JoJo the Dog Eared Boy worked as our gofer in clown alley for several months. As noted in earlier entries of this saga, he was rather credulous and held no threat for Albert Einstein. Like so many marginal personalities in this venal world we inhabit, he was constantly ignored, taken for granted, or put upon. Swede Johnson once sent him out for a can of “fat-free lard.” He was gone for two days, and when he returned he mournfully confessed to Swede that stores and pantries in the tri-state area were completely out of that mythical substance. I am sorry to say that I was not immune to such thoughtless raillery either. One day I gave him a dollar to go buy me a box of powdered water so I could make Tang while sitting at my trunk. Even his slo mo thought process caught a whiff of ripe baloney from my request; he wrinkled his nose quizzically, but then shrugged and went out. He came back with a can of Carnation Evaporated Milk.
“It’s the best I could do for a dollar” he told me while he counted change back. “I like Tang and milk; don’t you? Huh, dontcha?”
JoJo also functioned as a part-time dresser. Prince Paul did a come in gag with Murray Horowitz in which Prince was dressed as a mouse and Horowitz was dressed as a cat with a gigantic mousetrap ready to snap shut on Prince. After various thrusts and feints Prince managed to snap the trap shut on Horowitz's tail, and then they both ran off. The mouse and cat costumes were ancient relics made of dyed velvet and papier mache. They weighed a ton and were as cumbersome as deep sea diving suits, circa Jules Verne. Prince promised JoJo five dollars a week to help them get in and out of the costumes. JoJo faithfully helped them in and out, but at the end of each week Prince would say “Listen, boychick, I’m a little short this week.” Then he’d wait for JoJo to laugh (since Prince was a true dwarf.) JoJo never even cracked a smile. Shaking his head wearily, Prince would continue: “I can’t pay you this week, but I’ll make it up to you on Good Friday with a fish dinner.” JoJo nodded cheerfully and went about his other business. This was in the middle of July.
When Chico realized what an ideal patsy JoJo was, he dusted off the old Abbott & Costello routines.
When JoJo was flush with cash due to his hard work and complaisant ways, Chico would rush up to him and demand: “Quick, JoJo, lemme have two tens for a five!” JoJo would comply, and never seemed to catch on.
Or Chico would sidle up to him with a friendly smile and say “Pick a number from one to ten, JoJo.” JoJo would pick a number and Chico would sadly shake his head: “Sorry, JoJo -- that was the wrong number. You owe me a dollar.” JoJo would humbly pay up, wondering out loud why he was so bad at this game.
Many of the arenas we played had freight elevators which could be operated automatically from a distance with a switch attached to a long electric cable. Whenever such an elevator was close to clown alley, the switch was appropriated by Chico, Roofus T. Goofus, or myself, and the fun would begin. At JoJo’s expense. Seeing him ambling along, I’d toss a piece of wadded up paper into the freight elevator and ask him to go get it for me please. Once he was inside the elevator I’d squeeze the button -- shutting the doors on him -- and then send him up to the roof. It always took him a while to figure out how to work the elevator to bring him back down.
“The darn thing went haywire on me” he’d say when he finally escaped. “Went right to the roof. The roof!”
But it finally came to pass that on a warm day in September in Saint Louis we all got our comeuppance.
The matinee was over and JoJo had just come back with several orders of burgers and fries from a place down the street called Happy Clown Hamburgers. They were giving clown alley a significant discount for permission to tape a sign in their window reading: “WE SERVE THE BEST BURGERS TO THE BEST CLOWNS AT RINGLING BROTHERS!”
The alley was unusually quiet that afternoon. Dougie was not playing his trumpet; Kochmanski’s dog Kropka was not barking incessantly to be let out to pee; Horowitz was not arguing sports with anyone; and Prince Paul was dozing quietly on top of his clown trunk. So the ensuing dialogue was heard by all of dumbfounded clown alley.
A well-dressed middle-aged couple timidly poked their heads into clown alley to ask if there was a Joseph Frantze there.
“Nobody by that name here. Sorry” Holst took it upon himself to reply.
“He sometimes goes by his nickname, JoJo” the woman said softly.
“Hey JoJo” Holst called across the alley to the individual in question. “Someone here to see you! Come into the alley, folks. Everybody’s dressed decent.”
When JoJo reached the couple the woman pounced on him with an affectionate half-nelson.
“Joseph! Joseph! Don’t you remember me? I’m your Aunt Mabel!”
“Joseph” the man said with quiet authority. “Come out of this place so we can talk.” He placed very audible and disapproving quotation marks around the words ‘this place.’
I won’t draw out the suspense. Joseph Frantze, JoJo the Dog Eared Boy to clown alley, was a scion of the Anheuser family. His wandering fancies had cut him off from communications with his loving, and very rich, family -- so they hired a detective agency to track him down. He was now old enough to come into his trust fund, set up when he was an infant. And it was a big one. Clown alley heard the figure quoted, and clown alley nearly had kittens.
All JoJo seemed capable of saying in response to this revelation was “Hot jiggers!”
Eventually alerted to JoJo’s sudden change in fortune, Prince jumped off his trunk, pulled a wad of greenbacks out of his civilian pants, and raced out the alley roaring “Hey JoJo, bubala! I got your Good Friday backpay right here! A bonus, too! Where the hell is he?”
But JoJo was gone -- quickly whisked away by his aunt and uncle on a magic carpet of wealth and privilege, never to be seen again by clown alley. He didn’t stop to bid us farewell or to thank us, or to spread a little mazuma around -- and truly, why would he? We treated him like dregs and dross. Cozened him. Checked his basic dignity as a human being at every turn. By rights he should have hired a gang of plug uglies to come beat us all up. But he just left. And clown alley soon forgot all about him. Contract time was coming up and several new showgirls had been hired to augment the cast for the upcoming Chicago date. They needed some serious ‘chaperoning.’
But I remembered JoJo, especially whenever I attended Sunday School class in the coming years and the teacher used Hebrews 13:2 as their text: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
