ATLANTA BOOTLEGGERS

Atlanta Bootleggers

I was working on the Cristiani Wallace Circus in the early sixties and we were playing around North Georgia. It was a Saturday night in Newnan and we were headed to Mableton that night after we tore down the bigtop.  My pal Howard had a TBird on the show,which was unusual as the owner of the show didn’t like for anyone except the performers to have personal vehicles. He figured if a working hand had a car it would be too easy for him to escape. But he allowed Howards Tbird if he would let the purchasing agent to borrow it to pick up supplies once in awhile. 

              

  But this night orders from headquarters came down that they were short handed for truck drivers so Howard would have to drive the Grease Joint (Hot Dog Stand) to the next town. He came to me and said, his brother Doug was going to drive it but he would like for me to go with him to make sure he didn’t get lost. So we tore the Show down and I went over to the TBird and doug was there but also Clem the HotDog Operater was there also, he said I’m going to ride over with you guys. Right away I smelled a plot going on. Sure enough we hadn’t been on the road 15 minutes when Clem said, “We need to find a bar and get a drink”. Doug was a pretty heavy drinker but Clem was hardcore alcoholic.

Now back in the old days They had “Blue Laws”, so called because they were in a special book written on blue paper and they were only enforced on Sundays. Circuses weren’t allowed to work, many businesses had to close especially if they were considered ‘immoral’, for Instance bars had to be closed at midnight Saturday night and couldn’t reopen until Monday. 

I told them, “You’re not going to find a bar open in Georgia now.

Clem said, “We’ll find a bootlegger”.

I thought, “Good Luck, it’s 1;30 AM” So we kept moving along and we were at the outskirts of Atlanta and I saw a truck stop and told Doug to pull into it and get some coffee. We ordered coffee and the place was just about empty. There was a skinny looking Redneck sitting at the counter and Clem went to talk to him.

Clem came back and said, “This guy’s a boot legger but he doesn’t have booze here, he wants us to follow him to his house to get the merchandise.”

                           

  So we go out and start trailing this guy and we went way out into the countryside and I told Doug , “I don’t like the looks of this”.

Finally we arrived at a dirt road that went up a hill to an old shack and there was a handpainted card board sign at the entrance that said “Private Properrty… Keep Out !”  I told Doug, “Park here Doug, don’t go up that driveway… If you go up there it will be very hard to turn around in case this guy pulls a gun on you. He can walk back down with the booze. He sees this TBird and he probably thinks we got lots of money.” Doug & Clem agreed. The Redneck yelled, “You guys come on up”…. Clem yelled, “You come on down”.

“No” he said, “Come up here”.

Clem yelled back, “Fu** You”, we don’t want yer fuggin likker!” and Doug floored it and we left in a cloud of dust with gravel flying.

I told Doug, “Just keep going straight till we get off this dirt road and we’ll hit the main Highway in five minutes. We got to the Highway and I looked behind and saw headlights on a car coming up a quarter of a mile back and when it went under a street light I saw it was the Redneck and he was hauling ass trying to catch us.

I told Doug to take the next left and go two streets over and take a parallel street and cut his lights off. We did and I looked down the side street and saw the Rednecks car going in the opposite direction.

We got back on the highway and I kept watching but we had lost the redneck. We went through Atlanta and arrived at the Circus lot in Mableton. On the way in I spotted a Motel a block away, so we parked the TBird next to the owners Cadilac, I went over and woke Howard and gave him his car keys and we walked down to the Motel and got a room. Since the show didn’t open the next day, I took my time getting up , went to the Restaurant , ate breakfast and Clem & Doug came in and we decided to go see if any showgirls were interested in going to a movie in town.

When I got to the lot the owner was helping the layout man prepare the lot to put the trucks in position to be ready to put up the tent the next morning.

I walked up and he turned to me and said, “See you guys want to watch TV at the Motel and you miss all the excitement.”

“What excitement”, I asked?

