The Ringling clown alley in its heyday was an uninhibited bedlam, but with an underlying bedrock of showbiz professionalism. It really didn’t matter who you were, what you did or thought, or how often you sang “Ridi Pagliaccio” to no one in particular -- as long as you showed up fairly sober for each show and didn’t steal from a fellow clown. Just about everything else, in clown alley parlance, was ‘jake.’
When I first arrived at this roistering lounge for loonies nearly fifty years ago the members included Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, ex-cons, military veterans, hippies, grade school dropouts and college grads. Sexual orientation was as variegated as a kaleidoscope. Nobody in the alley cared about skin color, not because they were saints or far in advance of their times, but because it had no bearing on getting a laugh. Clown alley existed for one thing, and one thing only -- to excavate belly laughs from the audience. Everybody’s equal when they get a pie in the face.
Early on in my first season Roofus T. Goofus fell deeply in love with one of the showgirls, Alice. Roofus was white, Alice was black. They bonded quickly and completely, forming a seamless couple. Clown alley thought nothing of it. Black, white, green, or purple, the big top had welcomed all races and nationalities since its inception if they had the talent and determination. The show traveled as a self contained village, and I never saw the least hint of segregation within it. Of course there was a caste system, as deeply imbedded as any in India, and the clowns were near the bottom of that caste system. But that only held true inside the circus itself; outside of the arena we mingled and socialized however we pleased.
Fifty years ago the deep South was a different world from the rest of America. Growing up in liberal Minnesota, I saw little of the ugliness of race hatred; so I was startled at the reactions that Roofus and Alice as a couple stirred up when the show played in places like Tallahassee and Birmingham. I went out with them one night after the last show to one of the ubiquitous waffle joints that dotted the South like crabgrass. The place was a dump, but we were hungry. Amidst the malty treacly fug there was no one to seat us, so we picked a booth ourselves. The waitress who finally came over had her grey hair up in a bun and wore teardrop-shaped glasses on a metal chain. She took one look at Alice and immediately marched away. Then a middle-aged man in a yellow shirt and brown necktie -- obviously the manager -- came up to our booth. He had a nametag on his shirt pocket, but whether it read “Bubba” or not I no longer recall.
“You folks from around here?” he asked, but not in a friendly manner.
Roofus told him we were with the circus, and craved a late night snack.
“Y’all cain’t eat here. We closed.”
I looked around at the active patrons all around us, busily dissecting waffles and sausage. There was no CLOSED sign in the front window or on the door.
“You guys look wide open to me.” I chirped brightly.
I have never seen a human face go from flabby white to molten red in such a short time.
“I said we closed. Now git!”
We gitted. None of us three felt like playing hero or heroine that particular night.
Alice did not seem too upset by the incident. She reminded Roofus on the way back to the train, where we hoped the pie car would still be open for indigestion, that she had warned him it would be like this sometimes when they were seen together out in public. The bigots ran things down here, she told him, and he’d better not take her to another redneck place like that again. Still smarting, Roofus was all for going back and heaving some rocks through their windows, but appetite trumped indignation, and we were able to get some burgers and fries at the pie car without further uproar. After that the couple ate all their meals at the pie car until we crossed the Mason Dixon line.
I was dumbstruck when we played the Barton Coliseum on the State Fairgrounds in Little Rock to find drinking fountains clearly marked “White” and “Colored.” But I had little time to ponder the rank injustice of this, since the size of the building precluded having clown alley inside. Instead we were assigned to an outbuilding -- the Swine Barn. The prize winning porkers were not in residence, thank goodness, but their memory lingered on. The distance between the Swine Barn and the back door of the arena was approximately 75 yards. We couldn’t hear our musical cues from the outer darkness, so Swede stationed himself near the back door, and when it was nearly time for one of our entrances he gave a piercing, two-fingered whistle and we had to come a-runnin’. This was in the middle of a torrid Arkansas summer, when the humidity reaches a fiendish stickiness unknown outside of Dante’s Inferno. I finished each show as limp as a string of boiled pasta. At the end of the day I just wanted to get back to my roomette, which thankfully had air conditioning, and pour myself into bed. The world and its problems could go hang.
Roofus and Alice remained together nearly two years. He met her parents in South Carolina, and she met his in Illinois. The times were in an upheaval as the Vietnam War finally came to its tortuous end and Nixon schemed his way out of the White House; an interracial cohabiting couple was not deemed much of a scandal anymore -- in most places. I left to go on a two year LDS mission to Thailand, and when I came back Roofus T. Goofus was still in clown alley but Alice had moved on to Georgetown University in Washington D.C. to pursue a nursing degree.
“She was always smarter than me, Tork” he told me. “And her parents didn’t like me. Not because I’m white -- but because I’m a clown. She told me herself there was no future with the circus. But I didn’t want to leave -- this place is gonna trap me forever.”
“Yeah, I know” I replied. "Me too."
Just then Dougie Ashton came into the alley and cried out:
“G’morning, mates. Buck ‘em all, is what I says!”
It was time for me to go whip up the shaving soap for the wedding cake gag, so I gave Roofus a sympathetic punch on the shoulder and went to find the galvanized steel garbage can we kept outside the alley for the purpose. I hoped no passersby had used it for their trash; then I would have to clean it out first.
More newspapers is what I wish.
Not for the news that they dish.
But rather I clap
On them for to wrap
All of my leftover fish.
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