Remembering Ringmaster Harold Ronk

One evening back in 1972 a young Ringling clown snuck up on ringmaster Harold Ronk, who was chatting affably with Rhubarb Bob, the assistant performance director, and clipped a large yellow balloon to the split of his red sequined tailcoat. The balloon waved languidly in the popcorn-scented air, promising a big laugh when Mr. Ronk strode out to begin the show with that celebrated phrase “Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages . . . “ But before Ronk stepped out of the shadows the ever vigilant Charlie Baumann, performance director and tiger trainer, caught sight of the offending globe and hastily popped it with the tip of his glowing cigarette. This startled Ronk momentarily, but saved him from becoming a victim of clown alley’s penchant for japery.

Baumann then cast his eyes round about until they landed on me, innocently chewing a Van Holten’s Big Papa Dill Pickle. The glare he directed at me would have felled a lesser jester, but I merely waved at him with my briney cuke and sauntered back into clown alley to get ready for the opening number.

Ronk never inquired about this little incident; it was not in his nature to notice petty annoyances or be overborne by the vagaries of circus life. Like the Post Office, neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night could stay him from his appointed rounds of bombastic announcement and mellifluous song.  He favored corny tunes, warbled in a treacly tenor, and with great conviction and enunciation. Forty-five years later I still catch myself humming his signature song: “This is the happiest place on earth to be; come be the happiest child on earth with me!”

Harold Ronk came from Peoria, Illinois. He took voice lessons as a child and began his singing career with Sig Romberg doing Viennese schmalz. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he thought he was auditioning for a Broadway play when he sang for John Murray Anderson, the Ringling Brothers producer. When he was offered the job of circus ringmaster he shrugged his shoulders and took it, saying “A stage is a stage.”  He held that stage for 30 years.

Like Lou Jacobs and Merle Evans, Harold Ronk had become a copper-bottomed Circus Institution by the time I worked with him. He had, in a sense, tenure. He was part of the warp and woof of Ringling Brothers, and conducting the show without his Dudley Doright intonations was as unthinkable as giving arms to the Venus de Milo. It would be an artistic sacrilege.

But Ronk did not think of himself as irreplaceable.  When my clown pal Tim Holst approached him early in the season to audition as his understudy, Ronk was not in the least bit offended that a lowly comic wanted the position. Holst had a rich tenor voice, and, more important, he had picked up a dinner jacket and tuxedo pants at a Goodwill Store. They smelled of mothballs and Lilac Vegetal, but they gave Holst a ready-made ringmaster look.  Ronk heard him out, singing a few stanzas from Victor Herbert’s “Toyland.” Ronk gave him the position, making sure that Holst understood there was no extra pay involved; he also gifted him with a bright pink cumerbund from his own immense collection of waist wrappers.

After that, Ronk would occasionally inform Charlie Baumann that he felt a cold coming on and would not be in for the Saturday morning show -- let the understudy have a crack at it. And since Baumann, for all his high and mighty airs, was NOT a Circus Institution, he had to put up with Ronk’s desire to catch a few extra Z’s. But Baumann was not about to let a member of the clown alley lumpenproletariat flout circus dignity and tradition. On those special Saturday mornings, when the rest of the clowns would straggle into the alley around nine, blurry-eyed and blasphemous, Baumann would show up and crisply command Holst to come with him. He insisted that Holst dress as ringmaster in his own solitary dressing room, as befitted a member of circus royalty. But the red carpet was only rolled out on a temporary basis. As soon as Ronk showed up for the matinee performance, Holst was bounced from his private dressing room right back into clown alley. He didn’t mind. Anything to postpone putting on that cold, greasy makeup at nine in the morning was well worth it!

Ronk paid no attention to the clowns, either onstage or off. And he rarely socialized with anyone else on the show. His contract stipulated that he be provided with a hotel suite in every town we played; not for him the gritty train or a frowzy fifth-wheeler. Rhubarb Bob acted as his factotum, sharing in the luxurious lodgings and luncheons in return for taking care of his dry cleaning and acting as his social secretary. Whenever there was a Gilbert and Sullivan Society in town, Ronk could be found warbling renditions of “A Wandering Minstrel I” for their delectation.

Ronk was rather vain about his wavy chestnut hair. He rinsed it in apple cider vinegar each morning, then gave it one hundred strokes with a boar bristle brush. That’s what Holst told me after he had been invited up to Ronk’s suite one morning to go over some understudy notes. As Ronk aged he refused to let any silver strands loiter among the gold; he spent all his time between shows in his dressing room, having Rhubarb Bob pluck out any unwelcome reminders of advancing age one at a time.

