A Kid at the Circus

What strange influences impelled me to don the greasepaint and motley of Ringling’s clown alley? I’ve gone over that question a thousand times these past decades. A seminal guide to taking up the comic cudgels was John McCabe’s wonderful biography of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy. The movies of the Marx Brothers also pushed me towards the merry anarchy of the circus clown. My own instinctive use of humor to protect myself from school bullies is another reason I wound up trading affectionate insults with Swede Johnson in the Blue Unit clown alley. But the one thing that definitely DID NOT influence me to become a circus clown was the circus itself. My memories of attending the Zhurah Shrine Circus in Minneapolis back in my misspent youth are not at all pleasant. Why? Well, it’s complicated -- but it goes something like this:

My mother and father differed in many, usually rancorous, ways.
None more so than their approach to taking the family on an outing.
The major divide was that my father never wanted to take his kids anywhere. Period. He slaved all day at Aarone's Bar & Grill, and held a second job at the Minneapolis Athletic Club as a towel jockey -- and so he felt entitled, in his free time at home, to settle into a comfortable chair. light up a Salem, and watch Bonanza; not drag a bunch of yowling brats around to the movies or the circus.
It took a titanic effort on the part of my mother, or the deepest bathos on the part of us kids, to move him.

But . . .
When he did move and did take us to the movies, it was as if Diamond Jim Brady had swaggered into town. He gave us enough money to buy the biggest Coke and the most capacious tub of popcorn, along with oodles of Raisinets, Jordan Almonds, Nonpareils, and Mason Crows licorice. After the show, if there were pinball machines in the lobby, as there were at the old Apache Chief in Columbia Heights, he allowed us to squander his coins on them until steam came out of my mother's ears and she stomped off to the car to await our descent into pauperism.

My mother, on the other hand, was extremely conscientious about taking us places -- like the dentist or to Mass on Sunday. But I have to admit that she also took us to a fair number of movies and to the Zurah Shrine Circus every year.
But the thought of paying through the nose for any sort of concessions was anathema to her.
When she took us to the movies she brought along a bag of bridge mix in her purse, and if we wanted something to drink we could darn well go out into the lobby and lap up all the free water from the fountain that we wanted. This was not really fair, I now think, because the water fountain at the old Apache Chief was purposely kept in disrepair; it dispensed nothing but dust. I discovered early on to be sparing on the bridge mix, because after several mouthfuls it glues your tongue to the roof of your mouth if you have nothing liquid to go with it.
But it was our annual trip to the Shrine Circus that really showed her miserly mettle.
She would make her own popcorn the night before, stuffing it into brown paper bags from the Red Owl and fill up the big clunky red and white thermos with anemic powdered lemonade. Then tuck those minute paper Dixie cups, the size of a thimble, into her purse for the next day's outing. We always went with several of the neighborhood families and sat together to watch Tarzan Zerbini's lion act and juggling clown Carl Marx.
While the other families caroused with hot dogs and cotton candy, bought balloons and coloring books, my mother would apportion out the cold stale popcorn and pour out a few drab drips of lemonade for us. A circus programme book was out of the question -- we were not related to the Aga Khan.
Inevitably an usher would come up to her, reminding her that outside food was not allowed.
This produced such a cold glare from my mother that the usher would stumble backwards as if poleaxed, then turn and flee back down the concrete steps.

When my own kids came along I always made myself available to take them to shows and whatnot. But, like my mother, I found it very hard to pay through the nose for concessions. So we compromised. I brought an apple for each kid; after they ate it, if they wanted some junk to snack on from the candy stand, they could have it.
But now that my kids are all grown up, I rarely go out to see any kind of a show. I prefer to snuggle up with a good book or see what's happening on Netflix. But when I do go to a show I revert completely back to type; I buy a bag of chips and a can of Shasta to smuggle into the theater. No way am I going to pay those predatory concession prices while watching the next Star Wars or Jurassic Park.