Folding Chairs in Clown Alley

My dad knew quite a few questionable characters when he tended bar at Aarones in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  I got to know them vicariously, when dad would narrate their exploits at the dinner table, much to the disgust of my mother, who strived in vain for high tone and gentility in our lives.  There was Pickle Joe, who made a tenuous living selling bottled preserves that he processed in a shed under a bridge on the Mississippi.  An incautious wielder of knives, Pickle Joe kept losing a finger here and a finger there over the years, according to my dad, which would invariably turn up in one of his jars of pickles.  Needless to say, my mother forbade any of Pickle Joe’s products to cross the threshold of our home, much to my disappointment; I rather fancied a jar with a human thumb swimming amidst the dill weed and cucumbers.  Jelly Bean was a frequent visitor at the bar; he got his nickname not for his sweet tooth but because his fingers were so sticky, as if he kept jelly beans in them when not rifling the till or picking a pocket.  Mr. Skeets sold hot watches and jewelry, which turned your skin green on contact.  Father Prolasch liked to come in after Mass on Sunday for a prolonged tipple that usually ended with him napping on the pool table (this last character sketch was always thrown in gratuitously by my father simply because my mother was trying to be a good practicing Catholic).

And so when I joined Ringling Brothers as a clown in 1971, the raffish characters, that abounded like the Mississippi carp I angled for near the sewage drain, did not necessarily upset me.  Life was full of interesting people, and I was fortunate enough to now be surrounded by them.  They were honest and hardworking, for the most part.  There were two new clowns, however, who came into the alley at the  same time I did, who thought the world owed them a living and didn’t scruple to confiscate whatever they could lay their hands on.  I will not name them, as they both left the show after one season, never to return.  They were definitely Bad Hats. 

I would have nothing to do with them.  That is, not until the show got to the Convention Center, in Anaheim, California.  The Convention Center supplied clown alley with sensually soft, plush, red folding chairs, which, in turn, led to my first participation in a crime wave.  I’m sorry to say that almost all of the new clowns that season participated in this caper.  Common decency, to say nothing of our aching derrieres, demanded it

You see, we clowns never knew what kind of chair would be available in each building.  And clowns do a lot of sitting between numbers and between shows.  Mark Anthony, Swede Johnson, and Prince Paul, all had their own special chairs to sit in, which were carried by the show as a kind of perk for their long years of service with the show.  Otto Griebling kept a camp stool in his trunk.  The rest of us had to make do with whatever the arena could provide us with, which often was nothing.  With nothing to sit on we had to improvise with splintery crates or go hunting for dilapidated and rusty folding chairs that threatened to collapse the moment we sat in one.

But in Anaheim we were supplied with wonderfully soft and forgiving folding chairs that were a pleasure to sit in.  I could even snuggle down and take a nap in one!  And, I’m ashamed to admit, that is how our two Bad Hats got so many of us to participate in a chair heist.  They intimated, on close out night, as we were bidding a fond farewell to those wonderful chairs, that there was no need leave them behind; we could each grab a chair and take it back to the train with us.  After all, the Convention Center would not miss a dozen or so chairs . . .

Ah, but they would!  And to prevent anything of the kind from happening, security guards were placed at the Convention Center exit ramp.  None of us would be allowed to leave the building until we had been frisked!  This heavy handed attempt was a miscalculation on the part of the building.  Having affronted us with their suspicion of our dishonesty, we decided, as a matter of honor, that clown alley HAD to steal those chairs!

We emptied the blue prop boxes of all their rubber chickens, foam rubber dragons, turkey basters, and other sundry clown props, and loaded the beautiful plush folding chairs into them, locked them up for the Bulgarian baggage smashers to load onto the train, and then carried our own clown props back to the train with us.  Those lousy guards couldn’t grouse about that!

And so it came to pass that for the rest of that season we had great chairs to sit in.  Charlie Baumann, the German Performance Director, growled at us that he would inform the Anaheim police and have us all thrown in the hoosegow, but in this case his umlaut-sodden bark was worse than his bite – especially after he was bribed with two of the plush chairs for his own dressing room.

The statute of limitations has run out on this crime, I’m sure, so I can now print the story without fear of repercussion.  Most of us went on to unblemished careers in show biz and other pursuits, but we are all  united by the taint we still feel when a nice red plush folding chair is encountered.

In the long run, crime doesn't pay -- but the hours are good.