Egalite, Fraternite, and Liberte in Clown Alley

The Ringling clown alley in its heyday was an uninhibited bedlam, but with an underlying bedrock of showbiz professionalism. It really didn’t matter who you were, what you did or thought, or how often you sang “Ridi Pagliaccio” to no one in particular -- as long as you showed up fairly sober for each show and didn’t steal from a fellow clown. Just about everything else, in clown alley parlance, was ‘jake.’

When I first arrived at this roistering lounge for loonies nearly fifty years ago the members included Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Baptists, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, ex-cons, military veterans, hippies, grade school dropouts and college grads. Sexual orientation was as variegated as a kaleidoscope.  Nobody in the alley cared about skin color, not because they were saints or far in advance of their times, but because it had no bearing on getting a laugh. Clown alley existed for one thing, and one thing only -- to excavate belly laughs from the audience. Everybody’s equal when they get a pie in the face.

Early on in my first season Roofus T. Goofus fell deeply in love with one of the showgirls, Alice. Roofus was white, Alice was black. They bonded quickly and completely, forming a seamless couple. Clown alley thought nothing of it. Black, white, green, or purple, the big top had welcomed all races and nationalities since its inception if they had the talent and determination. The show traveled as a self contained village, and I never saw the least hint of segregation within it. Of course there was a caste system, as deeply imbedded as any in India, and the clowns were near the bottom of that caste system. But that only held true inside the circus itself; outside of the arena we mingled and socialized however we pleased.

Fifty years ago the deep South was a different world from the rest of America. Growing up in liberal Minnesota, I saw little of the ugliness of race hatred; so I was startled at the reactions that Roofus and Alice as a couple stirred up when the show played in places like Tallahassee and Birmingham. I went out with them one night after the last show to one of the ubiquitous waffle joints that dotted the South like crabgrass. The place was a dump, but we were hungry. Amidst the malty treacly fug there was no one to seat us, so we picked a booth ourselves. The waitress who finally came over had her grey hair up in a bun and wore teardrop-shaped glasses on a metal chain. She took one look at Alice and immediately marched away. Then a middle-aged man in a yellow shirt and brown necktie -- obviously the manager -- came up to our booth. He had a nametag on his shirt pocket, but whether it read “Bubba” or not I no longer recall.

“You folks from around here?” he asked, but not in a friendly manner.

Roofus told him we were with the circus, and craved a late night snack.

“Y’all cain’t eat here. We closed.”

I looked around at the active patrons all around us, busily dissecting waffles and sausage. There was no CLOSED sign in the front window or on the door.

“You guys look wide open to me.” I chirped brightly.

I have never seen a human face go from flabby white to molten red in such a short time.

“I said we closed. Now git!”

We gitted. None of us three felt like playing hero or heroine that particular night.

Alice did not seem too upset by the incident. She reminded Roofus on the way back to the train, where we hoped the pie car would still be open for indigestion, that she had warned him it would be like this sometimes when they were seen together out in public. The bigots ran things down here, she told him, and he’d better not take her to another redneck place like that again. Still smarting, Roofus was all for going back and heaving some rocks through their windows, but appetite trumped indignation, and we were able to get some burgers and fries at the pie car without further uproar. After that the couple ate all their meals at the pie car until we crossed the Mason Dixon line.

I was dumbstruck when we played the Barton Coliseum on the State Fairgrounds in Little Rock to find drinking fountains clearly marked “White” and “Colored.” But I had little time to ponder the rank injustice of this, since the size of the building precluded having clown alley inside. Instead we were assigned to an outbuilding -- the Swine Barn. The prize winning porkers were not in residence, thank goodness, but their memory lingered on. The distance between the Swine Barn and the back door of the arena was approximately 75 yards. We couldn’t hear our musical cues from the outer darkness, so Swede stationed himself near the back door, and when it was nearly time for one of our entrances he gave a piercing, two-fingered whistle and we had to come a-runnin’. This was in the middle of a torrid Arkansas summer, when the humidity reaches a fiendish stickiness unknown outside of Dante’s Inferno. I finished each show as limp as a string of boiled pasta. At the end of the day I just wanted to get back to my roomette, which thankfully had air conditioning, and pour myself into bed. The world and its problems could go hang.