He said, “About 8:30 this morning some crazy bastard came up and started beating on my trailer door and yelling …Yer gonna buy this moonshine muthaf*****, or I’m gonna kick yer ass”.  So I jumped out and slugged him and broke his jaw, the cops came and took him away. 

I gave Clem a sidelong glance and told him in a whisper, “I think we’d better keep quiet about this”.  And this is the first time I’ve told this story in fifty years.   Law of limitations is up amigos !!

Burned more Towns than Attila the Hun

So I did a hitch as a booking agent one year for a ragbag. It was one of the most stressful events of my career. The owner had a mind that went back to the 1930's and thought having grift on the midway was just fine. He claimed he had started out in show biz as a pickled punk. Said somebody had left the sideshows pickled punk out in the sun and it melted so his mom put him in a jar as an exhibit.
 He kept expecting me to lie about what the show really contained and I told him," Ï suppose you realize that when you try to go this route next year nobodies going to book you." But he didnt give a damn and it made working for him extremely difficult.  We had a fire Department booked in a town in Maine and they got us a grassy lot on the High School football field. But for some reason the owner, who was on the show got a hardon for the sponsors for some reason and left the elephant crap piled on the football field. The problem fell into the booking agents office as we had an 800 number that anyone could call. So we got a call everyday for a week from the Fire Department. What about this Manure? They kept asking. I lied and said I'll get in contact with the show and tell them to send someone. The General Manager just laughed. Finally I handed him the phone one day and he told them, "Hire someone to clean it up and send us the bill."two weeks later the bill came and he didnt even bother to open it, just tore it in half and threw it in the garbage. I was so glad when the season ended and I went to another show to sell cotton candy. This is the type of operaters that cause all shows to get painted black.

Helium

 My friend Willy seems  to think that someday they will quit letting us use helium for balloons. He thinks it has too many scientific uses and balloon peddlers are a triviality. Could be, The biggest helium mine  in the world,  is in Amarillo, Texas.
 The one in Amarillo use to be run by a lady named Mrs. Kelly. When the Shah of Iran got ousted a friend told me, "The Ayotolluh of Iran swallowed several hundred tanks of helium that belonged to Mrs. Kelly.I told him , "That must've made him talk like Mickey Mouse". The reason your voice changes when you swallow helium is because  the helium is thinner and lighter than air so your vocal chords resonate at a different pitch.
Unfortunately it won't make you high.
A kid came up to our balloon joint onr day and said, Can I swallow some of that gas?", he asked.
Why would you want  to do that? asked Pico.
I want to talk funny., he replied.
"Talk funny??, said Pico, "Hell, you might start acting funny, you might start wearing a dress".
Although theres nothing poisonous about helium it can displace air. One day a town sucker ran up to the gas tank, stuck the nozzle in his mouth and took a big hit before we could stop him. The tank was new and completely pressurized  and the helium blew the air bfrom his lungs, he fell on the ground and fainted, it took a couple of gasping minutes for him to get his breathe back, when he did I told him, "that'll be two bucks mooch."
Ï just wanted to have some fun he said.
"Well Mr. Asshole, Fun costs money., two bucks""
When you buy helium in the U.S. the tanks are registered in your name and you're the only one who can have them refilled. They have a code number on each tank.
 There was a balloon peddler named Tex working for Garnett at the Dallas Fair and when the Fair ended they fired him and told him not to bother coming back. He had been ringing in his own balloons and he figured that management would get wise because he was using too much helium (their tanks) for the amount of balloons he sold....soooo, he took out one of his own tanks, (which he had purchased because he made a few parades on his own) but he got confused and left his tank with the empties. So when inventory came around Mrs. Kelly told Garnett that he had given them an empty that belonged to Tex. So  they figured out what was going on.
 One of the first of Mays next year asked, "What happened to Tex?"
 "They fired him for stealing helium."said Rod.
The first of May looked puzzled and asked, "How could he steal helium?"
Rod told him, " Öh he would put some  in his pockets every night and take it back to the hotel room with him and put it in coke bottles."