My fondest memory of Harold Ronk is the night he introduced Merv Griffin as an honorary ringmaster to the crowd at the Anaheim Convention Center. Although Griffin came across as a folksy and genial talk show host on TV, when he was waiting backstage with the circus cast for his intro he managed to snarl at clowns, roustabouts, and showgirls in a very Equal Opportunity way -- treating everyone with the exact same disdain.

Ronk took Griffin by the arm and escorted him out into the spotlight. The band blared a few chords, and Ronk said “Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of all ages -- we are proud this evening to introduce our honorary ringmaster . . . Mike Douglas!”

There were rousing cheers from the audience as Merv Griffin was handed the microphone. He managed to splutter a strangled greeting and then stalked off. Ronk, not knowing or not caring about the faux pas he had just committed, blithely carried on with his duties.

  

The questions of Jesus:

But what went ye out for to see?

I went unto a seminar, to seek the victory

Over all the awful things that come so oft to me.

But all I heard convinced me that the man upon the stage

Was helping no one but himself unto a handsome wage.

Past burning plains and torrents swift I passed in search of peace;

To gurus and mahatmas I plied questions without cease.

But all I got for my long trips to all these sages wise

Was that they scratched themselves and yawned like all the other guys.

At last I bowed my head to pray for guidance unalloyed

with greed or pride or anything with which these people toyed.

I did not travel from my room that day, but wisdom came

To me, as it will come to all -- by calling on God’s name.   

Ronald McDonald in Clown Alley

In his autobiography Clown Alley Bill Ballantine tells of how the Ringling clowns had fallen on hard times during the Sixties, their walkarounds nothing more than advertisements for Kellog’s Cereal and Silly Putty. He rejoiced when Irvin Feld took over and got rid of such travesties.

This disdain for commercialism in clown alley was still strong when I joined up twelve years later. So when Art Ricker the show publicist worked out a deal with the local McDonald's franchise in Nashville to have a Ronald McDonald in clown alley and asked for one of the First of Mays to volunteer to wear the makeup for a week we initially balked. No one wanted to stoop to such depths of depravity. But when Ricker threw in an extra twenty-five dollar bonus for whoever would do it, Anchor Face immediately stepped up. The quisling.

Many a lip curled in disdain when he put on the McDonald’s makeup and costume, but somehow he managed to survive our collective scorn and was twenty-five bucks richer than the rest of us at the end of the week.

A few years later the same thimblerig operation was put over on the Red Unit clown alley, only this time the Ronald proxy was none other than the inimitable Peter Pitofsky  --  he who had once put on a green leotard, painted all his exposed skin green, and run through the audience during come in yelling “I’m a pickle! Who wants to put me on their hotdog?”  

I got the story second-hand, but apparently Peter-as-Ronald somehow acquired a Burger King cardboard crown to wear with his Ronald McDonald outfit. No one noticed the first few days, but then one of the local franchise owners spied the offending headpiece and had kittens. Large, screaming, clawing kittens. Ronald was never allowed in clown alley again after that.

As irony would have it, many years later when I needed a clown job to keep my family together my old pal Steve Smith, the Little Guy, arranged for me to interview with Aye Jaye -- the man who ran the Ronald McDonald program for the McDonald’s corporation. Aye Jaye was a Midwestern Falstaff; when I met with him in Milwaukee he took me out on the town for a series of feasts that left me feeling like the Hindenberg dirigible, but didn’t slow Aye Jaye down at all. He made free with a Chinese wine he called Wan Fu, guzzling it from a porcelain bottle like spring water. He had a bevy of lithesome blonde assistants that would have turned the head of a eunuch. Luckily, I was there strictly to schmooze him up and get an assignment to one of the lucrative Ronald McDonald regional franchise positions, so had no eyes for alluring pulchritude. My zeal was rewarded with a one year contract with the McDonald’s franchise out of Wichita, Kansas. I would travel the Sunflower State touting hamburgers. The salary turned out to be so handsome that we bought our first house in Wichita. It didn’t have a basement, and when the first tornado warning of the spring arrived we found out that the storm cellar in the back yard had been built too close to the sewer line; the seepage was not nostril friendly. Other than that, we settled into our new life with gratitude and contentment.

As the corporate mascot I and my family were allowed to dine for free at any McDonald’s in Kansas. My wife and I thought of it as a heavenly bonanza -- no more cooking and messes at home! But my children have never forgiven me, now that they are grown up and brainwashed, for the unending procession of Egg McMuffins, Big Macs, french fries, and Chicken McNuggets they were fed at a tender age. Today whenever one of them has to go to the doctor for something, they invariably notify me of the dire consequences of my ersatz parental abuse. I doubt I’d be hearing this much vituperation if I’d raised ‘em on beer and pretzels!