Roofus and Alice remained together nearly two years. He met her parents in South Carolina, and she met his in Illinois. The times were in an upheaval as the Vietnam War finally came to its tortuous end and Nixon schemed his way out of the White House; an interracial cohabiting couple was not deemed much of a scandal anymore -- in most places. I left to go on a two year LDS mission to Thailand, and when I came back Roofus T. Goofus was still in clown alley but Alice had moved on to Georgetown University in Washington D.C. to pursue a nursing degree.

“She was always smarter than me, Tork” he told me. “And her parents didn’t like me. Not because I’m white -- but because I’m a clown. She told me herself there was no future with the circus. But I didn’t want to leave -- this place is gonna trap me forever.”

“Yeah, I know” I replied. "Me too."

Just then Dougie Ashton came into the alley and cried out:

“G’morning, mates. Buck ‘em all, is what I says!”

It was time for me to go whip up the shaving soap for the wedding cake gag, so I gave Roofus a sympathetic punch on the shoulder and went to find the galvanized steel garbage can we kept outside the alley for the purpose. I hoped no passersby had used it for their trash; then I would have to clean it out first.  

More newspapers is what I wish.

Not for the news that they dish.

But rather I clap

On them for to wrap

All of my leftover fish.

The Milkman of Venice: A Clown College Idyll

When I let it, the Ringling Clown College defines who I am. That’s why I write so often about it and its aftermath. I’m trying to exorcise a demon. The sudden juxtaposition of complete freedom from parental authority and the narcotic effect of the Gulf Coast, compared to my first 17 years growing up strictly in Minnesota, gave a shock to my system that remains hard to overcome.

I shared a rented apartment at the Venice Villas with three young men, not boys like me. How they tolerated my gawky ignorance and puerile anxieties I’ll never understand. My own parents came close to murdering me, if I’m any judge of their facial expressions at times, and my roommates should have finished the job for them. But instead they tolerated me the way a family tolerates a slobbery puppy who chews on everything and gets underfoot.

While our Clown College curriculum was hard, it still left plenty of time for me to observe the natives of Venice, Florida. Like any good anthropologist, I noted their language, dress, customs, and beliefs. Among the men knobby knees and Panama hats prevailed, while the women folk favored culottes and a blue tint to their silvering hair. Several Italian restaurants, which I was too poor to ever enter, catered to the villager’s taste for the exotic amidst the humdrum sea grapes and sand fleas. The village was for the most part elderly, conservative, built of coral, and combatively religious.

Every morning except Sunday the milkman drove up to our motel at 7:30.  He parked his boxy truck down by the Villa’s private beach and waited for sleepy Clown College students to come to him for their eggs, milk, and butter. The reason he did not deliver items to our doorsteps was because he hated us.

He hated us because we were young, flippant, and unconcerned about the afterlife. He was middle-aged, stuck in a dead-end job, and deadly serious about the status of his reservations at the Pearly Gates. Milkmen all wore pure white outfits fifty years ago, and they were starched (the uniforms, that is, not the milkmen.) Our milkman looked ready to either baptise the whole lot of us in one fell swoop, or damn us all to perdition with a single evangelical blast. The frowning creases in his sunburned face hinted that he would prefer to do the latter rather than the former.

Some mornings he would hold a sort of street meeting while passing out the milk and cream.

“Didja know” he would start, while handing over a pound of unsalted butter, “that that there Peace Sign you all is a-wearin’ is actually a say-tonic symbol? It shows a broken upside down cross. Bin used fer devil worship fer hunnerds of years.”  

“Lemme have a dozen eggs, pops.”

“Here you go; thas 55 cents please. Thank you kindly. There ain’t no peace in the devil’s kingdom, only tort-shure. And why ain’t you hippies doin’ yer dooty over in Vietnam ‘stead of here fixin’ to be clowns?”

“They should draft beer, not us!”

“My draft number was very high” I added helpfully. Sometimes listening to the milkman gave me uneasy thoughts when I walked over to the public fishing pier to puzzle over the sunset.

“Friend” he said, pointing directly at me, “you need to get yer draft number directly from the Lord! He’ll march you in the right die-rection.”

“I asked for unsalted butter; this is salted.”

“My apologies, missy. Here you go.”

Suddenly the wind through the saw palmetto fronds sounded like tongues clucking in disapproval at me. I went back to my apartment, uneasy and distracted. Did that crazy old Baptist have something?

