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."