I only worked about six days a month. Not because there was nothing for me to do, but because the different franchise owners were an ornery bunch of former farmers and oil rig wildcatters who had bought into the McDonald’s franchise early, when they were cheap, and now had more money than they knew what to do with; consequently they argued with each other at their board meetings about how to save money, and forgot all about giving me work assignments.

It just so happened that the show Ronald McDonald was supposed to put on for the kiddies had been scripted by none other than Steve Smith, and was called The Big Red Shoe Review. It featured a lot of magic tricks, like linking rings, which I found impossible to do, especially since I had to wear thick yellow gloves. As with the unicycle in Clown College, I found my skills as a magician woefully inadequate. So I snuck my musical saw and some pantomime bits into the Ronald McDonald act, to replace the harder prestidigitation, and no one was any the wiser.

Since my contract gave me an assistant, paid by the franchise owners, I used my wife Amy -- keeping the income in the family. And since all our kids were still below school age, we took ‘em with us to every appearance. At the stores they were happy to sit still stuffing their faces while Daddy did his funny stuff. But when I visited schools or libraries or ribbon cutting ceremonies, the little ones grew quickly bored and developed an amazing wanderlust. They could be found in boiler rooms throwing janitors into the furnace or in civic flowerbeds cutting a large swath of hydrangea to give to Mommy. And the littlest one was still nursing, so when Amy would hear a lusty cry during my show she would simply desert me and go take care of business. I didn’t mind her leaving me in the lurch like that; I just pulled out my old Irish tin whistle and tootled on it until she got back.

The crowds were happy to see me and the franchise owners, when they could stop bickering long enough to visit with me, seemed pleased with my work. So I was thunderstruck when they did not renew my contract at the end of the year.

I immediately called Aye Jaye to tell him the outrageous news, but he was far from surprised or sympathetic.

“I knew this would happen” he told me over the phone.

“Why? What did I do wrong? They never once complained to me about anything! Did they talk to you about me?”

“No, but I talked to them. I told them not to rehire you.”

I was sure I had not heard him right. I asked him to repeat what he had just said.

“I was the one told them not to rehire you. You weren’t following proper corporate procedure.”

I thought he meant the changes I had made in the Big Red Shoe Review, and started to explain. But he cut me off.

“It’s not any of that. You forgot about my birthday.”

“What?”

“I always get a very nice present from each of my Ronald McDonalds on my birthday. You disrespected me and the company by not sending something. After all, I know how much you make and that you can afford to be generous.”

This was a shakedown, pure and simple. Aye Jaye expected a kickback. I was on the point of finding out just how much of a birthday present he needed to get back into his good graces when my good sense dissolved in an eruption of indignation.

“You go to blazes, you piss ant!” I yelled at him, and hung up.

Eventually I found work out on the road with another circus again, but not before we lost the house in Wichita. I never told Amy about my conversation with Aye Jaye; I was afraid she’d kill me for putting our family in such financial straits when a little toadying would have saved my job.

On the plus side, I’ve always been rather proud of myself for coming up with the phrase ‘piss ant’ as part of my last words to Aye Jaye.

From the New York Times:  The United States has long been the dream destination for many Latin American migrants, whether fleeing poverty, political unrest, natural disaster or violence. But now a growing number of migrants are putting down roots in Mexico, legally or illegally, instead of using it as a thruway to the United States.

Del Norte no longer appeals

To those who must take to their heels

To flee the unrest

Of their little nest,

Cuz Trump does not share their ideals.

The Questions of Jesus

Believe ye that I am able to do this?

No miracle without belief can happen in this sphere

Where so many are doubting and are paralyzed by fear.

Afraid to even think that God will intercede again,

The clerics and agnostics can say nothing good to men.

But I believe there’s more than what I see before my eyes.

I believe that but for God my being shrinks and dies.

I believe that timely aid and courage, not remorse,

Come to those who follow fast the Savior’s noble course.

And if some miracles are small, so small I cannot see,

Like microbes they are potent and can change my history!

Music in Clown Alley

The mad German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said “Without music, life would be a mistake.”  And with it, at least in clown alley, life was always noisy and off key.

Hurling back the years like a cape that gets in my way, I recall the acoustical eruptions of my brethren in buffoonery as earnest and upbeat, if not exactly classical. There is music in the soul of every clown, even if it’s expressed only with a kazoo. I myself studied the violin as a child, under the belief that I could eventually wring laughter out of it the way Jack Benny did on TV. But my aspirations did not match my discipline, I rarely practiced, and eventually my mother returned the instrument to Schmitt Music to save the fifteen dollar monthly rental fee.