As our graduation drew nearer we all started going into the rehearsal barn before the sun was up to work on props and rehearse clown routines. I was included, and then excluded, from several different routines. In one I was supposed to throw a plate of spaghetti (the pasta was made of red yarn but the plate was real) into the face of another clown -- somehow I managed to send it frisbee fashion into his forehead, opening an alarming gash which required stitches. After that I was considered a jinx and did only one gag in the graduation show.

The milkman left our orders at the Venice Villas front office, where Ruby the proprietor could put them in her refrigerator until we came back in the evening. Some days, if she’d been taking too much of her nerve tonic, which had a Russian label on it, she forgot to do so and left it all out on the veranda, so we came back to pools of butter and curdled milk. The eggs were half-cooked as well.

And eventually the seashore became more compelling to me than anything the milkman of Venice had said. One reason was because I was walking along it with one of the girl Clown College students who was almost as young as me. I remember that after half a dozen saltwater strolls I opened up to her while I held her hand, saying that I thought neither Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett were very good comedians and that only men could be any good at slapstick comedy.

After that I found myself walking on the beach by myself, wondering what it all meant -- life, love, milk, eggs, baggy pants, and Campbell’s tomato soup (which was about all I could afford that last week of school.) I did not yet know if there was a God, a real loving Heavenly Father, but I did know there was such a thing as infinity -- and that it was the ocean.

And by the way, that girl did not get a contract with the circus.

I, on the other hand, did get a contract with the Blue Unit for the 1972 season. It was a simple two-page document that I signed, stipulating, among other things, that I was responsible for my own makeup, costumes, and clown props. A roomette on the train was guaranteed, for ten dollars a week, which included a change of bedding once a week. I was obligated to join AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists) and pay annual dues of 125 dollars, which gave me health insurance coverage.  My salary was set at 135 dollars, minus taxes, each week. I assumed my residence would automatically be changed to Florida (which has no personal income tax) from Minnesota (which has a hellacious personal income tax.) Thus it was that several years later I was hit with a tax bill that delayed my LDS proselyting mission to Thailand for over a year, until I could get it paid off.

Long years later I heard that the milkman of Venice died of a sudden stroke while doing inventory in the back of his refrigerated truck. His icy blue corpse was not discovered for two days. Today no one delivers milk, or salvation, to the residents of Venice; they have to go to the Tom Thumb or Winn Dixie to get milk and eggs themselves. I have no idea where they go for salvation.  At least that’s what I’ve been told when I asked someone from Sarasota who had no love for Venice, telling me it’s still a pretentious backwater town on the Gulf Coast.  

The Gulf Coast tantalized and disturbed me with its vast white clouds sailing above an endless blue turmoil. Since those youthful days in Venice I have sought the seashore, in  California, Mexico, and Thailand, and then fled from it. It becomes too vivid, too sensual, too magnificent for my Minnesota-bred sensibilities -- so I either must cheapen it to make it bearable or embrace it by shedding my old perceptions like a snake sloughs off its old skin. Today I live in Utah, in the desert, and dream of the ocean slowly and peacefully engulfing me one last time -- forever.

Jack Spratt said news was flat.

His wife said it was lean.

And so fake news they swallowed whole

Upon their laptop screen.

Clown Alley Collectibles

I have no hard medical proof, but over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that Ringling producing clown Mark Anthony contracted tuberculosis because of the amount of time he spent in the backroom of the rehearsal barn at Winter Quarters.

This area was a lumber room pumped up on Boomfood. (If you don’t know what that is, you have not read very much H.G. Wells. Hint: It’s in his novel “The Food of the Gods.”) Over the years it had been expanded and a lean-to was added out back in order to store the miscellaneous costumes, pillions, clown contraptions, scrimshaw banners, hawsers, giant hollow Mardi Gras heads made of asbestos, unsold programmes, superfluous pompons, chests of rhinestones, punctured elephant tubs awaiting repair by itinerant Roma tinkers, limelights, wagon wheels, contorted rigging, ring curb sections in need of a retread, widgets, gewgaws, kickshaws, and everything else a venerable and prosperous circus  no longer needed immediately but was loath to toss away. Some semblance of order existed in this neglected godown, but over the years people had pawed and pried and pilfered so much that locating a specific item was like panning for gold -- you might get lucky, or you might not. No inventory was kept, and all the security employed was a superannuated night watchman that made the rounds year in and year out who never poked his head inside that backroom. A panhandle cracker, he was heard to say the place was full of “hants.”

