Circuses and Bread Pudding

When I was 18 I joined Ringling Brothers Circus as a First of May, a new clown.

I was paid $125.00 per week, out of which union dues, linen service, and roomette rental were taken. It also cost a quarter to take the show bus to and from the arena in each town. I had to provide my own food, costumes, makeup, and clown props. That left little to spend on wine, women, and song; just enough for a Dixie cup of seltzer while I listened to Tammy Wynette singing 'Stand By Your Man' on a jukebox for a quarter. 

When the show reached New York City in April of 1972 to play Madison Square Garden, I found the inflated price of a meal in the Big Apple to be pauperizing. The show would be at the Garden for the next 3 months, and it appeared likely that the wolf at my door would soon invite himself in as a permanent, nonpaying, guest.

Lucky for me an old clown, Swede Johnson, told me about the Greek Joint. Across the street from the Garden, by the old Post Office, it served a huge bowl of bread pudding for 75 cents. But you had to get there by eleven each morning -- otherwise it would be sold out. 

This bread pudding was heavenly. It had a yellow hue and was chock-a-block with buxom raisins;  a creamy white syrup, chastely sweet but not cloying, kissed the top of each serving. I got it to go each morning, and nibbled on it contentedly all through the day to assuage my hunger pangs. After the evening show a few of us First of Mays would share a taxi down to China Town for a tub of chicken chow mein -- divvied five ways, the cost of the ride and the meal was about two-fifty each.

That's how I survived my 3 months on $125.00 a week in New York City. I grew to love that Greek Joint. I'm sorry that memory no longer provides me with the name of the place. The counter was always crowded three deep, and the clamor was ear popping. Even though I yearned to sink my teeth into their souvlaki, oozing with yogurt cucumber sauce, my budget just would not allow it. But I never grew tired of that glorious bread pudding. Every season that we played New York thereafter I could be found each morning at the counter of the Greek Joint, elbowing my way to the front for an order of bread pudding to go. Sometimes the men behind the counter, big burly mustachioed specimens as brusque as snapping turtles, would take pity on my lean wolfish look and toss in whatever happened to be lying around extra on the counter -- a sour pickle, a plastic container of feta cheese, or a large scrap of fried loukaniko sausage. Those guys were all right -- they helped keep me from being able to count my own ribs at night. 

I've never found bread pudding as good as theirs anywhere else. It's mostly served at buffet-style restaurants like Golden Corral or Chuck Wagon out here in Utah, where I now live. A caramelized mess, drowned in a gluey brown syrup, I can barely stomach more than two or three helpings. Just for old time's sake, y'know . . .