Elvis has left the building

Many people in show biz get monickers hung on them for one reason or the other. I met many people and never knew what their real name was. Like, Mudcat, Big City, Bad Attitude, Butterfly, Holy Water, Jimmy Bad Breath, E Flat, Iowa and Dry County, just to name a few. Some of these guys were on the lam, others liked their nicknames.
 There was a guy working for Pico making special events who called himself  Elvis, I guess because he had long sideburns. We would all get rooms at the same motel and I noticed that Elvis would sometimes get up at wee hours of the morning and leave the room for a couple of hours. What he did I don't know and probably don't want to know...maybe he went to a bar or was a serial killer, who knows??
Anyway one day I asked him , "Elvis, What's your real name?"
Elvis glared at me... "Why? he asked.
"Because one of these nights you're going to get pinched and I cant go to Police headquarters to bail you out asking them, Do you have Elvis here?"
 But Elvis wouldnt reveal his real name.
 He was a strange looking dude also apart from the sideburns he wore a baseball cap that said, "I will lick you all over for 25 cents".
One night Pico and I were rooming together in St. Louis and Elvis had a room on the next floor of the same hotel . Pico and Elvis went out to find a place to eat, I stayed in the room to watch TV. About twenty minutes later they came back and Elvis said , I'm going to my room", and left. Pico got in his bed  and about five minutes later the door flew open and it was a girl with an apron on and a policeman. She looked at me and Pico and said, "No thats not them." And they left.
 It was so fast, I said, "What the fuck was that all about?"
Pico told me, " we went three blocks away to a Restaurant but as we got there they closed the door in our face and said, "we're closed". So I took out a five dollar bill and told them, "Open up, I've got more money than God." And I tore up the fiver and threw it at the glass door. But they wouldnt open up and I said, "C'mon open the door"... and started pounding on the door and suddenly...it cracked... and I said...lets get out of here Elvis and we screwed back here. I guess the waitress got a good look at Elvis but not me. She mustve followed us back here and called the fuzz.
 So when the waitress saw me instead of Elvis she figured she had the wrong room, If Elvis had been there they would've been buying a glass door.

As weird as Elvis was he proved the adage that there is someone for everyone in this world...he got married a couple of years later. Yes she was as weird as he was.
We were working a Fair in Columbia South Carolina and there was a supermarket across from the hotel we were in, on the way back from the lot Pico says, lets stop in the super so I can get some cigs. So we went in and as we were standing in line waiting for the cash register I told Pico... Hey Pico... check out the group in front of us"... I recognized  them as game jointees from the carny, two guys and a girl.
They had a cart with a case of beer and a can of whip cream in it. We all started laughing, even the cashier and the carnies.