Climate control was an ancient wall unit that blew cool air feebly and ineffectively into the place. Plus the roof leaked. Combined with the steamy Florida climate, the fungus, mold, and rust prospered to a disheartening extent. Mark worked long hours in this insalubrious midden during rehearsals and the off season, and undoubtedly inhaled a variety of spores and asbestos fibers that eventually led to his TB. Or so I believe. To me the place always smelled like a cave full of bats afflicted with Montezuma’s Revenge.

He once came up to me, down in Winter Quarters, quivering with indignation, holding up a ball peen hammer smothered in rust.

“I bought this myself just last year” he said through gritted teeth. “I left it back in the storage room. Now look at it! Not worth a tinker’s dam!”

I myself rarely ventured back there, although I was very intrigued by three large Mardi Gras heads that were painted and sculpted to represent Larry, Moe, and Curly of the Three Stooges. Rumor had it that the hapless clowns who wore these asbestos laced heads back in the 50’s and 60’s had all developed mesothelioma. They were put out to pasture and spent the rest of their lives coughing out their lungs huddled on the public benches that lined the public beaches in Sarasota.

Just as boorish tourists always manage to snag a monogrammed towel from an expensive hotel when they’re on vacation, part of clown alley’s larcenous tradition was to swipe an inconspicuous item from that moldy backroom as a keepsake and talisman.

Prince Paul had a battered tin badge that read “Concessionaire No.112 Ringling Brothers” that he had abstracted from the backroom. He kept it in his clown trunk for good luck.

Sparky lifted a stack of old programmes, water-stained and black with mold, to cut out the few remaining unravaged photographs to frame and hang in his roomette.

Dougie Ashton possessed a purloined cork-tipped baton he insisted had once been wielded by Merle Evans.

My illicit trinket was a heavy wool tam o shanter from some distant production number celebrating the Scottish highlands. Unfortunately it was also the home of some nameless pathogen that gave me a terrific scalp itch when I began wearing it during come in. I had to shampoo with coal tar soap for a month to get rid of the blasted infection. I threw the cap away. It only goes to show that in my case Crime Doesn’t Pay.  

Naming no names, but there were other clowns, much more predatory, who did not wait for an item to be consigned to Winter Quarters Siberia. On closing night of the season it was their custom to simply stash several of their production costumes into their clown trunks to hang the booty up in their own closets back home. In the celebratory confusion of that last night the wardrobe people did not keep very careful track of returns. A few years ago I visited an old clown alley colleague living in Chicago. After reminiscing about the good old days until we were both sick of it, he showed me his elegant walk-in closet, where he kept several production costumes that must have cost a mint, since they were all handsewn back at the time. He’d had them dry cleaned and moth-proofed.

He’s had a few hard knocks recently, so I assume these one-of-a-kind outfits will be seen on eBay one of these days. If he’s smart he’ll wait until after the show closes for the last time this coming May. He should make a fortune off the nostalgia.  

The Questions of Jesus

But whereunto shall I liken this generation?

With algorithms vigilant and cloud technology,

This generation worships at the shrine of symmetry.  

But iron pyrite makes our calf of gold this time around,

With lunatics elected and then furiously crowned.

And will this generation like so many gone before

Reject the Savior of the world and ignorance adore?

Swede and Mabel: A Clown Alley Love Story

I was only 17 when I served my first hitch as a clown with Ringling. It was so much fun, and so physically demanding, that the normal romantic pursuits of an American adolescent were for the most part laid aside. Besides, I was socially awkward and usually broke. My idea of a good time was to hole up in my roomette on the train with a book and a bag of Bugles. Sensual experiences were pretty much limited to soaking my throbbing feet in cold water and epsom salts after a long day of pounding around on cement floors in the Capezio slippers Ringling provided for all their production numbers. My feet were going flat, but my heart was intact and unmolested.

I was an anomaly in clown alley, not having a steady girlfriend or a spouse. The veteran clowns, for the most part were married or between marriages, and the younger ones had steady girlfriends or were on the make for one. I prefered to sit back and observe the battle of the sexes from a safe distance.

