Ringmaster with Carson & Barnes Circus

In July of 2005 I was struck down with Bell’s Palsy while working as ringmaster for the Carson & Barnes Circus. It happened in the parking lot across from the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St Paul, where we had just put up the big top. One minute I was getting ready to put on my tails and top hat for the matinee, and the next my face felt like melting wax. By the time I got to the ER the left side of my face was completely paralyzed. I could barely make myself understood. After a CAT scan and an MRI, the doctors gave me the diagnosis; my face would be immobilized for up to six weeks, and then a painstaking course of rehab would be needed to regain my former vocal abilities. There had been some damage to the vocal cords.

Had I been realistic about it, I would have realized that this event put paid to my career as ringmaster for Carson & Barnes. But I was just an angry and stubborn loudmouth -- who could barely talk anymore. And I was going to fix that in a hurry, no matter what the quacksalvers prognosticated.  

After a week’s rest at my mother’s home in Minneapolis, I rejoined the show in Bemidji; at first selling coloring books and writing press releases. Barbara and Larry Byrd, the owners and operators of the show at the time, were kind, but when I told them I would be back as ringmaster in a few more weeks, in a very slurred voice, they only shook their heads and said they would have to start looking for my replacement -- as the substitute ringmaster, Armando, the bareback rider, had a decidedly Hispanic accent. I begged them to hold off, to wait at least two more weeks and then let me try to announce the show again. If I couldn’t do it, I’d help them find my replacement. They reluctantly agreed.

Man alive, did I sweat bullets for the next two weeks! In my wayward reading as a youth, I had come across the story of how the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes improved his diction and pronunciation by supposedly holding pebbles in his mouth while he practiced a speech. I decided to try something similar, although I didn’t want to put any dirty gravel in my mouth.

No, I simply took up the first book I had at hand and vowed to read outloud from it for several hours each day, between the matinee and the evening show. As it happened, the tome I chose was The Book of Mormon. This is a book with as many flowery tongue twisting phrases as anything Shakespeare composed. I began at the beginning, proclaiming to the empty bleacher seats inside the  canvas circus tent:

“I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents . . . “

From there I went on to the thundering orations of Nephi to his disaffected brethren and then gathered steam as I quoted the brother of Nephi, Jacob, in his scathing denunciation of sin:

“. . .shake yourselves that ye may awake from the slumber of death; and loose yourselves from the pains of hell that ye may not become angels to the devil, to be cast into that lake of fire and brimstone which is the second death.”

I was on a roll, and could feel my tongue and palate responding to the grandeur of the words of these prophets of old.

I kept haranguing the bleachers with the mighty sermons of Abinadi against wicked King Noah and the portentous philippics of Alma as he faced down the worldly semantics of Nehor. And my voice grew stronger and clearer. Even the candy butchers, getting their cotton candy and popcorn ready underneath the bleachers, commented to one another:

“Él puede estar loco pero suena bien!”

Now don’t imagine that because I was quoting scripture like Charleton Heston playing Moses I was anywhere near as righteous and obedient as those spiritual giants. Far, far from it. The list of my sins and indiscretions was, and remains, longer than the Mississippi. No, I just happened to use that book to get my ringmaster voice back. I might have chosen a telephone directory or Alice in Wonderland just as easily. And, by jumping Jehosaphat, it worked! In two weeks time my voice, while still a bit weak and scratchy, was deemed acceptable by the Byrds and I was back in the spotlight in top hat and tails introducing the high wire act, the tiger act, and those ever-lovin’, crazy clowns.   

And even today, long years later, from time to time, when I’m feeling down in the dumps or particularly guilty about some shabby transgression, I like to stride around my apartment, declaiming from Alma, Chapter 29:  

“Oh, that I were an angel . . . “

I’m not an angel, as my neighbors will gladly tell you; but there’s nothing like the sound of my own voice to convince me that “God’s in His heaven -- All’s right with the world!”