the Dislocated Grit

2 Nephi 11:7 -- "For if there be no Christ there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time."

From the dislocated grit a rare world was made for man
by the Son of God to advance the Father's master plan.
The mechanics and the time frame of this overwhelming feat
are less important than the liberation oh so sweet!
For we are made the heirs of a completeness so outright
that we'll outshine the sun, the moon, the stars aflame at night.
And all because a Father's love commanded God's own Son
to do what in His other worlds has already now been done!