Among the married clowns, Swede Johnson and his wife Mabel seemed the most comfortable with the venerable institution. Swede was a retired lion tamer who started clowning after the big cats turned on him one day, ripping his legs to bloody ribbons. His wife Mabel was the head of Women’s Wardrobe. He was a thin galoot and she was a fleshy barrel of a woman. Swede preferred to stay calm and quiet while Mabel was an excitable matron who brooked no nonsense from showgirl or circus star in her spangled realm. They reminded me of the old nursery rhyme:

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.

His wife could eat no lean.

And so between the two of them

They licked the platter clean.

When she wanted Swede for anything she ambled over to clown alley and gave vent to a piercing shriek that resembled a factory whistle at noontime:

“Sweeeeeeede!”

Swede would drop whatever he was doing and nimbly thread his way between trunks to hold a confab with his spouse. Since she made good money as Wardrobe Mistress, their discussions outside the walls of clown alley rarely involved financial wrangles. More often Mabel simply wanted to unload some of her vast indignation about snippy showgirls upon Swede’s uncomplaining shoulders. Swede rarely got a word in edgewise, but that didn’t seem to bother him. As Mabel complained about the way the showgirls left their tiaras all over the place or tore holes in their nylon sleeve length gloves or kept plucking the ostrich plumes out of their turbans to decorate their roomettes, he would nod like a bobblehead doll, with a patient grin on his painted face.

Swede and Mabel traveled in style. They lived on the circus train but drove between towns in a salmon colored Coupe Deville Cadillac. Swede did all the driving; when it came to piloting that big boat across the highways and byways he was completely and unashamedly misogynistic.

“I don’t mind if women want to vote” he said, puffing on his ever present Chesterfield, “but I’ll be damned if I let one drive my car. They dent up cars running over pedestrians like they was bowling pins!”

Swede also insisted on driving the clown car as well. This required some tricky maneuvering around guy wires and ring curbs in a Ford Pinto that was crammed to the gunwales with squirming clown bodies. Since I was one of the taller, lankier clowns, I got in first and had the  other clowns pile on top of me. I still have a lingering claustrophobia from that uncomfortable position.The interior of the vehicle was gutted to accommodate ten clowns, so Swede had to sit on a small wooden block, hunched over the wheel like a cathedral gargoyle. The one time he relinquished the wheel to producing clown Mark Anthony the car ran aground on a shoal of elephant tubs until a crew of roustabouts could push us back onto the track.   

Mabel packed a lunch for Swede each day, consisting of a liverwurst sandwich on dark rye bread and a banana. Swede loved liverwurst but hated bananas; Mabel made him take it in his lunch for the potassium it contained -- or, as she pronounced it, ‘protassimum.’

“Make sure he eats that banana!” she’d yell at us over the walls of clown alley as Swede came in each day and threw the banana to Prince Paul or Dougie Ashton. “He needs the vitamins and protassimum!”

Mabel refused to ever enter clown alley. The place was traditionally an exclusive male preserve, verboten to all women. That began to change the first season I was on the Ringling show; some of the more bold girlfriends and female reporters came barging in without so much as a by-your-leave, sending clowns scrambling for their bathrobes or jumping frantically behind their trunks. It was finally decided to attach an English handbell on a length of rope to the side of the entrance and insist that all visitors give it a good loud shake before entering. Any female who failed to observe this courtesy was roundly condemned with a chorus of “Ring the bell - Ring the bell!” until she retreated.

When the weather turned cold in the fall prior to the end of the season, Mabel would set up an electric heater in a secluded corner of the arena where Swede could rest between shows, lounging in a folding canvas beach chair and covered with a large sheepskin.  

Swede told me that he met Mabel when he was a young lion tamer. In constant need of raw horse meat to feed his animals, Swede haunted many a butcher shop. One dewy morning in Sheboygan Wisconsin he walked into a prosperous German butcher shop and deli, redolent of sour salami, Bismarck herring, and limburger cheese, to inquire about equestrian protein. The proprietor agreed to provide enough meat for the hungry cats and sent his daughter Mabel out to the lot later that day with several large bulky packages wrapped in brown paper rapidly deteriorating from the dripping blood. She stuck around, fascinated by Swede and his career, becoming part of the curious crowds in each town that circus folk refer to as ‘lot lice.’ When the show left town a week later Mabel came along, now married to Swede by a local Justice of the Peace. Her parents were not the usual small town bigots when it came to consorting with circus people, and they welcomed the hasty nuptials. Swede says that even as a young bride Mabel had an enormous appetite, so perhaps mom and dad were relieved to be shut of a daughter who probably threatened to eat so deeply into their inventory. They gifted the honeymooners with a barrel of pigs knuckles in brine and a large wheel of Emmentaler cheese. The well-fed couple remained together for forty-five years before the Grim Reaper came for Mabel, and then, a few months later, escorted Swede back to her in those Grassy Lots beyond.  

