Teddy Bear

 We were playing around New York State a one day between shows I was headed for the cookhousei the backyard when I passed the blue room (beer tent) and my friend Jack stuck his head out and said, "Bob, come see this". When I entered the tent a propman named Teddy Bear was on all fours growling like a dog trying tobite people on the leg. When he bit the scabby legs of Donicker Mike I knew he was out of it.
I left the blueroom and on the way to the cookhouse I saw the propboss and I told him, "You'd better go check your boy Teddy Bear in the blueroom, he's acting crazy". So he went and told him to go sleep it off.
A few days later we had a two day stand in Binghamton and as soon as we got to the lot we spotted a motel across the street and got rooms for that night.
 I had the snow joint and I hired a prophand to help me fill the ice bin and chop ice blocks into segments that would fit in the icegrinder, I gave him five bucks a day to fill the ice chest before the show started so he could have time to work props.  His name was Tripper and it fitted him, he would drop acid and while he was chipping ice with an ice pick I heard him say one night, " Diamonds...millions of diamonds, and they're all mine".
 I told him, "Tripper, you gotta stop taking that stuff". Tripper would just stare into Space and smile.
When the Show ended that night I went across the street to the motel, I was beat, it had been a straw house and we had worked it hard. I started to my room and I passed the bar, there were several show guys there but I went right to my room. I could hear someone in the bar singing happy birthday.
 I crashed in the room and went right to sleep. The next morning I walked over to the lot and saw several police cars parked nearby. The hot dog man asked," Did you hear about the murder?"
"What murder?", I asked.
"He said, " There was a girl in the motel bar having a birthday party and they found her body naked, her purse missing, and she was strangled under a railroad trestle a block away." And not only that but the fuzz think someone on the show did it and they say they're not going to let the show move till they find the killer."
I said, " Do you think they can do that? It costs 10 to 15 grand a day to move this show and they have some big spots coming up, I don't see how they can stop a business like that. Should be interesting to see what happens at teardown tonight."
  So we worked the matinee and then the night show was about to start,  Tripper was chopping ice behind me into the ice bin and singing, "Hi Ho,,,Hi Ho.. it's off to work we go....,in a mine, in a mine...where a million diamonds shine".  when suddenly a cop came up to the counter and said, " I want to talk to you..."
I said "You want to talk to me???"
"No", he said," I want to talk to the guy with the beard  behind you chipping ice".
Tripper took off his apron and said, "I'll be right back", and went out to talk to the cop, they went to a cop car and got in and left.
About 45 minutes later the cop car pulled up at the front of the midway and the cop and tripper got out but now Tripper was in handcuffs, they walked through the main entrance with 4 or 5 other cops and in about three minutes they came out and they had Teddy Bear with them and he was handcuffed also.
The Show started and was almost at an end when the hotdog man said "Look at this".  He had a portable TV set and the news was on, thhe TV cameras were at Police headquarters and Teddy bear and Tripper were getting out of the car. The reporter was saying,," And the Police have arrested a Circus worker, the alleged murder of the young girl who's  nude body was found strangled under a railroad trestle last night."
When Teddy bear saw the cameras he turned his back an flexed his muscles and gave them a good shot of the Circus title imprinted on his prop hand jumpsuit.   Later I heard that the owner who was in Florida at the time bit his cigar in two when he saw the news report.
 The next day we played a lot about 35 miles away and some cops came by and searched the prophands sleeper and found the murder victims purse, ID and stained pantis under TeddyBears matress.
One of the cops who had been there the night before stopped by the hotdog stand and was telling the Hotdog man. " Yeh, that guy TeddyBear confessed to the murder. The other guy, Tripper was wanted for drug possession in Detroit, but we're holding him as a material witness cause he saw TeddyBear leave the bar with the girl."
 A few months later we heard he got life  and was in Attica.  I'm sure they gave him a warm reception there.
 The next year we played the same lot and I was wondering if the murder the previous year would effect audience participation. Two straw houses... I asked a couple of town suckers what they thought about the murder the year before, they had never heard about it.
A couple of years later Pico was driving through New York state and the fuzz pulled him over for a broke taillight, they told him to open his trunk and they lifted a blanket and saw he had a pistol under it.
 So they asked him what kind of work are you doing, he told them "I work on a circus".  One of the cops asked him, "Do you know Teddybear?"
Pico's ears perked up, "What town is this?" he asked.
"Your on the outskirts of Binghamton", they told him.
He said, "Oh Shit!"
Well its an automatic year in jail for posession of an unlicensed gun in New York.But some people have the luck of the Irish with them. The Pistol was some kind of a collectors item, kind of rare. The cops came to his cell and said, "we couldn't even raise the serial numbers with an acid test, great job of filing them off. But heres the score kid, You forget you had this gun, I want it, and we forget you had this gun and we'll just charge you for driving with a broken tail light, go pay your fine and get out of town".
How lucky can you get?
Of course if you keep your nose clean and fly the straight and narrow many of these problems will never occur.

