The Hobbies of Clown Alley

The merry jesters of the Ringling clown alley were not averse to lavishing their funds on wine, women, and song. Thus it came about that every November as the show wound down, getting ready to return to winter quarters in Florida, a number of denizens in clown alley suddenly found themselves financially embarrassed.

But not the veteran clowns. They made a decent salary, and they had been around the block a time or two. They had wives or business managers who took care of their income, allowing them to spend the winter months at leisure so they could catch up on their sleep and pursue their sometimes surprising hobbies.

Mark Anthony was obsessed with the “Pueblo Incident.” During the off season he collected every scrap of print about that unfortunate episode when North Korea captured a US Navy gunboat. He kept all this in several immense scrapbooks in a storage locker he rented in New Jersey. I went with him once out to it, so he could check to see that the “black bellied paper noshing beetles” (as he called them) had not done any damage. He was worried because he used homemade flour paste as an adhesive. He knew the names of the entire crew, all 83 of them, and he carved a beautiful bas-relief of all of them and their ship on a large slab of Carrara marble, which he donated to the American Merchant Marine Museum, in Kings Point, New York. Mark had trouble differentiating between North and South Korea. I once saw him toss a brand new rubber mallet out the door of his camper in disgust because he noticed a label on it saying ‘Made in South Korea.’

LeVoi Hipps, our boss clown for several seasons, owned a small citrus grove in Florida, to which he repaired during the off season. It really was more of a hobby farm, since he refused to grow anything that he could sell profitably. His passion was raising Nagami kumquats. His kids refused to eat them and his wife could not find a good jam recipe for them, so when they ripened he would pick them and place them in bushels by the side of the road with a sign imploring motorists to stop and take as many as they wanted. Hardly anyone ever did. I had dinner at his trailer house several times during the off season, and each time I ate a dozen of them prior to the meal out of sympathy for his forlorn fruit hobby. You eat them whole, rind and all. They weren’t bad, only they made my lips pucker something fierce.

Don Washburn, otherwise known as Sparky, was crazy about china tea cups. During the season he loved to drift through thrift stores looking for a stray Royal Doulton or Limoges cup. During the off season he traveled the length and breadth of California as a vendor at outdoor flea markets. Each cup was packed in yards of jeweler’s cotton, which was not supposed to be flammable. But it was, and a fire in his truck one night scorched his beloved cups beyond repair, cracking most of them as well. After that, Sparky began collecting pewter snuff boxes. But he did it listlessly, without passion or conviction. When he talked about fine bone china his eyes would light up like a pachinko machine; but snuff boxes were just something to pass the time.

“You gotta have a hobby in the circus” he told me. “Otherwise you just go crazy -- or crazier.”

Anchor Face spent the winter months testing barstools in Massachusetts. He bragged he could nurse one beer for hours without even losing the head of foam. He told me swiveling barstools should be avoided; they tended to make you dizzy (apparently how much you drank while sitting on one had nothing to do with it.) A captain’s chair barstool, in his estimation, was about the best place to rest one’s fanny when bending the elbow. It had some back support, some bottom cushioning, and, most important, you only found them in really classy cocktail lounges where lonely women congregated and were glad of the chance to buy a forlorn circus clown laid off for the winter a few snorts. And maybe a meal to boot.

I think Prince Paul collected delusions during the winter months, he seemed to have so many more of them every new season. He discovered a company in Colorado that sold pine cones for chewing. Thereafter he always had a bit of pinecone in his mouth, claiming it sweetened the breath and prevented cavities. He certainly carried a resinous reek with him from then on. To protect his sensitive eyesight he wore a brand of sunglasses that guaranteed nothing but blue light spectrum rays could get past the lens. This essentially made him blind as a bat when he wore them. At Madison Square Garden he ran into a closing elevator door and had the tip of his nose snipped clean off. He came into the alley the next day with his nose stitched up and so raw he had to wear a rubber nose for the next six weeks. He abominated reading a used newspaper, even though he was otherwise so tight he squeaked. He explained to me, in all seriousness, that you only got the latest news from a crisp new paper -- anything already opened and perused was as archaic and useless as a singletree.

I didn’t believe Swede Johnson’s hobby when he told me what it was.

“I like to build bottles in ships on my off time” he told me once.

“You mean ships in bottles” I corrected him.

“Nope, pinhead. I put together little bottles of gin and such inside model ships.”

“Aw, go on, you old ninny; there’s no such thing!”

He just shook his head at my abysmal ignorance and walked away. Several weeks later he came over to my trunk in clown alley, a wicked grin splitting his lopsided face in half. In his hands was a scale model of the Mayflower, and down in the hatches he pointed out a miniature bottle of Johnnie Walker.

“Did you rig that up just for me, you miserable old sinner?” I asked.

“Is the Pope a Republican?” he shot back, continuing to grin like the Cheshire Cat on something anabolic.

From the New York Times:  A New York Times feature writer, Jacob Bernstein, has come forward as the reporter who made derogatory comments about Melania Trump at a Fashion Week event on Sunday, apologizing in a four-part tweet.

Reporters who quiet can’t be

About others fine livery,

But must become snide

Deserve a rich tide

Of media ignominy.