When Tempers Flare

Tempers flare over the smallest things. One of the cheapest attempted murders I ever witnessed was over a bucket of hot water. Let me explain:
The cookhouse was always on the lot before anyone, they would tear down after supper at 6:30 and go to the next town and set up to be ready with breakfast the next morning at seven. So they always had hot water going to wash dishes with. The cooks helpers, there were two of them had a side business going to make a few extra bucks by selling a bucket of hot water for 15 cents. One day an argument broke out between them as one had caught the other selling a bucket of water and pocketing the money instead of sharing it. So he pulled a shiv and stabbed the guy. Attempted murder for , since it was a shared deal, seven and a half cents, I don’t know what else you could call it.
Summer would come along and first of May college boys would show up, the seasoned butchers had been busting their backs for four months and these guys were all fresh and sometimes they wanted to bend the rules to suit themselves, like run up an aisle with you and grab your customers, it was an unwritten rule that this was prohibited. And some would brown nose the management trying to get favors and sometimes it worked. My buddy Jack the Ripper and I had a Dirty tricks squad that we would use if they started getting out of hand. In the mornings when the stake driver started up I would wake up and get out of bed. Once the four center poles were raised the boss butcher would bang on the side of the trailer and yell “four poles…out on the canvas”. If you weren’t out in five minutes it was a five dollar fine…double if it was a Monday morning and triple if it was raining.
Jack or I would find the troublemaker and tie his shoestrings in hard knots, a sure five dollar fine that went to hire kids to help on teardown.
They gave one of these punks a fast truck to drive and Jack was steaming, so he went to the mechanics helper and asked him if he would like a beer from the blue room every day, he said “ sure what do I have to do for it?”… Jack told him, “This punk is reckless and speeding, slow him down”. So the Mechanic governed him down to 35 miles an hour and it took him all night to get to the next town. That lasted a week and he blew the show.
It just doesn’t pay to not follow the rules boys !!!
We closed the show one fall but the owner decided to put out a smaller one ring show just to make dates in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Since several other shows had closed for the season we had the cream of the crop for perfomers and butchers. Everyone was well seasoned and knew what to do, the bigtop flew up in the mornings and by ten AM all the flags were flying.. But like paradise theres always a snake around.
The owner stayed in winter quarters and left the superintendant and office manager in charge. His nephew came on the show to do a low wire act and to give credit where credit is due it was one of the best I’d ever seen, he also was in the elephant leap act in which he would run down a long ramp and from a springboard leap over three elephants and land on a rubber mattress on the other side of them. Since it was the Fall of the year he had to agree to a price cut in his normal salary, he said he would if he could work concessions also. The owner said OK. But immediately suspicion entered our minds. I have seen nepotism on other shows and usually it meant the nephew, brother, sister or whatever relative got cut in on the butchers money but didn’t have to do chinese. So we went to the boss butcher and asked him if the wire walker was going to do chinese. He talked to him and the kinker said yes he would do everything that we did if he and his wife could eat in the cookhouse. So it was agreed. We went on the road and about three weeks out we were in Georgia and the kinker started coming in late enough to miss putting up the bigtop and grandstand.
So we discussed this, since he was the owners nephew we weren’t sure just how to confront this situation , he always had an excuse, traffic, or one thing or another but for butchers there really is no excuse for leaving your work for someone else to do so the pressure cooker was boiling.
One morning the tent was up earlier than usual and the guys decided to go downtown and shoot some pool, which just shows how casual things had got on the show, the kinker hadn’t shown up. We had unloaded the concession equipment and most of the joints were up and I decided to stay and wash down my popcorn stand. My friend Patrick paid a bigtop hand named Congo to put his stand up. Congo called me and asked “How do you put this center peak pole in the stand?”. I said, “here let me do it”. And I climb on the stands counter to put it in when suddenly the kinker came charging down the midway yelling, “Why the Fuck isn’t my stand outside of the concession wagon?” I told him, “ If you were here to do your part of the chinese maybe it would be.” Now this guy was built like a raging bull and did a forward somersault on a low wire every day, I was a 120 pound skinny kid. “Screw You” he said, My temper started flaring, “ If you wouldn’t act like a kinker asshole maybe we would be willing to help you”. I should’ve counted to ten.
He turn red and lunged at me. I raised myself up on the bar at the top of the stand and he went under me, so I kicked him in the back of the head and jumped to the ground, he hit me and knocked me down, I got in about three punches to his mid section but it was like I hadn’t touched him he knocked me down again when Congo jumped in, Congo was a big tough guy who had been in Detroit Prison so he really wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with. Congo said, “Stop hitting my friend”, and grabbed him in a bear hug. After a few seconds he calmed down and left saying “I’m talking to the manager about this”.
I was pretty ruffled up but no real damage had been done. About an hour later the butchers showed up from downtown and when they saw me the word of the rampage had already gotten to them and Patrick said, “We heard what happened and we thought you might be dead”. I had recovered my self esteem by then and had a sledge hammer handle under the popcorn stand counter in case of a recurrence.
The Kinker came out and went into the Road Managers office screaming as how he had been mistreated. The road manger chased him out of the office with a ball bat and told him stay off the midway, stay out of concessions and shut up.
At lunch time he showed up at the cookhouse, Wacky Mack the cook glared at him and said, “you jumped that skinny kid this morning, now try some of this fat mans ass.” And he started throwing frying pans and pots at the kinker. Wacky Mack yelled at him as he hurriedly left the cookhouse, “Only butchers and office personell eat here and you’re not either one anymore, so keep out”.
That night as the kinker was leaping over the elephants the matress had been spotted wrong and he broke his leg. The next day he left the show. I never could figure out if it was an accident or if somebody had done it on purpose.
Bad case of the red ass….. there were some home remedies for redass …. Talcum powder…if not available, corn starch… a piece of rock alum in each pocket or a styptic pencil broke in two in each pocket. But the only real remedy was a good hot shower. Bucket baths were no match for a hot shower. One day I heard one of the show girls say, “it’s almost show time, I’m going to take a P.T.A. Bath”. “ What’s a P.T.A. Bath?”, I asked“She said, “Pussy, Tits and armpits”.
The aisle jumper was working cokes in the seats, the guy making cokes in the ice tent was wobbly John, he could fill 40 cups at a time then heat seal a plastic cover over them. Then on busy days he would stack several trays in preparation, we would come out grab a tray and tell him one tray john, If I saw the aisle jumper was coming out of the tent behind me I had a straight pin stuck in my jacket collar and if John turned his back I would stab 4 or 5 cokes in paper cups in the next tray then take my tray and go in the bigtop. The aisle jumper grabbed the next tray and it was slowly leaking the pricked cokes, his jacket was getting wet, a few cups were half empty and the purchasers would complain and slow him down, one guy threw the empty coke cup that had nothing but ice in it, when he got back to the coke tent he bitched at wobbly John and told him, “You dumb ass drunk you don’t know how to cap the drinks”. Wobbly John jumped out of the trailer and whacked him.

