arizona clown antics

Ah, Arizona at last, and the long, wet, cold spring, was behind us!  The Ringling Blue Unit had at last left the gray smog of the East behind and was in the West – where a man’s a man, and a clown’s a moocher, at least when the a/c goes out on the Iron Lung in the middle of a July heat wave in Phoenix, Arizona.  We baked at night like Idaho spuds, waking in the morning drowning in our own perspiration.  The plexiglass windows in our roomettes were sealed so they could not be opened.  We asked the train master when the air conditioning would be fixed; he merely glanced off into the middle distance and began whistling “Oh Danny Boy” while he wandered away.  We tried sleeping outside the train in cheap little Army surplus tents, only to be deafened and nearly flattened by the rushing freight trains that zipped by on nearby tracks all night.  We tried sleeping at the arena, only to be kicked out by persnickety ushers.

We never thought to ask the management to pay for motel rooms until the a/c was fixed; we had been trained and broken in; we knew our place, and knew not to ask for any favors that involved money – the answer was always to “Take it to AGVA”, our union.  They never replied to our questions or requests; we might as well have been in Outer Mongolia for all the union cared.

So some desperate, slightly questionable, action was called for.

Across from the arena was an oasis, a motel with a large kidney-shaped pool, and neon signs advertising air conditioning that mimicked, if it didn’t exceed, conditions in the Arctic.  Their rates were also on the neon sign, and they were beyond our meager resources.  Unless . . .

I forget who had the original brainstorm, but it sounded pretty good under that broiling Arizona sun.  Bear, as the oldest, most respectable-looking of us, would saunter into the motel lobby and reserve a room for the rest of the week, a room for one.  Five of us went in on the payment; me, Roofus T. Goofus, Chico, Rubberneck, and Anchorface. It amounted to just a few dollars apiece.  Each night, after Bear had gotten the key from the night clerk and gone upstairs, each one of us, one by one, would sneak past the distracted clerk, who was engrossed in studying necromancy or something from a big, thick textbook and paid no attention to anything that did not walk up and ring the bell.  We then would make ourselves comfortable either on the bed or on the couch or the floor, and wallow in the frigid breezes from the a/c. 

The first two nights, all went well; we tiptoed past the clerk, who never stirred from his seat and book.  We could have snuck an elephant upstairs without his knowledge.  Our second floor room looked out  over the pool.  We were discrete in leaving in the morning, of course, and always went out the back way, through the kitchen, where the vigilant day clerk could scarcely catch a glimpse of us.

But I made the mistake of boasting about our little escapade to Stanley and Lester Janus, twin brothers, midgets, and notable cheapskates.  Even though their train car still had functioning air conditioning, the little pishers couldn’t resist the thought of staying basically for free in a nice motel room right by the arena, so they blackmailed us; either we let them in to sleep at night or they would blow the whistle.  The Janus brothers could not keep their big traps shut, and so we soon had a slew of other clowns clamoring to be let in to our Antarctic retreat.  We finally stood firm at an even dozen for the night.

The consequences, as you may guess, were not happy.  That very night, after everyone was safely in the room and the a/c was cranked up to Ice Age, a few of the more rambunctious clowns wanted to have a little party, put on some music, drink some beer, howl at the moon.  Our original chaste intention to use the room as a demure sanctuary from the heat and humidity of Arizona went out the window, along with several pillows and an ashtray.  Thundering up the stairs came the night clerk.  He knocked on our door, demanding to know what all the hubbub was, when there was only supposed to be a single, solitary human being in the room!  We were all dressed in pajamas, or briefs, and so could not very well explain our presence as a social visit.  Roofus T. Goofus panicked.  He opened the sliding glass door out onto the balcony and took a heroic leap over the side, clutching all his clothes, to land safely in the pool.  Several more clowns followed suit, until it must have appeared to the residents on the first floor that it was raining bodies.  (Stanley and Lester wisely hid in the closet – when the excitement was over, they snuck out without a word to anyone.) When Bear was all alone in the room he opened up to the furious night clerk, who had been pulverizing his knuckles on the door for ten minutes.  Although threatened with arrest, Bear stuck to his guns, insisting that he was the only one to be sleeping in the room that night, so the night clerk allowed him to stay, but he’d have to leave the first thing in the morning.

The rest of us, sopping wet, trudged back to the circus train, a good two miles away, and bedded down in our sauna for the rest of the night. 

The air conditioning stayed broken until we residents of the ‘Iron Lung’ realized that some baksheesh was expected by the train master to fix the problem.  We each kicked in five bucks, and lo and behold the next day the Iron Lung was as cool as iced tea.

And, as far as I can recall, I have never had to jump out of a second story window again.