Let me take you back nearly half a century to when the only security Ringling Brothers Circus had was Backdoor Jack. It wasn’t as if there were dozens of terrorists wanting to get in to blow up clown alley or kidnap an elephant. No, the problem was that everyone on the show wanted to sneak in their family and friends to watch a performance for free. The show was rather stingy on passing out Annie Oakleys (free tickets). With over 400 people on the show, the number of possible deadheads convinced circus management to station Backdoor Jack at the back entrance of each arena to carefully scrutinize each person coming in, to make sure they were authorized circus personnel.
A roustabout who had fallen from the rigging years ago, Backdoor Jack had a twisted spine and a shuffling gait that made him slow and cranky. At the beginning of each season he was given a list of names. These were the people allowed in. He would sit at his card table and demand our names as we came in. He spent the first few weeks getting names connected to faces, and then threw away the list. He had to do this twice with the clowns, since we not only had our civilian faces, but our clown faces as well. Not overly smart, he was extremely tenacious. And he never left his post, not even to answer nature’s call. He kept a large mason jar underneath his table.
John Ringling North, circus scion and playboy, who sold the show to Irvin Feld in 1968, came to visit what he still regarded as ‘his’ circus in Portland, Maine, and was denied entrance by Backdoor Jack. He wasn’t on the list. I happened to be at the back door that day, stuffing a rubber chicken with Silly String in an experiment that went sadly awry, when the encounter happened. I recognized North from when he had come to our Clown College class to give a lecture on circus history.
“How dare you tell me I can’t go in! I’m John Ringling North, you idiot! Now let me through!”
Backdoor Jack squinted at him, totally unimpressed. He replied in a flat, scratchy voice:
“Can’t go in, mister.” Then he added, rather illogically, “I got my orders, same as you.”
Rhubarb Bob, the assistant Performance Director, was finally called to give North the nod to get in. The intervening years have erased the reason why we called him Rhubarb Bob. In circus slang, ‘rhubarb’ means a fight. But Rhubarb Bob was about as feisty as a dish of melted ice cream.
“I’ll see you are thrown off the lot for this, you dolt!” North hissed at Backdoor Jack. But nothing happened to Backdoor Jack. He continued to sit at his card table, rain or shine, gatekeeping with Kafkaesque brutality. He liked to eat sandwiches made of white bread slathered with bacon grease (supplied to him by the cook on the pie car) and layered with scallions. Originally from Texas, he also enjoyed red creme soda and Moon pies. I tried bribing him once to let my New York girlfriend Alice sneak in the back way, with a sixpack of Barq’s, but he spurned my advances with contempt. He was incorruptible.
But not omniscient.
Clown alley developed a technique for getting girlfriends and family past Backdoor Jack. We’d put our makeup and costume on them outside of the arena, and then they could stroll in as easy as falling off a log. Jack never paid too much attention to the clowns -- there were too many of them, and they were all crazy anyways. A half hour later we would pass by Jack, out of makeup, and he would wave us through without a moment’s hesitation. Then we would hook up with our stowaway, help them get off the makeup and costume, and find them an unoccupied seat out in the arena. They could leave however they wanted after the show; Backdoor Jack didn’t give a hoot who came out the back way, only who came in.
In Montreal an October blizzard raged throughout the day, but Backdoor Jack remained at his post, dressed in a bulging parka that had him looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from “Ghostbusters.” He made us pull down our own jacket hoods to identify ourselves before he’d let us in out of the frosty elements.
As a roustabout Backdoor Jack enjoyed a curious privilege that even star performers didn’t have. When the season ended and the train was pulled back to Florida for the winter, all performers and other circus personnel were summarily kicked off the train and not allowed back on until rehearsals started several months later. Except for the roustabouts. They were allowed to ride the train back to Winter Quarters in Venice, then live on it rent-free until the season started up again. And they got two dukey boxes a day, along with a small weekly stipend. The reason for this was ostensibly that they were needed for maintenance; cleaning out the train cars and washing the outsides. They also repaired elephant harnesses and rigging, repainted the ring curbs, and bush hogged the Winter Quarter grounds. But that took up just a few hours each day. They got to spend most of their time lazing about, angling for catfish in the canals or going after bigger quarry off the Venice Municipal Pier. Backdoor Jack was a fishing addict, along with Lou Jacobs and Otto Griebling, who both had homes in Venice; the three of them would spend happy hours under the mellow winter sun inveigling bluefish and croakers to take their hooks. The circus caste system and the grudges it inspired disappeared during the off season, so a roustabout could hobnob with his betters in the pursuit of game fish.
