Long immured by my mother's staid Norwegian cookery as a child, when I at last burst the shackles of home and joined up with the circus I craved the finest and most exotic of cuisines. On a First of May's salary this was hard to conjure up; ninety dollars a week, even back in 1971, did not allow me to order bowls brimming with vichyssoise or platters of filet mignon very often. Mostly I subsisted on a grilled cheese and bowl of tomato soup at Woolworth's for seventy-five cents.
Still, I managed my first taste of oyster stew in Boston; fried scrapple in Philadelphia; and thin slices of country ham swimming in red-eyed gravy with cow peas on the side in Little Rock.
I loved all of it. There wasn't anything you could serve me that would turn my stomach. Bring on the pickled pigs feet! Slice me a wedge of halvah! Pour me an egg cream and don't be stingy baby! And don't forget the chopped liver, oy!
In New York City it happened that I stopped by a deli close to Madison Square Garden for a bottle of Dr. Brown's Celery Tonic, and spotted my first can of sardines. My parents abhorred tinned fish of any kind, so I had never become acquainted with this homely staple. These were King Oscar brisling sardines, in olive oil. I purchased a can, then wended my way back to clown alley at the Garden.
Settled at my steamer trunk, I began the arduous operation of opening my virgin can of sardines. Back then there was no such thing as a pull tab. The can was opened by winding a key around the edges -- a procedure that proved nearly beyond my meager skills. But finally I got the tin open, after having spilled most of the pungent olive oil onto my clown pants and the cement floor. I had not thought to take a plastic fork, or a paper napkin, from the deli, and so I dug in with my fingers. It was lip-smacking good -- in fact, I was smacking my lips so loudly that I failed to hear the first bellows of outrage from my compatriots as the unmistakable scent of sardines wafted over the alley.
"What in the Sam Hill are you eating?" cried Swede Johnson, one of the veteran clowns. "Get it out of here -- this ain't the city dump!"
His request was followed by several others of like import, all implying without much subtlety that I was a heedless simpleton to be bringing such a stinking mess into the alley during working hours.
"What smell?" I finally hollered back, as I took my tin of sardines outside the confines of clown alley. For it was true then, as it is true today, that I cannot smell anything offensive about sardines. To me they are like a breath of fresh and salty air.
As luck would have it Rhubarb Bob, the assistant Performance Director, chose this moment to stride into clown alley to make some kind of pronunciamento -- the slick soles of his black dress shoes encountered the olive oil from my sardine can, and over he went bass ackwards. When he had recovered his dignity and equilibrium he demanded to know who was poisoning the building with the foul stench of sardines. His tuxedo pants were ruined! Everyone remained silent, innocently looking up at the ceiling. With rare wisdom, I had ditched the sardine can in a nearby dumpster. Rhubarb Bob threatened a thorough investigation into the outrage, but we all knew he was blowing so many bubbles. After he stalked out I shyly reentered the alley and tried to stammer my thanks to the fellows for not squealing on me.
They pooh-poohed the whole episode. Clowns didn't snitch on one another; that was part of The Code of Clown Alley. But for god's sake don't ever bring another can of sardines into the alley!
And I never did bring in another tin of sardines. Although there was some difficulty with a bit of Country Castle Limburger I tried to smuggle in later that season . . .