By the time I reached clown alley in late 1971 my instrument of choice was the Irish tin whistle, on which I was wont to play ‘Yankee Doodle’ or ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ with such panache that the other clowns begged me to take my talent to Carnegie Hall, or anyplace else far away from their aching eardrums.

During all my years with Ringling the holy grail of clown alley music was a center ring lampoon of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake.’ Producing clown Mark Anthony made pink inner tube tutus for himself, Swede Johnson, Prince Paul, Dougie Ashton, and Lazlo Donnert. Band leader Bill Prynne rehearsed his brassy minions in a selection of waltzes, mazurkas and pas de deux from the celebrated ballet. The idea was to throw each other around the ring, bouncing on the inner tubes like rubber balls, and then have Dougie don a pair of foam rubber swan wings and be hoisted high up into the rigging where he would drop his tutu to reveal red and white striped jocky shorts.

But artistic differences prevented this wonderful gag from ever being performed in public. Even though it was rehearsed for several seasons. Specifically, Lazlo wanted to be the one to go up into the rigging for the blow off. But he weighed twice as much as Dougie and the roustabouts balked at trying to pull such a heavy load up so high. Or else the inner tubes developed slow leaks and had to be constantly patched, which was very time-consuming for Mark since nobody else would help him dunk the inner tubes in a tub of water to locate the pin prick holes. After a while Mark refused to do it all by himself, and the flaccid rubber tutus languished in the clown prop box, unloved and unused.

Spike the clown played the slide trombone, with a large boxing glove on the curve of the slide so he could deliver knockout blows with it during serenades in the ring.

Dougie Ashton was quite skilled on trumpet. He warmed up in clown alley with endless choruses of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Lazlo Donnert was a dab hand at the flugelhorn. He worshipped the classics, playing themes from Mozart’s horn concertos with a distant look in his eyes -- dreaming, no doubt, of his days at the Nagy Cirkusz in Budapest. His son Lotzi played the flute.

Rubber Neck (so called because of his marvelous double-take and fade away, which rivaled that of movie comic James Finlayson in numerous Laurel & Hardy films) picked up a banjo in a pawn shop and learned to strum a few wild chords on it. During come in he would sit on a ring curb and ‘play’ his banjo while yodeling like a Swiss banshee. The rest of us clowns would then bombard him with various objects, such as rubber chickens and beach balls, to encourage him to migrate backstage.

Because this was the 70's, over half of the First of Mays played rock guitar, or else did soulful renditions of 'Blowin in the Wind.' It got so bad that boss clown LeVoi Hipps finally banned all guitars from being stored in the clown prop boxes; if you wanted to show off your guitar work in the alley you'd have to lug a guitar case around all by yourself.

After hearing Lou Jacobs play the musical saw, I determined to become proficient on it myself. Lou was rather close mouthed about the whole subject when I asked for pointers; he prefered to be the only one under the big top to perform that particular musical specialty. But good ol’ Mark Anthony told me I could send away for a musical saw with lessons from the Mussehl & Westphal company out of East Troy, Wisconsin. I did so, and spent the next several months driving everyone crazy on the Iron Lung train car where my roomette was located by practicing day and night until I could manage a lilting rendition of ‘Aloha Oe. (The company is still doing a thriving business today selling musical saws and lesson books!)

The one song that is never played in clown alley, or anywhere else on the show, is John Phillips Sousa’s ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ This tune is reserved for emergencies only, when the building or tent has to be evacuated immediately. It was played during the Hartford Circus Fire disaster in 1944, when over 167 people died under the Ringling tent as it collapsed in flames. The tune is considered sinister and bad luck by all circus personnel.

Ringling expected a clown marching band from clown alley each season. The traditional song attempted was always ‘MacNamara’s Band.’ Prince Paul led our motley group, twirling an

outsized baton that was twice as big as he was. He was followed by the Little Guy, Steve Smith, on snare drum. Then came everyone else, tootling and banging on whatever was handy, including ocarinas, tambourines, and a large assortment of glockenspiels that had been ordered for a Spec production by the show but had been nixed at the last moment; the show was going to throw them away until boss clown LeVoi Hipps persuaded management to donate them to clown alley. Once I learned to play the musical saw, I always came up the rear of the processional; holding my saw and bow in one hand and a chair in the other -- I would sit and start to play, then notice with a start that the band had marched on, so hastily picking up my chair I would scamper after them. It was a mildly amusing sight gag.      

At the end of the season, to end the last show, the ringmaster would always announce: “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have come to our journey’s end for another season. We thank you all for your attendance this evening, and wish you godspeed back to your hearth and home. And may all your days be circus days!”

And with that, BIll Prynne would strike up ‘Auld Lang Syne.’

