“Take it outside the alley!”
Such was the cry of the peacemakers in the Ringling clown alley during the years I worked there.
Whenever a major conflict arose between parties, with increasing volume and threats, the disputants were invited to remove themselves and settle their differences outside. If they ignored this request and continued their wrangle inside the alley they were forcibly ejected. Very few ever broke the Pax Comici. It was hard enough to keep a lid on 30 paid lunatics all crammed together, without hotheads making the whole shebang go up in smoke.
My personal hot button were the smokers. Back then it was still a Constitutional right to puff away wherever and whenever you wanted, despite the health and fire hazards. Asking someone to put out their cigar or cigarette was tantamount to asking them to give up their right to bear arms. The clown alley nicotine fiends heedlessly threw their butts way with careless abandon: I had lit cigarettes land on my costumes and even on pizza slices! It was damaging and disgusting, but the more I hollered the less anyone heard me -- since fully two thirds of clown alley were heavy smokers. One of the worst offenders was Chippy, who specialized in making dozens of black powder squibs for each show. Squibs were used as blow offs for numerous gags; anytime an explosion with a large mushroom cloud of heavy black smoke was needed, you just rigged one of Chippy’s squibs up to a battery with a simple on/off switch, and your comic detonation was ready to go.
Chippy shed cigarette ashes like dandruff; they got on everything. Plus he rolled his own, and whatever brand of tobacco he used must have consisted largely of shredded horsehair and rubber tires -- one whiff was enough to telescope my nose back up into my sinuses. But Chippy was big and cranky. He didn’t take criticism well. So I was forced to mute my protests into vengeance-filled daydreams. But Chippy taught me an important lesson about getting even with your enemies. One day a live ash from his cigarette fell onto the squib he was working on. He had it in his lap and the flash explosion sent him hobbling off to the the ER howling in agony. His misfortune gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside, and after that I didn’t loathe him quite so much. So I learned the age-old lesson that if you want to get even with your enemies just wait for life to do something cruel to them. It always does, to everyone. So you don’t have to lift a finger or take any of the blame. That philosophy has served me well, and kept me out of jail, for many years.
We called troublemakers ‘heat merchants.’ There were a number of them. Dougie Ashton was always sniffing around the alley, looking for disagreements he could fan into a blaze. As a new convert to the LDS faith, I wanted to share my newfound beliefs with others, but Holst, also LDS, advised me to keep quiet and preach by example, not by word. But Dougie liked to draw me out with outrageous statements about Mormonism. Come to think of it, he may have been one of the first purveyors of fake news . . .
Strolling up to my trunk, he once said “I hear your church doesn’t let members eat Twinkies -- aren’t you in big trouble?” I happened to be eating a Twinkie at the time, and shouted back between bites that it was a lie and he was full of dritt! That’s all he was waiting for.
“Oh yeah, you little twit? C’mon and make me eat those words you bloody church boy!”
“Take it outside the alley!” came the familiar refrain from a dozen throats.
“Sorry Dougie. I didn’t mean to yell at you” I told him quietly.
“Yeah, mate. Same here, I guess.” Many clown alley contretemps blew over quickly, like a summer storm.
There were occasional powder sock fights. After applying the heavy greasepaint, clowns used an old white sock, full of baby powder, to set the makeup and keep it from smearing. One day a major rift developed in the alley when the older clowns discovered that the younger clowns, including me, thought then President Nixon was a crook and a war monger; the sooner he was impeached and the sooner we got out of Vietnam the better. Prince Paul, a stalwart political conservative who thought Barry Goldwater was a hippy, threw the first sock right into Racoon Face’s kisser. After that it quickly developed into a dusty Donnybrook. When the talcum powder settled, clown alley looked like a pale white moonscape. Without anyone saying a word, we reached a consensus that Nixon and the Vietnam War were conversationally off limits in clown alley from then on.
Another heat merchant was Mama. So named because he pretended to a solicitous concern about his fellow joeys, he was only after scurrilous information he could retail to Charlie Baumann. Offering a hungover clown some aspirin, Mama would learn of his unpaid bar tab. The next day Baumann would saunter into the alley and sandbag Mama’s victim with a dire threat to pay his local bills or he’d be cut loose from the show and handed over to the local cops. Mama was universally loathed as a stoolie. When he became boss clown a few seasons later his trunk mysteriously developed the ability to acquire dime bags of pot and other illegal items. Baumann was informed of these amazing appearances but chose not to investigate. Still, it kept Mama on his toes and was probably the reason why he retired from clowning at the age of thirty-five to become an evangelical pastor in Michigan.
I suppose this is as good a place as any to mention my unfortunate altercation with Michu, the World’s Smallest Man. He received star billing in the program and from the publicity department, keeping Art Ricker hopping to find new ways to exploit his stature without ruffling his dignity. But he never had his own dressing room. Circus management put him in clown alley. He was an ornery cuss, and one Sunday afternoon as I was minding my own business reading the Book of Mormon at my trunk he came over and poured a bottle of beer over it. Without hesitation I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, threw him inside his own wardrobe trunk, and locked it.
I have never apologized for my actions. The little pisher deserved it. But if I had it to do over again I would probably take my sodden scriptures to Charlie Baumann, tell him what happened, name the clowns who were witnesses to the event, and then ask for reimbursement for a new Book of Mormon.
In the event, once they got Michu out of his trunk I was allowed to finish the season, but then was blacklisted from Ringling. I spent several years in the wilderness, working for mud shows, but eventually, mostly because of the good offices of my pal Holst, who was by now Vice President of Talent at Ringling, I was pardoned and reinstated. Michu went on to animate Alf in the hit TV series.
And, by the way, we never threw pies in clown alley. That kind of stuff only happens in the movies.
There was an old man who was crazy
(or else all his doctors were lazy.)
His meds did include
A bunch of quaalude
It kept him both docile and hazy.
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