It just doesn’t pay to break the rules boys !!!

Not all the fun is in center ring

One thing about being on the road is that something different happens every day and everything is always the same....sounds like a contradiction right?  On the mud show usually about mid july tempers start to flare amongst the kinkers... A friend of mine commented,  "they start getting the red ass", that is they get chapped between their legs and lose their tempers. Indeed its a pleasure to see the kinkers fighting amongst themselves instead of bitching about how much money the candy butchers are making.
 Things happen like, they get on the lot and start fighting for position for the only shade tree on the grounds.
I saw the French and Mexican acts tossing garbage cans at each other for several minutes just for that reason one day.
I was working a mud show and one day as I went in to work the seats the low wire act came in to do his act went to the wire and turned around and stormed out. I asked the Equestrian Director, Roger about it..."Why did he walk out like that?" He said, "Someone buttered the wire."
 There was a group of tumblers from Hungary I believe their names were Hugbarris or something like that,but everyone called them the "Hug A Bears". There were several good looking women in the troupe, wives and sisters, and the guys were very jealous and hotheaded.
One day while working a Shrine date in Chicago one of the butchers came in as we were fixing to hit the seats with snowcones and told me , "hey the Hug a bears and the prop crew are punching it out in center ring". Really", I said,"Who's winning?" He said, "Well, as of the moment it's Hug a Bears....one and Prop hands zero".. During that same spot a few days later as I was going up to the second level seats I saw some shriners had bored peepholes in a plywood panel that happened to look into the the girls dressing room, three days later as I passed the same shriners One of the Hug a Bears was pointing a 45 caliber pistol at them and saying, "You wants to look through a hole you sons of the beetches, look at this hole".
The next day there was a large piewce of laminated metal over the plywood and some very very elderly shriners guardind the stairway.
 Speaking of Shriners, Why do they have to block you when you're trying to vend in the seats? Pico use to ask them, "Have youy burned any crippled children today??" just to piss them off.
My buddy Jack the Ripper liked to remind them that the serial killer John Wayne Gacy was a Shrine Clown.  The first thing they do when they promote a circus is to put up a bar.
 There was an act that I always liked watching on the show because you never knew what would happen called Uncle Heavy's Pork Chop Review,  Uncle Heavy  was a big guy and he had trained hogs, Uncle Heavy was also a two fisted drinker which made him an OK Guy with the candy butchers, but the other Kinkers ostracised him. Sometimes he would get to drinking and yell at the other performers... "I know what you bastards are saying...you say I smell like pig shit...well fuck you kinkers!!!"
Once Uncle Heavy passed out in center ring with his hogs running circles around him, the prophands drug him out by the feet and the audience thought it was part of the act.  Great Guy!!!