From the New York Times:  Mr. Trump, a profane, bombastic, thrice-married New Yorker, may not have been the candidate many religious conservatives prayed would win the White House. But the mutually beneficial arrangement he has nurtured with the Christian right is already starting to nudge the government in a more conservative direction.  

So narrow and strait is the way

To White House salvation today,

The humble and meek

Are finding it bleak --

Cuz charity just doesn’t pay.

A Fundraiser in Clown Alley

Several years ago I was embroiled in an embarrassing contretemps with my employer over a company blog I wrote about the use of homonyms -- words that sound the same but have different meanings, such as “See” and “Sea.” This misunderstanding eventually led to my termination, which I detailed on my personal blog, which was then picked up by the Salt Lake Tribune and went viral online. Here is the full story, if you want to read about it:  http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/politics/58236366-90/says-english-homophones-language.html.csp

I found it difficult to find another job because of my sudden notoriety, and so in desperation I turned to online fundraising to help me get back to Thailand and resume my career as an English teacher. My fundraiser site is still active at https://www.gofundme.com/cmbn6w

But alas, the money did not come pouring in, so I spent an uncomfortable winter living in a friend’s unheated basement, sleeping in a recliner and eating at a local soup kitchen. I never did find gainful employment again, taking early Social Security instead.

I mention all this as prelude to my recollection of a fundraiser held for Spaghetti Joe in the Ringling Blue Unit clown alley about 41 years ago. Spaghetti Joe was only four foot ten; he had the classic Napoleon chip on his shoulder, impelling him to talk big, brag outrageously, and swagger around spending his money for drinks on the house and on the tallest, most statuesque shady ladies he could find. He was convinced he was born lucky, so gambled incessantly. The result of all this, naturally enough, was that at the end of the season he was not only dead broke, but in hock to every usurer on the show. And they were very earnest when it came to collecting their vigorish. “A session with the elephants” was the traditional method of encouraging deadbeats; it consisted of shoving the victim between two of the larger pachyderms late at night and then making a loud noise to startle the animals. Elephants sleep standing up, and the entire herd would start to sway back and forth, trumpeting in alarm. Anyone caught between two of the beasts at such a moment was lucky to escape with his life.

Spaghetti Joe was not a popular guy in clown alley, because of the above character traits, but also because he was just plain lousy as a clown. In Clown College he had incurred the wrath of master clown Lou Jacobs for the wobbly intricacy of the lines on his clown makeup.

“Too much spaghetti!” Jacobs pronounced, and so hapless little Joe became Spaghetti Joe to everyone on the show. Besides his makeup, which from a distance looked like a black and blue smudge, Spaghetti Joe was incapable of following orders or taking advice from the veteran clowns. He abused the phrase “Do your own thing” when it came to ensemble clowning; nobody wanted to work with him because we didn’t know what he would do when he felt ‘inspired.’ But whatever it turned out to be, it was always as unfunny and unappealing as a scab on a baby.

So sympathy was lacking for Spaghetti Joe in clown alley the last week of the season when the loan sharks closed in on him. He went to every clown, begging for some financial help to stave off his imminent session with the elephants. He got the cold shoulder from each of us. But then Spaghetti Joe did something unheard of in the annals of clown alley history. During intermission he sat at his trunk and wept. He sobbed uncontrollably as great bubbles of snot blew out his nose. He was so miserable and afraid that he no longer cared about his tough guy image; he regressed back to that scared little kid we all have hiding in us somewhere. I don't think he was play acting; he just wasn't bright enough for that.

Now you can threaten clown alley, cajole it with flattery, taunt it with challenges, or beg it for mercy, and clown alley will simply turn its back to moon you. That is the nature of the collective beast. But no one in clown alley had ever broken down and cried like a baby before. We were nonplussed, standing around in confused knots wondering silently what to do. When Charlie Baumann the baleful Performance Director came in to give us the ten minute warning before come in he glanced coldly at Spaghetti Joe’s spasms of grief, paused to light a cigarette, then asked boss clown LeVoi Hipps “Vhat de hell is it mit him? No more big shot, eh?” And Charlie smiled a slow cruel smile, the kind I imagine he used when serving in the German Army bayoneting French babies during World War Two. Before LeVoi could answer, Swede got up from his wooden folding chair, strolled over to Baumann, looked at him like he wanted to spit in his eye, and said “He’s all busted up because we’re throwing him a fundraiser tonight after the show. Tell the rest of the cast about it, will ya, Herr Baumann?”

Charlie snarled and turned away, like a stage villain, batting away the heavy blue curtains to make his discomfited exit.

