I have no hard medical proof, but over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that Ringling producing clown Mark Anthony contracted tuberculosis because of the amount of time he spent in the backroom of the rehearsal barn at Winter Quarters.
This area was a lumber room pumped up on Boomfood. (If you don’t know what that is, you have not read very much H.G. Wells. Hint: It’s in his novel “The Food of the Gods.”) Over the years it had been expanded and a lean-to was added out back in order to store the miscellaneous costumes, pillions, clown contraptions, scrimshaw banners, hawsers, giant hollow Mardi Gras heads made of asbestos, unsold programmes, superfluous pompons, chests of rhinestones, punctured elephant tubs awaiting repair by itinerant Roma tinkers, limelights, wagon wheels, contorted rigging, ring curb sections in need of a retread, widgets, gewgaws, kickshaws, and everything else a venerable and prosperous circus no longer needed immediately but was loath to toss away. Some semblance of order existed in this neglected godown, but over the years people had pawed and pried and pilfered so much that locating a specific item was like panning for gold -- you might get lucky, or you might not. No inventory was kept, and all the security employed was a superannuated night watchman that made the rounds year in and year out who never poked his head inside that backroom. A panhandle cracker, he was heard to say the place was full of “hants.”
Climate control was an ancient wall unit that blew cool air feebly and ineffectively into the place. Plus the roof leaked. Combined with the steamy Florida climate, the fungus, mold, and rust prospered to a disheartening extent. Mark worked long hours in this insalubrious midden during rehearsals and the off season, and undoubtedly inhaled a variety of spores and asbestos fibers that eventually led to his TB. Or so I believe. To me the place always smelled like a cave full of bats afflicted with Montezuma’s Revenge.
He once came up to me, down in Winter Quarters, quivering with indignation, holding up a ball peen hammer smothered in rust.
“I bought this myself just last year” he said through gritted teeth. “I left it back in the storage room. Now look at it! Not worth a tinker’s dam!”
I myself rarely ventured back there, although I was very intrigued by three large Mardi Gras heads that were painted and sculpted to represent Larry, Moe, and Curly of the Three Stooges. Rumor had it that the hapless clowns who wore these asbestos laced heads back in the 50’s and 60’s had all developed mesothelioma. They were put out to pasture and spent the rest of their lives coughing out their lungs huddled on the public benches that lined the public beaches in Sarasota.
Just as boorish tourists always manage to snag a monogrammed towel from an expensive hotel when they’re on vacation, part of clown alley’s larcenous tradition was to swipe an inconspicuous item from that moldy backroom as a keepsake and talisman.
Prince Paul had a battered tin badge that read “Concessionaire No.112 Ringling Brothers” that he had abstracted from the backroom. He kept it in his clown trunk for good luck.
Sparky lifted a stack of old programmes, water-stained and black with mold, to cut out the few remaining unravaged photographs to frame and hang in his roomette.
Dougie Ashton possessed a purloined cork-tipped baton he insisted had once been wielded by Merle Evans.
My illicit trinket was a heavy wool tam o shanter from some distant production number celebrating the Scottish highlands. Unfortunately it was also the home of some nameless pathogen that gave me a terrific scalp itch when I began wearing it during come in. I had to shampoo with coal tar soap for a month to get rid of the blasted infection. I threw the cap away. It only goes to show that in my case Crime Doesn’t Pay.
Naming no names, but there were other clowns, much more predatory, who did not wait for an item to be consigned to Winter Quarters Siberia. On closing night of the season it was their custom to simply stash several of their production costumes into their clown trunks to hang the booty up in their own closets back home. In the celebratory confusion of that last night the wardrobe people did not keep very careful track of returns. A few years ago I visited an old clown alley colleague living in Chicago. After reminiscing about the good old days until we were both sick of it, he showed me his elegant walk-in closet, where he kept several production costumes that must have cost a mint, since they were all handsewn back at the time. He’d had them dry cleaned and moth-proofed.
He’s had a few hard knocks recently, so I assume these one-of-a-kind outfits will be seen on eBay one of these days. If he’s smart he’ll wait until after the show closes for the last time this coming May. He should make a fortune off the nostalgia.
The Questions of Jesus
But whereunto shall I liken this generation?
With algorithms vigilant and cloud technology,
This generation worships at the shrine of symmetry.
But iron pyrite makes our calf of gold this time around,
With lunatics elected and then furiously crowned.
And will this generation like so many gone before
Reject the Savior of the world and ignorance adore?
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