The hazards of eating fire

 My friend Pico and I went to make an indoor circus date in Pittsburgh and arrived 5 days before the opening. While waiting it out in a hotel room we were bored to death and I asked Pico how he got started in Show Biz. He told me he had gotten married at the age of sixteen when his girlfriend had told him she was pregnant but the baby came around 11 months later. After a rocky marriage and no work to be had in Butte, Montana he decided to hitchhike out of town and look for a better economy elsewhere.
 After a day on the road a Circus truck came by and picked him up and introduced him to the wonderful world of circusdom. I believe I recall he said it was Birnam Brothers. Even back then at that tender age he was a two fisted drinker. The shows manager had him doing everything from putting up the big top to juggling and they decided he could learn how to eat fire in the sideshow. However one day after imbibing a fifth of Wild Turkey he went to do his fire eating act and instead of aiming the fire upward he sprayed it towards the town suckers and caught 6 of them on fire. That was the end of his fire eating act, just as well I guess, I hear that every time you eat fire you get a trace of gasoline in your system no matter how cautious you are and mixing it with Wild Turkey Whiskey probably doesnt help your system either.

 Playing with fire is risky business, I saw an act in Mexico where this guy would get in a 50 gallon drum filled with water, submerge himself completely, then the assistant would pour a cup of gasoline on top of the water and ignite it. After about 15 seconds of flames he would spring out of the barrel with enough force to put out the flames.... usually... the owner told me it´s not 100 % effective thats why he has a shaved head and no moustache.



Snap and pops

We were working the Rodeo in Houston with popcorn and it was off and on rain outside. They always have a parade on opening day a few interesting things have happened during the parade.

One day a few years ago my friend Alex was working gas balloons when a cop grabbed him and said, " You're under arrest for peddling balloons without a license".

As it happened a guy stepped out of the onlookers and said, "I'm a lawyer and I'm going to represent your case." This Lawyer was a famous Texas attorney known as Racehorse Haines.

When the trial came up he told the Judge, " Your honor,  this year there has been 133 murders in Houston and 14 arrests,  there's been 98 armed robberies and 6 arrests,  77 rapes and 9 arrests and one balloon peddler without a license and one arrest. Now it seems like this police officer could be out trying to solve some of these crimes instead of molesting the court with these trivialities."

The Judge agreed and threw the case out of court. And for several years the police stopped harassing balloon peddlers.

 Anyway to get back to the parade on a rainy day, my buddy Steve was loading a cart with novelties and thinking he shouldnt put on the snap and pops because of the wet weather when a fire marshall walked up and said, "You cant sell those Snaps on the parade route".

Steve said, "Ok its too rainy anyway". So he took them off the cart and started to put them in his truck.

"What's in that truck?" asked the fire marshall.

"I'll tell you what's in the truck", said Steve, "NONE OF YOUR FUCKIN' BUSINESS, THAT'S WHAT'S IN THE TRUCK !!"

 The Fire Marshall called a cop over, Steve kept arguing, "Go ahead and cuff me", he said, " Show the people here what a bunch of Gestapos you are".

So they cuffed him and took him to jail.  I forget what they charged him with..disturbing the peace or something.

Later that night his wife came by my popcorn joint.

She was from Colombia, she told me she went down and tried to bail him out but Steve was raging and said, This is unAmerican and he would do the time rather than pay a fine. It was two weeks.

One of the cops asked Steves wife, " You have a funny accent, Where are you from?"

She said, "The most beautiful place in the world, Bogota, Colombia."

