'Devil's Night' at the Circus

There are two holidays that the smaller shows never book. Mother’s Day and Halloween.

On Mother’s Day families take their mothers and grandmothers out to a nice Sunday dinner -- nobody in their right mind wants to celebrate the day under the big top. Even the mighty Ringling Brothers show, at least when I was on it as a clown forty five years ago, lost money on Mother’s Day. The seats were so empty that tumbleweeds blew through them during intermission. Smaller shows, all the mud shows and Shrine shows that I played spanning a thirty year period, took the day off and didn’t worry about setting up the tent. It was a nice change of pace from the normal frantic tear down, drive like a maniac, and set up before the sun rises routine. The cook tent would make a special meal for dinner -- sometimes lamb, sometimes turkey -- which was also a wonderful change from the usual beans, tortillas, and greasy carne asada that kept the Hispanic roustabouts content.

Halloween was a zebra of a different stripe. It was not only unprofitable to play on that last day of October, but it was downright dangerous.

The reason goes back to the 1980’s in Detroit, when the destructive tradition of Devil’s Night began in the rundown neighborhoods and slums of the crumbling Motor City. Mobs of unemployed and psychotic people roamed the streets Halloween night, torching abandoned houses and factories. Any innocent trick and treater caught out by the mob that night was in for a very rough time -- sometimes lethal. This nasty tradition spread throughout the Rust Belt in the next few years, and then became a general malaise in the Midwest. It is still a terroristic tradition in some of the more backward areas of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and southern Illinois. But you never find it mentioned in brochures from their Chamber of Commerce.

Fifteen years ago, when I was the ringmaster on Carson & Barnes, the management decided to buck the tradition of no shows on Halloween. We were in the deep south of Illinois and the weather was holding up fine -- beautiful Indian Summer days of warm hazy sun and crisp refreshing nights. Most of the show was Hispanic or Russian, and playing on Halloween meant nothing to them one way or the other. It was just another day, like any other day. But to the few Americans on the show who knew the pulse of the Midwest, it didn’t seem like a good idea.   

The Halloween matinee was meager. Most of the candy butchers didn’t bother to go out to sell their wares, since there was pretty much nobody out there to sell to. I did the Peanut Pitch to one of the most lethargic group of goitrous yahoos I’d ever seen. We sold exactly two bags.

But the evening show was packed -- and it was an ugly crowd. No children, just teenagers and young adults, who were obviously drinking hard and spoiling for a fight. Their costumes were not pretty and cute, they were brutal and monstrous. Creepy fanged clowns predominated.

Gary Byrd, one of the owners of the show, came up to me just before opening to say “I don’t like the look of these people. The minute any sumbitch starts trouble I want you to blow the whistle and close the show!”

“Yessir!” I replied.

He strode off and his wife, Barbara, came up to me a few seconds later to say: “I know these people look to be trouble, but they’re buying concessions like there’s no tomorrow. No matter what, don’t you whistle down the show -- you hear me?”

“Yes ma’am!” I replied.

Now I was in a pickle. Gary was known to deliver a stout roundhouse punch to any employee who disobeyed him -- but Barbara was the one who handed out my salary each Sunday. I decided to take my chances with Gary. Not out of bravery -- but out of greed.

There was trouble not long after the show got underway. After the first clown act, Pepito, the head clown, came to me to say they were not going to do the rest of the show -- the hente maldito were slinging pennies at them from slingshots. He showed me a cut right above his left eye.

“They blind me, those bastardos!” he screamed in my face. I told him to calm down and go talk to the Byrds about it. “No show!” he spat in my face and strode away.

All five clowns took off their makeup, despite Gary Byrd’s resonant threats. But they didn’t just leave the tent. They saw how good concession sales were going, so they borrowed some white jackets and striped caps and went out hawking hot dogs and Coke and making a killing.

During the lion act someone set fire to a hay bale under the bleachers, but since the roustabouts put it out quickly while the big cats were jumping through their smoky flaming hoops the crowd didn’t catch on -- they thought all the extra fug was just part of the act.

During my Peanut Pitch that night some reveler sent a penny speeding into my forehead, leaving a flap of skin that bleed like hell. Barbara Byrd patched it up and passed me a hundred dollar bill while hissing “Keep going -- we’re almost sold out of everything and then we can kick these hillbillies all out!”

“Yes ma’am” I said woozily, my head ringing with an incipient migraine. To this day I still carry a slight scar on my forehead from that episode.

As the highwire act got ready to go one I spotted a furtive group of kids trying to set fire to the sidewall of the tent. I quickly pointed them out to Rudy, the roustabout hefe -- he got a group over to the pyromaniacs pronto and had them frogmarched outside, where they were gently massaged with an assortment of hand tools.

We didn’t let either the elephants or the trapeze act go on that Halloween night. The elephants might have been spooked into stampeding and too many drunks were hanging around the rigging trying to untie it -- the flyers could have come plummeting down on a loose guy wire.

Barbara finally gave me the high sign to end the show, so I blew the show down and gave the audience the most insincere thank you for their attendance in the annals of show biz. The Midway rides and concessions didn’t bother to stay open for the aftershow crowd -- they were afraid they’d be robbed and their stands smashed. So there were no elephant or pony rides, and the petting zoo was securely locked up as the crowd staggered out of the tent and back to their cars. The local cops had finally shown up, strengthened with a spate of State Troopers, so we thought there’d be no more trouble.

But during the night someone, or something, got into the pony stable and ripped open one of the animal’s throats. The poor thing was found bled to death early the next morning.

That was the only Halloween I ever worked on a small circus. And believe you me, if another show had proposed the same thing I would have gladly quit rather than go through that kind of Grand Guignol deviltry again!