During the winter of 2006 I worked as a warming house attendant at Van Cleve Park in Minneapolis. My job was to keep homeless people out of the warming room, keep track of where skaters left their regular shoes, and help kids who didn't have any ice skates find a pair that fit from the dozens of pairs donated to the Park over the years. I had grown up skating at Van Cleve Park myself, so it was kind of a homecoming -- a miserable one. As a kid I swooped around the rink in a hilarious, carefree, manner. Now, getting fat and already divorced and behind on child support, I could barely manage to hobble out on the ice, and my stipend was even less than what McDonald's was doling out.
Desperate for a change, I applied to several circuses for the upcoming spring season: "Circus Clown -- Have Rubber Chicken, Will Travel."
The only show I heard back from was Carson & Barnes Circus, out of Hugo, Oklahoma. But they didn't want me for a clown -- after reading my resume and hearing my voice over the phone, the owner, Barbara Byrd, asked me to be the Ring Master. With a very handsome salary.
So in 2007 I became the Equestrian Director (as ring masters were known in the horse & buggy era) for The Mighty Carson & Barnes Five Ring Circus.
Their tent was the length of two football fields. There were actually only three rings, and in between the two middle rings was an open area where additional acts could perform -- so, by stretching things, you could call it five rings. Still and all the same, it was the largest tented circus extant at that time. Tickets were four dollars for adults, and three dollars for children. Infants under two years were free. Patrons got their money's worth. The show lasted nearly three hours and included lions, tigers, tightrope walkers, trapeze artists, jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, the Wheel of Death, a human cannon ball, horses, camels, a pygmy hippo, a dozen elephants, clowns -- and one green ring master. Altogether, we carried nearly three hundred people from town to town. Everyone worked who traveled with the show -- even the toddlers were given coloring books and snow cones to hawk during intermission.
I started the season with a stack of index cards several inches thick, on which I wrote down the name of each act and a quick punchy intro -- such as "High above the hippodrome track, please give a hearty welcome to . . . The Fearless Flying Fernandos!"
(Little did the audience suspect that not only did the Fernandos flit about on the trapeze, but they also took care of the porta-potties in-between and after the shows; it was part of their contract; an old circus tradition, called Cherry Pie, wherein every act has a second job on the circus lot -- my second job was as on-lot publicity director, giving local bigwigs a tour of the circus attractions and getting them a free meal at the cook tent.) After the first month on the road I was able to toss my cards, having learned all their names and settled on how much schmaltz to butter them up with.
I was the only gringo on the show, outside of Barbara Byrd and her family -- who ran things. And the elephant trainer, Captain Jingles. Like most mud shows, Carson & Barnes contracted with South American entertainment exchanges for all their performers, plus a crew of experienced roustabouts (tent riggers.) 'Mud show' is not a derogatory term to circus people; it simply means an outdoor show, one that has to take its chances with the weather.
I got along well with everyone, since I made the effort to learn Spanish and often gave rides to performers who wanted to prowl the local pawn shops for musical instruments. Apparently there was a thriving market for trumpets and clarinets down in Argentina and Chile -- a bunged up and out of tune bugle purchased for ten dollars in Kalamazoo could bring close to a hundred dollars down in Santiago. Trombones were especially sought after; the members of the Flying Fernandos assuring me that a band of slide trombones was a requisite for bull fights up and down the Southern Hemisphere.
There was one unfortunate contretemps when we played Winona, Minnesota, on the Fourth of July. A garland of small American flags was rigged up around the entire inside of the tent. Halfway through the matinee one end of the flag garland came loose and was playfully grabbed by a clown. He proceeded to pull the entire string of flags down and then let them trail in the dirt as he skipped about and did cartwheels. I don't think he did it out of disrespect, but the audience suddenly went very still, and I heard a few Nordic imprecations. I quickly gathered up the string of flags into a ball, shoving the clown away and giving him a hearty kick in the rear of his baggy pants so the crowd would think it was part of the act.
But after the show, when I tried to explain to Pepito, the flag desecrator, why I had kicked him without warning, he chose to not understand my action and told me there was now bad blood between clown alley and me. I was no longer welcome to sit at their table in the cook tent during meals. They would no longer set up my microphone or put out my director's chair and carafe of lemon-honey water. And they absolutely refused to let me work in any of their clown gags. Up until then I had been a willing stooge, the perfect straight man, in several of their gags -- using my pompous ringmaster authority to tell them to leave the ring so the next act could start and being pelted with confetti for my pains. I really enjoyed that -- I felt like I was giving Edgar Kennedy or James Finlayson a run for their money. Now that was all taken away from me.
I finally managed to patch things up with clown alley towards the end of the season when the show played El Paso, where a Catholic priest came early one Sunday morning to celebrate mass inside the main tent. This was a rare event, one that the performers looked forward to with great fervor. Most of them were practicing Roman Catholics. They almost never had the chance to go to mass.
The night before mass the priest had come by the lot to ask for a few voices to sing Dona Nobis Pacem, a section of the Agnus Dei much beloved by South Americans. Since I had sung it as a kid at Saint Lawrence Catholic Church back in Minneapolis, I volunteered. It's a pretty easy tune to carry.
After the mass I was given a group abrazo by clown alley and welcomed back into their fellowship. Anyone who could sing Dona Nobis Pacem like that, like an angel, could be forgiven any blasphemy, any outrage.
And so I ended my one season as ringmaster for Carson & Barnes Circus back in a shower of clown confetti.
No comments:
Post a Comment