The cop said, " Oh yeh, that's where that really good COFFEE comes from", as he put a finger up to one nostril and gave a big snort.

"The cops are a bunch of cabrones (sons of bitches)," she told me.

Yeh, I think I have to agree with that.

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".

..........................................................................................................................................
 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".

WHITE LINE FEVER

After you travel a million miles in a truck everything starts to become a blur. Most Butchers were truck drivers, they didn't get paid for it but it was more or less expected of them. I've seen some wild wrecks and have even been in a couple of them. I didn't drive a Semi but I always navigated, that way I had the option to jump if the need ever came up.And mostly I would only navigate, read maps and watch for the arrows (convoy markers) either with whoever was driving the concession truck or the Butchers sleeper. The Concession truck had priority because if it didn't get to the lot then I didn't make money. Next best was the sleeper, if it broke down I could go to my bunk and sleep. Have to be logical about this. Someone said, "Why don't you sleep going over the road?"
No thanks, first of all I've seen trucks turn over, once the sleeper went on its side and there were about 6 butchers sleeping in it, they were all bruised up and could hardly work for a couple of weeks.Secondly, it irritates the driver to think some asshole is in the trailer sleeping while he has to drive several hours down the road. I've seen drivers purposely hit potholes to try and wake people up.
 All kinds of things happen going down the road. There was a midget on the Beatty Show who drove a semi. He had the pedals built up with blocks of wood so he could push the pedals. The Fuzz pulled him over one night for a bad taillight and they were shocked to see midget driving such a huge truck.
He wasnt the only midget who drove a truck, there was another one on the Beatty Show who was a driver and the sideshow giant always road shotgun with him, it always caused a lot of murmuring when they would pull into a truck stop.  Whenever they came in I would try to leave as soon as possible. They were both kleptomaniacs and I figured it was just a matter of time before they created a Heat Score.
 Saw many a truck broke down on the highway, they would try fix it themselves or wait for the show mechanic. The best mechanic I ever saw was Pete Sadowski from South Carolina. One night I saw him and his helper take a cracked engine block out of a GMC and replace it in two hours.
We saw a truck pulled over beside the highway one night and the police were talking to the driver. We stopped and asked if we could help. The cop said, " This truck has a red lens missing from the back stop light and he can't move till its fixed." About that time Pete the mechanic pulled up and the cop told him the same thing, so he rummaged through his truck but couldn't find a lens, so he went into his camper and came backwith a bottle of his wifes fingernail polish, painted the bulb red and said , "There officer, its red now, we only have twenty miles to go, will that work till I can get a lens tomorrow?"
The cop laughed and said, "Yeh you can go".
Mechanics never get to sleep at night.
So many things happen on the road... going out of winter quarters they always call a meeting of truck drivers to brief them about going from town to town. Follow the arrows (convoy markers), arrow pointing up go straight ahead, two arrows down and an arrow to the left or right...prepare to turn in that direction. One arrow down and an arrow to the left or right... turn here. three arrows down and chalk letters saying LG means Low Gear (steep hill).  Sometimes punks would tear the arrows down, sometimes rain and wind would loosen them. The drivers would receive a route slip stating which roads would take them to the lot in the next town. The Cristiani show had flourescent red arrows but the highway patrol stopped the 24 hour man from putting them up in a few places and they had to go to plain dark red arrows. The Sells and Gray show had the same type arrows and we crossed paths with them a couple of times and a couple of trucks wound up on their lot without realizing where they were till the next morning.
 One night on the Beatty Show we played a town in New Hampshire and the lot was at the bottom of a hill, there was a car wash next to the lots entrance, at the top of the hill was a doughnut shop, when we arrived there we decided to get some coffee and doughnuts. There were four or five trucks parked out front who's drivers had the same idea. While we were drinking coffee one of the drivers looked out the window and said, "Oh shit!! My truck."  It had popped out of gear and was rapidly rolling downhill, too late, it couldnt be stopped and it plowed into the car wash, demolishing it.
