Of Clown Wigs and Barbers

The author's natural hair; of which he is very vain.

The New York Post ran a stimulating article the other day, which began thus:

California is poised to become the first state to ban discrimination against people with natural hair, according to reports.

This sentence caused me to jump up and splutter "by the great horn spoon!" while nibbling on a slice of sprouted wheat bread toast. This in turn brought on a fit of violent coughing when I inadvertently inhaled a few crumbs. I live alone, so there was no one to give me a good pounding on the back -- I had to do it myself, with a broom handle I keep around to beat off paparazzi. Once I caught my breath I finished the toast, then began flossing -- and reminiscing. The reason that particular newspaper sentence had agitated me so much was because it brought into sharp focus an episode from my motley past. A time when I had donned the cap and bells for Ringling Brothers as one of their clowns, and felt I was being persecuted for using my own natural hair.

At that time, some forty years ago, most professional circus clowns wore a wig -- usually something fiery red that stuck up like pampas grass, or else a bald wig made of cotton t-shirt material. Only a few clowns, like Otto Griebling and Dougie Ashton, used their own locks while performing. Being veterans in clown alley of long standing, they could get away with it. A martyr to craniofacial hyperhidrosis (excessive head sweating), I also used my own hair when clowning. This did not go down well with the big enchiladas of circus management. 

At first it was merely a passing remark from the boss clown, LeVoi Hipps, or from the Performance Director, Charlie Baumann. Hadn't I better get a professional wig, they asked, now that I was in the big league and making good money? Since a professional wig, made of yak hair, would set me back a month's salary, I politely ignored their comments. How could anyone not like my naturally wavy brown hair?

 Then my old pal Tim Holst, who had started as a First of May with me in clown alley and was now nimbly climbing up the Ringling corporate ladder, put me on the qui vive:

"Tork" he said, "you gotta get a wig; Kenny Feld [the circus owner's son] hates your hair -- he says it looks like a rat's nest. He's gonna make sure you don't get a new contract in Chicago if you don't get one soon!" Chicago, I should add, was where the show played in the fall, and where all the seasonal contracts for the clowns were renewed.

This scared the bejabbers out of me; I loved clowning and intended to make it my life's work. Where else, I reasoned, could I get paid so well for goofing off -- outside of a government job?

So I asked Prince Paul, a Ringling warhorse and whiteface, to sell me one of his cotton t-shirt bald wigs for a test run. He kept dozens of them in his clown trunk, laundered, perfumed, and starched like handkerchiefs in a chiffonier. But I couldn't stand wearing it for more than one show -- the sweat streamed down my forehead in unrelenting rivulets, eroding my greasepaint.  

Next I decided to dye my own hair fire engine red -- that should do the trick, and keep those bossy honyockers off my back.

  Ever the pinch penny, I refused to go to a beauty parlor to have it done. I simply bought a bottle of Rit Dye and blithely did the deed myself in the men's room of the Von Braun Civic Center, in Huntsville Alabama. That particular brand of dye, lamentably, is meant only for fabrics, not hair. I had skimmed over the instructions. The resulting botch forced me to find a barber with jittering dispatch and have him shave my insulted mane down to the nubbin. 

And that is what finally turned the tide. That natural cue ball effect, without benefit of a confining bald wig, went splendidly with my clown makeup -- like chicken with waffles. The next time I saw Kenny Feld he stopped to chat with me in a most affable manner -- asking me if I was ready to re-up for another hitch when the show hit Chicago. 

 I spent the rest of the season getting scalped once a week. Back then you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a barber college, where fifty cents got me scrapped to the bone. And for an additional half dollar I could get a shave with a hot towel wrapped around my face. I don't know how they perfumed that warm lather that purred out of a white enamel dispenser, but it always put me in mind of a Turkish harem and the Taj Mahal.  

 Today, long after my big top rambles are finished, I've let my hair grow out again. Because I'm still a pinch penny, and haircuts around here are now going for twenty bucks a pop. 

Me with my long brown locks, back in the day.