My first Christmas away from home was spent in Venice, Florida. In rehearsal with the Ringling Brothers' Blue Unit.
By a series of fortuitous missteps I had been offered a contract as a First of May and told to report for rehearsals by December 20th. I sped back north to the ancestral home in Minneapolis prior to the deadline, the news of my employment in the buffoonery department leaving my parents agog. They had both predicted my abysmal failure at such a hare-brained venture; now here I was, waving my contract in front of their aging, sagging faces with a complete lack of familial piety.
It was a wonderful moment for a kid who had spent his life, up until then, being told by everyone to stop daydreaming and fooling around and start buckling down to real life.
After making the rounds of high school pals who were now either entombed in factory jobs or carousing at the University of Minnesota, I fled the gelid embrace of winter for my very own roomette on the Ringling train in Winter Quarters, and the rigors of rehearsal began.
Richard Barstow was the rehearsal director and choreographer that year. A Broadway camp follower, his low opinion of clowns was demonstrated clearly by his first stage instructions to us at rehearsal: "When I'm not using you please stay out of sight, and never sit on the ring curb!"
This wispy-haired rake handle kept us busy all day doing dance steps to the accompaniment of his raspy screams and withering sarcasms. There was no time to work on our clown gags, except in the late evenings after rehearsals. That's when Mark Anthony, Otto Greibling, Dougie Ashton, and Prince Paul would meet in solemn conclave to decide what the ring gags would be and to distribute tattered, hand-me-down walk-arounds to the First of Mays, such as myself, who didn't have any original ideas about what to do.
I was given the ancient 'balancing a rubber ball on a parasol' gag to extract some chuckles from the crowd. This consisted of a cheap Japanese paper parasol and a rubber ball with fishing line attached to it that had a loop at the other end. Once the loop was placed around the crown of the opened parasol, I could spin the parasol while apparently balancing the rubber ball on its edge. Of course once I closed the parasol and put it over my shoulder, the audience could see the rubber ball dangling on its invisible thread.
Since clowns only got half-pay during rehearsals, I was forced into extreme frugality. No car, of course. I rented a bike from a shop in downtown Venice to take me places. My meals came from the Winn-Dixie store, where a smoked turkey leg cost fifty cents and a bag of oranges a quarter. That, and numerous pbj sandwiches, provided all my nourishment.
While I gloried in having my very own private space on the circus train (previously, the new clowns had bunked barracks-style on one of the train cars) I was a bit put out by the hygiene arrangements. Each roomette had a fold-out sink, and there was a bathroom at the both ends of the car -- but there were no showers. For that, I had to rely on the one single shower stall at the rehearsal arena. It serviced all 30 clowns, and the Bulgarian acrobats. I had to get there mighty early to shower or risk being late for rehearsals, which started promptly at 9. While turning a blind eye to tardiness in the star acts, if a lowly clown were a minute late Barstow broiled them with vituperation, via his microphone, until they shriveled up and blew away.
So my days and nights were busy; except for Sunday, when the show took a welcomed Sabbath rest. Sundays I would wander along the canals throwing coral rocks at the 'gators or spread out on a blanket at the beach listening to the mewing of the gulls and the hissing of the surf, marveling at my good fortune yet wondering if this were really how Charlie Chaplin got his start.
There were no rehearsals on Christmas day, so Kevin Bickford, Tim Holst, -- both First-of-Mays -- and I shared a taxi into Sarasota to eat at the Golden Buddha. The three of us ordered shrimp fried rice, sweet and sour pork, and egg foo young, washed down with copious amounts of tepid tap water that the waiter brought after we had shot down his suggestion of tea or bar drinks a dozen times. Tim and Kevin were from small-town Illinois, so we were just three unremarkable Midwesterners holed up in a dimly lit and depopulated Chinese joint on the most sentimental day of the year.
We spoke about our dreams, what we wanted to accomplish. Kevin wanted to become a famous magician; his dad did amateur magic shows for the VFW back in Illinois. Holst was determined to get into circus management, because that's where the money is. His dad was a mailman; one shoulder permanently lower than the other from carrying that heavy satchel for forty years. I really didn't know what I wanted out of life yet.
"Maybe just to make people laugh -- that would be a pretty good deal" I said at length.
Yeah, they agreed. Nothing wrong with making people laugh. But unless you're Bob Hope there ain't much money in it.
"But it should be steady work" I hazarded, "cuz everybody likes to laugh."
They didn't reply; our fried rice had come, so it was time to dig in and let our plans take care of themselves.
Afterwards we took a taxi back to Winter Quarters and went our separate ways. I spent the evening in my roomette, reading
W.C. Fields -- His Follies and Fortunes, by Robert Lewis Taylor. I still recall Taylor's narrative detailing Field's penchant of opening bank accounts in every town he ever visited while in Vaudeville. That sounded like a pretty good idea to me at the time.
I can't vouch for Kevin or Holst, but my first Christmas away from home did not generate a pinch of homesickness or loneliness. I was a professional clown about to embark on a nation-wide tour, I owed no man one red cent, and, for the most part, I liked my fellow performers. The world was not only my oyster, but the lemon, salt, bread and butter were on their way as well.
The infamous Richard Barstow, during circus rehearsals.