Prince Paul, an emphatic bachelor, once looked at the two of them quietly sitting together on the ring curb between shows, then turned to me with a thought:

“Y’know, Schmutz Finger, marriage is a sucker’s game -- but those two make it work somehow.”

Then Prince turned and stumped heavily back to clown alley, singing to himself an odd tune that began “I’ve got a customer for your face . . . “

Kyle Mazza

A kid and a question succeed

In getting the President’s heed.

Must ev’ry reporter

Become a spoil sporter?

There’s room for a gentler breed.

Auditioning for Clown Alley in British Columbia

I’ve never felt there was anything wrong with Clown College students who didn’t get a contract with The Greatest Show On Earth. As I’ve shared before, the main reason I was given a contract was because I was thin and of medium height -- so I would fit into all of the expensive show costumes for the gorgeous production numbers Ringling was famous for. It was not because of my talents and skills as a clown. Those came later -- if they ever came at all. The fact of the matter is I know many students from Clown College who were much more talented and versatile than me who never got a contract. Most of them still managed to do all right.

39 years ago I took my clowning skills on a Canadian tour with the Garden Circus. There were two other clowns with me -- Walter and Wayne. They were both Clown College grads who did not get contracts. So they formed a team and worked a lot of Shrine dates in Canada. Their wardrobe was fantastic; they must have cornered the market on zircons. They outshone Liberace at his gaudiest! At the beginning of the season they were a tad bitter and sarcastic towards me, the Big Shot who had actually clowned with Ringling Brothers. But as the season wore on and the roads got rougher and the towns got smaller, they saw that I was not a diva and didn’t expect any special treatment. And compared to their Las Vegas wardrobe, my poor weeds were strictly Goodwill. We three put up our trunks under the bleachers in each town, which we shared with Chief Thunderclap -- who did a Slide for Life. In real life Chief Thunderclap was Herbie Slobowsky, from Hoboken. Dressed in full warpath regalia, Herbie literally slid on his feet from the top to the bottom of the longest guy wire inside the tent -- a distance of some 20 yards. By the end of his descent his moccasins began to smoke from the friction. When he jumped on the group after a hair raising descent his wife Ramona would let off a full shotgun blast, which made the audience jump to their feet and yell their heads off. Not surprisingly, his feet were always red and swollen. He went through a tin of J.R. Watkins Skin Care Gift Set, Head To Toe, Hand Cream/Hand & Body Lotion/Foot Cream/Lip Balm every week.

Walter and Wayne had all the props to perform several traditional clown gags, so I really didn’t have to bring along anything but my costume and musical saw. We did the doctor gag -- which has more variations than a Haydn concerto. In our version most of the action took place between the patient, Walter, and the nurse, Wayne. My role as doctor was basically to stand around and get hit with a giant thermometer from time to time. Walter and Wayne liked to play it dicey, so most of the comic byplay involved the balloon bust of the nurse, which kept moving around Wayne’s body in an erratic fashion -- finally exploding from an ill-placed hypodermic needle. When the ringmaster intervened to say “Give that patient another shot” I pulled out a revolver and started shooting blanks at the patient as we all ran off. Not exactly Chaplinesque, but the Canadians ate it up -- especially when the balloon bosoms popped.

As part of my contract I was obliged to come up with some publicity stunts for the show as we went up and down British Columbia. The lush green mountains and boisterous Pacific coast were enchanting to behold, but the breathtaking environment seemed to breed a hardy pioneer stock that didn’t like to spend money on circus tickets. As the season progressed we were visited more and more often by that dreaded couple, Mister and Mrs. Rows. Long rows of empty bleacher seats, that is. Finally Larry, the owner of the show, came to me with grim news. Either I come up with some kind of publicity that would start filling the bleachers again or I could pack my trunk and head back to the States. We had just finished playing Kamloops, which I thought was so lovely I seriously considered relocating my family there when the season was over, and I did not want to miss the rest of the tour. The cost of living was a third less than what we were struggling with in Minnesota at the time. The fishing, I might add, was beyond spectacular. I had only to drop a line, even in a birdbath, and a second later I’d be reeling in a brookie.