“What’s this about a benefit for that little snicker?” demanded Dougie Ashton. “He don’t deserve it! What’s he done to deserve any help from any of us?”

At this question from Dougie, Swede Johnson, usually so philosophical and mellow, blew up like Mount St. Helens. He raged at Dougie to shut his infernal mouth or he’d tear him another one, and went on to exhaust just about every expletive and profane phrase in the English language in his efforts to describe the kind of lowlife scum we were for not helping a fellow joey out. No one dared point out that Swede had also told Spaghetti Joe to take a hike when initially asked for succour.

Swede ended his philippic by enjoining everyone to stick around after the evening show for Spaghetti Joe’s fundraiser, and to have their wallets open and ready to shell out, dammit.

That night, after we toweled off our makeup with baby oil, Swede gathered us around his trunk. Spaghetti Joe, like the rest of us, not exactly sure what Swede was up to, stayed over by his own trunk, quiet and subdued. A few of the showgirls and a smattering of Bulgarians and roustabouts crowded into the alley as well, having heard rumors of something crazy going on.

Swede’s fundraiser took the form of blackmail.

“Prince” he said to Prince Paul. “You remember when you was so drunk you ran right into the elephants during the Manage number? You recall who pulled you outta there?”

“You know you did” replied Prince gruffly.

“Then gimme ten dollars.” Swede held out his hand.

And that’s how Swede collected a goodly bundle that evening for Spaghetti Joe’s fundraiser. Being old, wise, and prying, Swede had the goods on everyone, and he pulled no punches as he described the various peccadilloes of clowns, acrobats, roustabouts, showgirls, and even some of the stars, who, it became clear, were hiding themselves outside the thick blue curtain to clown alley to find out if their particular skeleton was being dragged out of the closet. And those who had led a blameless life of sanctified purity, such as yours truly, got into the spirit of the thing and threw in a few dollars as well. Many of Swede’s scandalous stories were only a few words old when there would be a bleat or shriek, followed by a wad of greenbacks flung at Swede to keep him from continuing.

When Swede figured he had milked the crowd dry, he stuffed the cash into a brown paper shopping bag and solemnly walked it over to Spaghetti Joe’s trunk, handing it to him in silence. Spaghetti Joe uttered not a word, but his face was suffused with the kind of wonder you only see in children on Christmas morning.  

I would like to report that this touching scene caused Spaghetti Joe to turn over a new leaf. But I can’t. The next day he never showed up in clown alley. He was gone for good, having stiffed all the loan sharks and never having uttered a single solitary ‘thank you’ to Swede or anyone else for saving his bacon. To this day, I have no idea whatever became of that little rat.

And by the way, if I start getting some hefty contributions to MY fundraising site mentioned earlier, I’ll be heading back to Thailand to teach English again. It beats sticking around here to see what this country is going to be like during the next four years!  

The questions of Jesus

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?

I am a little sparrow and the Lord will note my hurt

If I should fail to fly away but crash into the dirt.

He spares the weak and lowly; he spurns the high and fine.

And he will always make his love upon his flock to shine.

Kochmanski Rides Again

During rehearsals of the Ringling Blue Unit show for 1972 I took to wearing my wrist watch around my ankle. The reason is not complicated nor eccentric. The faux leather watchband expanded in the torrid Florida humidity until it flopped around on my skinny wrist and kept falling off. So I put it around my ankle, where it stayed snug as a bug in a rug. When I wanted to know the time I simply lifted my knee and looked down at my exposed ankle.

Kochmanski, the Polish clown, took advantage of my unusual circumstance, waiting patiently by my side until somebody in the vicinity asked “What time is it?” He immediately pounced on my ankle and pulled it up to his face to gaze at my watch, upending me ass over teakettle.

“Is four O’clock” he said cheerfully, while I lay sprawled on the ground.

Thereafter I removed the watch band from my ankle, keeping it in my pocket. But I didn’t begrudge Kochmanski his violent little joke, because he was a hard guy to dislike. Diminutive and wiry, he did a Charlot (Chaplin) character in the show, faithfully accompanied by his wire hair fox terrier Kropka. When he whistled, Kropka was trained to sink his teeth into the rear of Kochmanski’s black and white checkered pants until they gave way to expose a bright red pair of jockey shorts. In clown alley Kochmanski was quiet and polite to everyone. He read comic books to improve his English.

“Kaboom!” he would repeat out loud, followed by a quizzical “Splat?”

“What is it, this boo-eng?” he asked me once, referring to an Archie comic where Jughead’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets at the sight of a giant hamburger, accompanied by a balloon sound effect reading “BOING!”   

“It means . . . “ I tried to explain, not very successfully, “Uh, it means when something is like shot out of something else and makes a popping sound but it’s not a popping sound, it’s like a spring or something that goes ‘boing’.”

