The Big Shot

I never ate at a Chinese restaurant as a child. While dad liked to inhabit any establishment that had a bar, which included most Chinese restaurants in Minneapolis, my mother was of a culinarily suspicious nature when it came to foreign food.

“No telling what those people put in their food” she told me many a time. “Probably loaded with creeping charlie weeds and such.”

So when I finally shook off the dust of my feet at the age of 17 to go work for Ringling Brothers as a clown down in Florida, one of my first forays out to eat was to the Golden Buddha in Sarasota. I was entranced with sweet and sour pork; intoxicated by Peking duck; and immediately addicted to the steaming piles of egg foo young that came with a mountain of steamed white rice. This, I told myself as I tucked in, is what the Celestial Kingdom will be like. I blew through a whole week’s food budget in one meal.

Like all the other First of Mays I was on half pay during rehearsals, and had to subsist on pbj sandwiches, bananas, and canned tuna with crackers. Nasty, nasty, stuff.

But then out of the blue my mother, who could only predict dire consequences for me as a circus clown, sent me a check for a hundred dollars, hoping I would use it to keep myself well fed and for godsake to buy some new underwear.

Strutting about center ring during a lull in rehearsals like old man Rockefeller dispensing his dimes, I let it be known I had come into a small fortune and would shortly be treating the clown illuminati to a fine meal at the Golden Buddha.

Suddenly I had more friends than I could shake a stick at.

Whereas before my ship came in I was treated pretty much like the slow-witted kid down the block who needed help to blow his own nose, now I was treated like a big shot. At least by the First of Mays, who I knew were desperate for a free meal where they could stuff themselves. I let myself be petted and cozened, complimented and fawned upon. Like Bob Hope in a Road Picture with Bing Crosby, I could lap up the flattery with a brazen conceit while still doubting that it was really genuine.

The next Friday night, after I’d cashed my windfall, I and a dozen other clowns commandeered a fleet of taxis to take us from the backwaters of Venice to the bright lights and soy sauce of the Golden Buddha in Sarasota. All on me, of course.

There was Bear, and Chico, and Rufus T. Goofus, and the Little Guy, and Anchor Face, and Rubber Neck, and Sparky, and Sandy, and the Tasmanian Devil (a dwarf -- Taz, for short), and Colavecchio, and the Dorfman.

Swaggering into the main dining area, I commandeered an obsequious waiter, instructing him to locate us at the largest groaning board available. Sensing a bonanza from such a yokel, he hurried us into a side banquet room and began suggesting appetizers. Bring ‘em all, I commanded. Nothing is too good for my friends.

A round of ravenous applause followed my extravagant pronunciamento, immediately followed, however, by groans and catcalls when I produced a pint of milk from a brown paper bag I had brought with me. I wasn’t about to pay a dollar for one measly glass of milk! I drank at least three glasses of milk with every meal -- otherwise I felt starved. I had done that ever since I was weaned. My mother never stinted on the moo juice for us kids -- she kept the milkman hopping for twenty years.

Don’t embarrass us, the ingrates shouted at me. Ditch the milk and get a beer like a real man they hollered.

“Just a cotton-pickin’ minute!” I shouted back at ‘em. “I’m drinking my milk whether you greaseballs like it or not! And another thing -- I ain’t paying for no beer! You can have soda pop or water. That’s all!” I sat down amidst more hisses than you’d hear in a radiator factory, but I held my ground. The only one not to give me the fish eye was Bear -- he and I were the only Mormons in the entire circus that season. But good cheer was quickly restored with the arrival of the appetizers -- spring rolls and egg rolls and crispy noodles with calamari and rice balls rolled in sesame seeds, and deep fried wontons filled with pork sausage.

Gad, did we dig in and eat!  

Rufus T. Goofus could not resist juggling the rice balls -- sending them flying around the room like fragrant meteorites.

Everyone, including me, ordered at least two entrees, and soon the table was loaded with steaming platters of everything from chicken feet to skewers of pork liver. The bean sprouts flowed like wine. We used up more soy sauce than the troops during Mao Zedong’s Long March back in 1934. Stacks of thin Mandarin pancakes came and went like flapjacks at a lumberjack camp.

The feeding frenzy lasted a good hour, after which everyone leaned back and groaned ingreasy, MSG-induced ecstasy. Our belches would have made Fu Manchu homesick.

The bill came to 95 dollars. So I left the remaining five dollars as a tip. On our way out our waiter fixed me with a murderous eye, no doubt casting an obscene oriental curse on me and my progeny until the end of time.

I didn’t have dime one to get us back to Venice, but I was so stuffed with good food that I really didn’t care if we had to walk the 23 miles. Luckily everyone was still in a jolly mood and everyone pitched in to pay the fleet of taxis the Golden Buddha staff had summoned for us.

Back in rehearsals the next Monday, it was back to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with a green unripe banana for dessert and lukewarm tap water to wash it all down with. But to me it had been worth it. I was a big shot, for a little while, with my First of May buddies. Once they found out my wealth was as ephemeral as the Edsel they reverted to addressing me as “Pinhead” and never leaving space for me on the ring curb to sit while we waited for the circus director, Richard Barstow, to stop yelling at the Hungarians and get on with things. I had been very foolish with my money, like the Prodigal son, but somehow the husks I was forced to nosh on were not the least bit disgusting. I figured the next time I got a hold of a hundred bucks I’d go to a used book store and buy me a library.