So I spent the night cogitating, dredging the old cerebrum for something to boost attendance in Greenwood, the next town we played. At last I hit on a stratagem from Carson & Barnes. When their attendance began to sag they would put ads in the newspaper seeking employees for the circus, to start immediately. This always brought a huge crowd of curious folks out to the lot, just to see if there were really any job openings. There always were -- as candy butchers. Concession sales always paid for itself, and more -- so if some of the townies wanted to sign on to sell cotton candy or balloons they were more than welcome. The side effect, so to speak, of this was that most everyone that came out to see about the jobs stayed and bought tickets for the show.

I ran this past Larry and he agreed to spend $50.00 on just such an ad for the local newspaper prior to our arrival.

When we got to Greenwood it was a ghost town; there was no one on Main Street and the stores were closed. Everyone, it turned out, was down at the lot waiting for us -- and waiting for jobs. The place had recently experienced a tremendous financial downturn when the remaining mining companies had all closed up unexpectedly overnight.

Whoops.

We couldn’t very well hire 600 candy butchers, and this crowd was turning surly; they had waited all morning for the chance to apply for a job; now they suspected it was all a come-on (which it was!) Larry was no help whatsoever.

“This was your big idea, Torkildson” he said glumly. “You handle it. I’m going to go lock myself in my AirStream. Good luck.”

And this is where Walter and Wayne showed their true blue Ringling Clown College training. When I told them what we were up against they immediately rallied round and suggested that we hold clown auditions. We’d take a dozen at a time and run them through some rough and ready slapstick to discourage their ambitions. So we invited everyone into the tent, had them sit on the bleachers, and systematically subjected a dozen at a time to the delights of shaving cream pies and how to take a slap. After the first two groups had staggered away, with us calling cheerfully after them “Don’t call us, we’ll call you!” -- the rest of the crowd decided that playing Pagliacci might not be a sound career choice after all. They dispersed to the ticket wagon, as I had hoped and prayed they would, and bought enough tickets to give us straw houses for both the matinee and evening show. Plus a reporter from the CBC showed up, having gotten wind of our 'employment fair.' She interviewed a lot of townies and was about to interview me when Larry, ever the showboater, leaped out of his Airstream to give her a guided tour of the lot.

And we did pick up one young man who took our shaving cream pies and blows to his chops in stride, declaring that he was ready to put up with anything in order to learn to be a clown. He stayed with the show for exactly two weeks -- at which time his girlfriend showed up to bring him back to their love nest in Greenwood. His choice was simple -- continue on as an ill-paid unappreciated amateur or start having sex again. The kid had some potential as a clown, and I was sorry to see him go; it would have been nice to have a protege. But our next stop was Nanaimo, where they make exquisite custard and chocolate bars -- so I soon forgot about him and Greenwood.

My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, and I thank you for your support of my mini memoir “Auditioning for Clown Alley in British Columbia.”  

Sandy Weber

Billy Jim Baker

Victor Ruiz

Mike Weakley

Gabriel Romero Sr

Alberto Ramirez

Trevor Whittow

Joe Giordano

Mike Johnson

Leander Finder

Norm Thomas

Paul Dymoke

Jim Aakhus

Laura Lee Vaugh Nadell

Brenden McDaniel

Linda F Vogel Kaplan

David Orr

Kenneth L Stallings

Erik Bartlett

“May the sun never set on your good fortune.”  

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch bought an axe

To give reporters forty whacks.

And when he saw what he had done

He gave his editors forty-one.

The Cook Tent

According to the Ringling clowns I worked with who were veterans of the big top cook tent, the grub served up was always standard meat and potatoes fare, well-cooked, generous, and served on a special set of Arzberg china that John Ringling North had personally ordered from Bavaria. Breaking a plate would cost a performer five dollars back in the Depression days of the 1930’s. But on the other hand, the staff ate free -- three times a day.

By the time I arrived on the scene, the Ringling cook tent was no more. True, they had the pie car -- but you had to pay for your meals. And there was no al fresco ambience.

I had to wait a number of years until I worked for Carson & Barnes as their ringmaster to experience the real deal of a cook tent.