“Tenk you, Tim” he said politely. He was the only person in clown alley who called me Tim. To everyone else I was Tork, or Pinhead, or Nut-Nut, or Pete the Pup (because of my one black eye), or Torkil-Twinkle, or Schmutz Finger. Like I say, he was hard to dislike.

And his wife, Slavka, was just as nice. Although, as it turned out, she was not really . . .

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here; so let’s back up.

Born and raised in Poland, Kochmanski had spent the tail end of World War Two in a concentration camp for helping to hide some Jewish neighbors. He told me that when he was liberated he found his village blasted and blown away and his family scattered beyond recall. So he joined up with a ragtag circus, as a roustabout, and then learned how to be a bareback rider. That skill took him all over the Soviet Bloc and then to America, where he was able to defect. A bad fall from a horse left him with a slight limp, and so he became a clown. A good one. His Charlot character paid tribute to the ineffable sadness that Chaplin could sometimes display. After his tragic experiences during World War Two, I imagine this was not too hard for Kochmanski to display. And he was up to anything when it came to clown gags; he could throw a pie, take a slap or a fall, and mug it up with the best of ‘em. He never put on any airs as an artiste, as Dougie Ashton, who came from a famous Australian circus family, sometimes did.

And his Slavka made a wonderful pickle soup. She was shorter than he was, with black hair, and loved to sit in the pie car, chain smoking Winstons and playing solitaire. She did not work in the show, preferring to stay at the train all day and cook hearty Polish soups for Kochmanski when he came back at night. Those first few weeks of the season I would give her a smile and a friendly nod when I saw her. She didn’t appear to have many friends on the show. I never saw her gossiping with the other Polish ladies, who worked mostly in Ladies Wardrobe. One day as I passed by her with a smiling nod she stopped me to ask in halting English if I would like to come over that evening for some ‘zup.’

“Is good zup” she said. “Make with pickles.”  

I said sure and that night I tasted a dish that has left me dissatisfied with other watery concoctions for the past forty years. She made it with hamburger, potatoes, and dill pickles; that much I know. But as to how she combined it and coaxed it to turn into ambrosia as it caressed my tonsils on its way down, I never found out. I meant to ask her, but by the time the show reached Madison Square Garden . . .

Slavka was gone; replaced by Brygida, who Kochmanski introduced as his wife. Who was a brunette that never smoked, although she too played solitaire in the pie car all day long. I was sure Kochmanski had introduced Slavka to me as his wife; could I have misunderstood his ambiguous English? When I asked him he smiled pleasantly at me and just said “Is Brygida my wife here, no?”

Well, she didn’t have me over for pickle soup -- but otherwise she seemed okay. So I didn’t think anything more about it.

Until the show reached Denver. Then Brygida was replaced by Magda, a stunning blonde who towered over Kochmanski. She too played solitaire all day long in the pie car, and never smiled. By now I was not only confused about Kochmanski’s apparently polygamous marital status, but extremely curious -- and a bit censorious. I figured if I asked him outright he’d give me some convoluted rigmarole, half English and half Polish, so I went to Prince Paul, who had worked with Kochmanski longer than any of the other clowns.

“What gives?” I asked Prince early one afternoon in clown alley, before there were too many people around. “How come Kochmanski has got a wife in every port, like a sailor?”

Prince put down his New York Times, removed his half moon glasses, and gave me a frown that had his lower lip sticking out like a balcony.

“None of ‘em are his legal wife, Schmutz Finger” he replied. “The Nazis killed his first wife a long time ago. He got married again, but he had to leave her behind in Poland when he came here back in ‘65. When he defected the Commie momsers back there locked her up, and he hasn’t heard from her since. So he grabs a couple of poor Polish grass widows along the route each year, let’s ‘em tag along for awhile, pays ‘em off good, and then hooks up with another one. And it’s really none of your damn business, is it?”

I told Prince I guess not, then went over to my trunk to get ready for come in. I remember that day the shows were hard to do, hard to have fun with. The world can sure be a mean place sometimes.   

Twirly Birds

As a Ringling clown I gathered tons of prestige, but not much mazumah. This was not really a problem as long as I remained a breezy bachelor, but once I married and the little nippers began appearing at regular intervals Ringling became less appealing to me. Shrine circuses were still going strong back then; they had a much shorter season than Ringling, but they paid a lot better and they gave the clowns a fifty-fifty split on concession sales if they wanted to do it.