The Winter Show

 Pete decided to try a winter unit one year, we hit the road in October with the idea of working Georgia, Alabama and mostly Florida. To cut down on expenses the grease joint became the cookhouse and the donicker was left in winter quarters.
 This doesnt sit well with the health department. One day the health man asked where the toilets were. The standard answer was they had a flat or breakdown but we expect themin at any minute. One health guy came twice asking, then he came at 9:00 that night and asked. Pete told him, "You just missed it, there it goes down the street going to the next town.
 The Show had red GMC trucks but nothing had a name on it because they had a few dates under different names. We personally called it the "No Name Circus".
One day a sponsor called and said we may not have a good crowd because there's a ragbag show playing in the area. When he came by and saw the trucks he said, "What the hell !! This is the same pile of crap that I saw playing 20 miles from here.
Actually it was a pretty good show, we werent getting rich but we had good help, good performers who wouldnt normally be working in the winter time and everything ran smooth and quick.
The end came when JFK was assassinated, nobody came to the show ,we spent 3 miserable days in a hotel seeing the Kennedy funeral over and over again. Pete decided to pull the plug and we all went back to quarters.
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Donicker tales
 We were playing in Ohio and were on a lot next to the Catholic Church. That night as we were tearing down the priest came out and looked at the lot it was littered with popcorn boxes, peanut sacks and other debris.
He asked the owner, "Who's going to clean this up?"
The owner told him, " Let's let the Presbyterians clean it up Father".
The Boss butcher, Murray hired a couple of guys to help tear down and after about ten minutes they told him, 
"We quit, give us ten bucks",  I looked at them, they were pretty drunk,  They started getting beligerent and murray picked up a wooden stake and ran them off the lot.
A few minutes later they came back with a cop and they told him, "These guys chased us with a baseball bat".
    "Thats ridiculous ", said Murray, "These guys are drunk".
The cop looked at them and I guess it was obvious they were drunk. And he, being a good Catholic, and us being sponsored by the church, took them behind a truck and beat the hell out of them.
Meanwhile Murray said, "Whats that smell?"
Congo the Donicker man had emptied the Donicker in the middle of the lot.
Murray said, "Bob lets depart from this town, looks like a heat score".
I never heard of any repercussions but I often wondered what that priest thought the next day when he found a pool of crap next to the church.
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We were in Illinois and the cops came on the lot, it seemed that one of the show girls was hemmoraging and upon examination in the hospital they determined that she had performed an abortion. This was illegal in those days and they wanted to arrest her but they had to have the fetus to press charges.
They decided that the fetus was in the donicker so they had Congo drive it to an empty field next to the lot and empty the contents so they could search for it.
We proceeded to tear down the bigtop and fold it. we could see the cops searching for the fetus . These guys must've been the flunkies on the force to put up with that job. There they were, standing in a lake of human waste with a rake. one of them said I think I found it, he lifted something with his rake, it was a pair of trousers, someone had thrown a pair of pants in the donicker.
Whatever, they never found the fetus and the broad was released.
 The next day we were talking about it and my friend Jack the Ripper said, "imagine that, standing in a pool of shit, then going home to the old lady and explaining the odor.... and...and.."
Jack started throwing up. He had a very weak stomack and just talking about something nasty would nauseate him. The manager walked by and asked, "Whats wrong with him?"
Pico said, "Aaah! Jacks just doing his regurgitation act."

Castros Clowns

 Back a few years ago I w'ent to make a Fair date in Kentucky and I'm sitting in a motel room watching the news about the Mariel Boat lift when all those Cuban refugees came swarming into the country.
What are we gonna do with them? Many were interned in Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas. Then the news commentater said something that got my attention. He said, " Here's the answer for at least one refugee who was offered a job on the Clyde Beatty Circus. They offered him a job clowning," This guy was a dwarf.
A few months later I caught the show and I saw the Shows announcer, Jimmy James and I told him, " Hey, Jimmy I saw you on TV a few months ago with that Cuban dwarf"
Jimmy shook his head in disgust, "That little bastard", he said.
"Oh, he didn't work out?" I asked.
"Hell no," said Jimmy, " first of all, he had no talent, so we just used him in the spec walk around and as a greeter to wave at the kids when they came through the front entrance,".
"Then he started flashing the kids mothers when they walked by, taking his weenie out and shaking it at them.
and he was an alcoholic, if there was a bar nearby he would go in and say drinks on me, give 'em all one".
Then when the bartender gave him the tab he would say, I no pay, fuck you"
Nothing but heat all the time, we had to ship him back to Ft. Chaffee."
I thought tomyself, "Fidel sure pulled a fast one on Uncle Sugar that time".