The cook tent's blue and white striped siding was attached to a roach coach type truck that prepared and dispensed 2 meals each day; lunch and dinner. Since the show moved every single morning at 5:30 a.m., there was no breakfast as such. The cooking staff, which doubled as trash pickup and truck drivers, merely set out stale donuts and instant coffee on several rickety card tables. Biting into one of those ancient crullers was like chewing on cardboard sprinkled with powdered sugar. However, I rarely had any appetite to speak of that early in the morning -- so I did not feel compelled to grumble.

Luncheon was served promptly at 12, or as soon as the big top was up and the rigging set inside.

Initially I thought my status as the ringmaster would allow me to step up front for my meal.

How wrong I was!

The roustabouts, those unappreciated drudges who put up the tent each morning and tore it down again each night, had first call at the cook tent. I was politely told to step aside until they had all been served.

After they had been served I once again stepped up for my meal, only to be told once more to cool my heels.

Now the clowns, already in makeup, were to be fed, since they had to go out well before the show started to sell coloring books.

Then it was my turn, along with the rest of the no-accounts.

Since most of the workers and most of the acts were Hispanic, lunch leaned heavily towards beans, corn, and tortillas. There was also a generous tub of pickled jalapeno peppers, sliced carrots in vinegar, and fresh radishes with the stalks still on. I learned quickly that radish leaves are just as good to eat as the radish itself -- something Latinos have known all along but we gringos have yet to learn.

Meat empanadas were also a mainstay of lunch. I had never eaten one prior to working at Carson & Barnes, although I smugly considered myself a world traveler. The cooks did 'em up right. The crust was light and flaky and they didn't skimp on the savory pork or beef filling.

The rule on Seconds was simple; when the cook yelled "Que quiere mas?" there was a mass stampede up the metal steps to the truck window for the leftovers. It was not unlike a soccer riot, and I did not wish to risk being trampled to death -- so I usually had some beef jerky or beer nuts stashed away in my little room in the back of the electricity truck if I still felt peckish.

I also functioned as the on-lot publicity man, so whenever a newspaper reporter came to do a story I would give them a tour of the circus lot, including the cook tent. This turned out to be a good deal, because the cooks were instructed by Barbara Byrd herself that any time a reporter visited the cook tent she wanted lots of green salad to be served as well as the regular starchy provender. I took advantage of this ukase by casually informing the cooks almost every day that I expected a reporter from the Times Picayune to pop up during the lunch hour. This got me some much-needed greenery in my diet, although eventually the cooks caught on to my stratagem and started demanding the name of the so-called reporter that was coming over to sample their wares.

Dinner was much the same as lunch, served between the matinee and evening performances. The big difference being there would also be a hearty soup or stew and cake and pie for dessert. All meals were served on metal trays, the same kind the military uses, and after you were done you took your tray and utensils behind the truck and slid them into a large soapy trough for later washing.

No one ever went hungry who worked for Carson & Barnes.

Dining al fresco under the blue and white stripes held vast charms for me most of the time. I could look out past the tent flaps onto the circus lot, where elephants swayed, tigers snarled in their cages, and the pennants at the top of the main tent snapped in the breeze. And I always found the combined smell of manure, cotton candy, straw, and cumin to be exhilarating.

The only hair in the soup, so to speak, was when it rained hard and blew fast -- at those times the cook tent was a leaky, soggy hellhole. The food turned cold as fast as it was served out, and there were boggy holes to circumvent on your way to your table if you wished to avoid sodden feet and a sprained ankle.

And of course, in the great tradition of mud shows everywhere, during the last few weeks of the season, when the cooks finally realized that they would be unemployed pretty soon, they began to skimp on everything so they could feather their nests for the winter. That's when the food became all canned, all beans, and practically inedible. I had been forewarned that this would happen, so I always located the nearest Subway and began getting most of my meals there.

I was ringmaster on Carson & Barnes for only one season -- a Byrd family nephew had been groomed to supplant me. But that didn't dismay me; at least I'd eaten well. And with the circus, that's about all you can ever hope for.

A great big ‘Danke’ to readers who are supporting this clown mini-memoir:

Keith Holt

Veronica Renee

Sandy Weber

Mike Weakley

Victor Ruiz

Joe Giordano

Beth Grimes

Jim Aakhus

Linda F Vogel Kaplan

Brandon Deloney

Andrew Fronczak

Leandra Finder

“May all your detours be vacations”