That’s the reason I found myself up in the Yukon during the late spring of 1984, clowning with the Tarzan Zerbini Shrine Circus. The routing of the show was irregular, to say the least. We started in Whitehorse, the territorial capital, and then moved north towards Dawson, hitting every village with a quonset hut hockey rink on the way. We played Haines Junction, Carmacks, Faro, Mayo, and a dozen other spots that boasted nothing more than a gas station, a Hudson Bay Mail Order Center, and a native population that had nothing to spend their money on except our show. Those were long overnight trips between towns, with the road as straight and flat as a ruler, with the Northern Lights slithering through the sky above.

In most villages the population was not enough to warrant two shows, but we did two anyway because everyone not only came to the matinee but to the evening show as well. They applauded everything just as wildly the second time around. And the sale of tchotchkes was phenomenal.

I worked with a clown team called Tom and Jerry. Neither of them had any Ringling experience; they had come up the hard way with mud shows. They knew every angle a small tented show uses to ‘make the nut’ (turn a profit), and when we hit the Yukon they saw a huge opportunity to make a killing. And they were decent enough to cut me in on it.

The show carried one semi full of nothing but tchotchkes -- trinkets and baubles like kazoos and strings of metallic colored beads. If we sold them we got the fifty-fifty split. But the show owner had made what he called a ‘boneheaded mistake’ by ordering 30 thousand Chinese-made twirly birds. These were cheap handmade red cylinders with some imitation feathers pasted on one end, tied to a long thin bamboo splinter painted blood red. When they were twirled around they made a high piercing shriek. But they were so cheaply made that they fell apart after a hour or two of use. We couldn’t sell them in the States -- nobody wanted such shoddy stuff. But as soon as Tom and Jerry saw the lay of the land up in the Yukon they went to the show owner and offered to take all the twirly birds off his hands for three hundred dollars. The owner, thinking he was getting the best of the bargain, demanded cash on the barrelhead before turning the twirly birds over to Tom and Jerry. They in turn told me if I would give them a hundred bucks out of my future profits they’d cut me in on what promised to be a wonderful bonanza. I said sure why not.

And then the magic began. Starting in Whitehorse every blessed man, woman, and child wanted a twirly bird. We charged 2 Canadian dollars for each one. And when the twirly bird inevitably broke they did not come back to us to complain -- they came back to buy another one. We kept all the money on every sale.

After a few days of this Tom took Jerry and me to the gas station cafe, where we had poutine washed down with (I kid you not) Homo brand milk. Tom proposed that we cut down our clowning to just the bare minimum required by our contracts and concentrate on unloading every single twirly bird in the next few weeks before we headed out of the Yukon. Because once we got back to civilization, said Tom, those twirly birds wouldn’t be worth a dime. I don’t like admitting to whoring after the almighty dollar at the expense of bringing laughter into the world, but I had a hunch I would never be making so much money so easily again in my life, so I agreed. We did a hurried Bigger and Bigger during the show, and that was about it. Otherwise we went out into the audience to sell twirly birds. We sold them before the show and after the show, and if there had been any real houses around we would have gone door to door selling them.  

Oh, it felt good to wire that money home! I told Amy to take all the kids to the dentist; we could pay for it in cash. She bought a good used car, finally disposing of our old clunker which had all the earmarks of a deathtrap -- bald tires, sluggish brakes, whining fan belts, and piston rods ready to drop at a moment’s notice. She bought herself some new clothes, at a real department store, instead of haunting the Ladies section of the Goodwill Store. A new TV; a VCR; a new Frigidaire that dispensed water and ice from the door. She paid back a loan we took from her parents when the first baby came along during a period when I was “at liberty,” as the circus trade says of being out of work.

Tom turned out to be one hundred percent correct about the end of our El Dorado; as soon as we crossed over into British Columbia and started playing spots like Kamloops and Chilliwack we couldn’t give away our remaining twirly birds. Thank the bon Dieu we managed to sell all but a hundred or so before the market collapsed.

That winter was one of the happiest times of my life. Amy had wisely saved much of the money I’d sent her, and so there was no pressing urgency for me to work during those off months. I could play the pater familias to my heart’s content. One extravagance I allowed myself was the purchase of the complete works of Laurel and Hardy on video cassette. It cost a pretty penny, but soon I had the satisfaction of hearing my children repeat catch phrases such as “Here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into” and “Hard boiled eggs and nuts, huh!”

The Questions of Jesus

"And why take ye thought for raiment?"

Since Adam fell that men might be
We cover up remarkably
With skins and toga, kilts and pants,
Made from animals and plants.
Around our necks a collar goes,
Choking us until we doze.
Shod with Nike or Doc Martens;
No matter which, the price disheartens.
As if all that does not flummox,
We also have to put on socks!
Like Adam we should shun the weave --
But then we’d hear from Ms. Eve!