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 One morning we were guying out the top and about halfway around there was a young kid , about 19 or 20 standing by the stake line with a french poodle on a leash. We recognized the poodle as belonging to the head clown. So the kid is watching us guy out and my buddy Jack the Ripper asks him, "Who are you?"
The kid says, " Oh, I'm new on the show, I just joined yesterday".
"What are you going to do?," Jack asks him.
He said, " I'm an apprentice clown".
When he said that everybody started laughing.
He looked puzzled and asked, "What's so funny?"
Jack is guffawing and said," What were you doing in that clowns trailer last night?"
The kid turned red and stammered,"Uh, we were watching a baseball game",
Jack said, "Really, were you the pitcher or the catcher? Do you think nobody knows whats really going on in there at night? Hell the whole show knows whats happening."
 The kid did a rapid about face and stormed off into the head clowns trailer, a few seconds later he comes flying out with his suitcase in his hand and heading off the lot with Tootsie the clown in hot pursuit crying, "But why are you leaving ? You have a great career ahead of you."
All the butchers broke out laughing. Tootsie didn't talk to us for the rest of the year.

Gum chewers, skirt chasers and comic book readers not wanted

Being a candy butcher it was always (and still is) necessary to be a hustler. The saying is: Hustlers never work and workers never hustle" I'm sure there's some exceptions to that rule. I've been in a lot of things in my life, freelance photographer, newspaper journalist, night watchman, barnacle scraper in a Marina, Assisstant Road Manager for a ragbag circus, booking agent and other things. But being a candy butcher was my focal point on the shows.
 Once when I was a booking agent we got a copy of circus report in the office and saw a show asking for help. Their ad had a typographical error in it. It was supposed to read ... experience help wanted NO DRUGS: but the typo said:  DO DRUGS:  So we called them up and told them we were looking for a spot but were a littleconfused... What kind of drugs did we have to do? And would they supply the drugs or did we have to bring our own?   They started blasting us out over the phone but we had a good laugh over that.
 One day some performers dropped by on their way to catch up with the show. This guy was going to see his brother who was a wild west performer... he said, "I have to go make a Pow Wow in Arizona and do my native dance. Anyway he left and we were talking about him, I said, "Now wait, his brother's a cowboy and he's an Indian?" This dude was also a little bit tutti frutti. One of the other booking agents said, "He ain't no friggin Injun."
"Sure he is," I said.
"Oh yeh, what tribe is he from?"
I said, " He's an eerokway indian".

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When fall rolls around the Fairs start poppin and circuses start having a decline in revenue, for a butcher it doesnt make economical sense to work for nothing and quite often I would make Fair dates.
I was making The Columbia South Carolina Fair one year, several of my friends were there. I had the balloon stand at the main gate and my friend Pico was my partner. Pete the Tramp was working a hot dog stand for Curtis helping Curtis' wife. She was forever telling him, "Grillman...face the front". 
"Should I put some more weenies on the grill ?", he would ask her.
Curtis told Pete, " I'll see that you get a stand at the next spot"
Pete said, " Oh great, can I have one with a silver dip pan under the counter like the rest of them?"
There was quite a bit of dipping into the till going on.
Mudcat (from Mississippi) had the glo necklaces and he would only come on the lot after dark.
Pete asked him,  What room you in Cat?"  We were all in the same motel. "Room 27", he said.
There were several notch broads working the parking lot and they were aggressive. "Would you like a date love?" they would ask us when we got off the lot at night.
Pete would tell them, " Not right now Hon, but come to my room and knock at 2 in the morning", I'm in Number 27"
Then we would go eat and on the way back from the restaurant, we were approached again. "Date love?"
Pete said, "Give me time to clean up and come by my room at 3 AM, I'm in number 27"
Then he ran into two more and told them to go to room 27 at 4 AM and 5 AM.
The next day we saw Mudcat, he was all bleary eyed. "Whats wrong with you Cat?, we asked.
He said, " Damn Whores kept me up all night".