 The next year we played the same town and I was riding with Pico in the Concession truck, we decided to stop for coffee at the same doughnut shop, while drinking coffee I said, " Remember that wreck that happened here last year?" Yeah", he said, "It really screwed up that car wash".
All of a sudden the guy at the end of the counter said, "Damn, there goes my truck".
It had jumped out of gear and was barrelling downhill and smashed into the rebuilt carwash.
 The next year we were playing the same town but the night before we pulled out of the preceding town The manager called all drivers to a meeting and said, " Anyone that stops at that doughnut shop in the next time will be immediately ran off the show.... with a black eye."   Oh well, doughnuts are fattening anyway.
 We were in Pennsylvania one night and Pico missed the arrows and turned the wrong way and went under a railroad trestle that was one foot lower than the trailer. He peeled the roof of the concession trailer back about 6 feet... right over the concession managers office.
A butcher called GooGoo (because he wore thick glasses) was riding with him that night. Pico didn't have a drivers license so he jumped out of the cab of the truck and told GooGoo, " When the cops come tell them ,the driver screwed, you don't remember my name, it was Tom or something like that".
"OK," says GooGoo.  So Tom went to a bar across the street and got a beer and returned standing amongst the crowd gawking at the truck stuck under the trestle, saying things like, "Well look at that, Can you believe that", etc. Then the cops showed up asking who the driver was and GooGoo said, "I was riding in the truck but the driver ran away." What was his name?" asked the cop.
GooGoo said, " I don't know his full name but he called himself Pico".
Pico gulped his beer and walked away. The management told him don't drive till we get out of Pennsylvania.
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We were going through Canada and had some long jumps, someone said, it's three hundred miles tonight and theres only one truck stop about halfway to the next town. So we pulled into it and half the show trucks were there along with a few local truckers. When I walked in I knew it was going to be a problem, Frank the sword swallower had a beefsteak in his hand and he was beating the cash register with it saying, " You couldnt cut this moosemeat with an axe and I'm not paying for it". Several people just walked out.
Later I heard the Mounties stopped a couple of show trucks and made them pay for the meals even though they hadnt stopped there.
 Sometimes there would be cases of mistaken identity because the trucks were all painted the same. One night I saw Jack the Ripper miss the turn and he tried backing up to the turn and hit a light pole knocking it down. We could see the town from the hill where the turn was and half the lights in town went out.
Later on the cops stopped weird Harold the prop guy and charged him with knocking the pole down.
A few weeks later going through Ohio we came around a bend and there were flares everywhere, Pico said, "Damn, must be a hell of a wreck ahead." When we got to it, it was weird Harold, he was dazed and walking around and the truck was hangig over a bridge. Jack the Ripper was directing traffic with two flares, we discovered that he was flare happy, he loved lighting them. Weird Harold was completely drunk, so I looked in his truck cab and there were empty Mickey bottles all over it and in the glove compartment. Pico and I started throwing them in the river so the cops wouldnt find them but to no avail, when they got there and looked at Harold they knew he was drunk.
 The cop told Jack, "its a good thing you were here with flares, go to the trunk of my patrol car and replace what you used". Jack opened the trunk, there was a case of flares...he took them all.
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Leaving Deland one year and making the run to Long Island, we took off and headed North. made a few rest stops for coffee but kept going for three days. When we were in New Jersey, it was about 3 in the morning and we were both pretty zombified, I looked at Pico and he was driving with his eyes closed and we were in the left lane of a two lane blacktop. So I said, very calmly, " Hey Pico, You don't want to die do you?" Groggilly he said, "No, why?"
I replied, "because you're in the wrong lane and your eyes are closed"
His eyes popped open and he said, "Oh".  I suggested that we stop at the next truck stop and sleep a couple of hours.
 Years later he told me, " Remember that night? If you had started yelling I would've probably run off the road.... Sometimes I get to thinking about things like that and I break out laughing. I'm sure some of the guys that work for me think I'm nuts"

MORE FUN THAN A BARREL OF MONKEYS

While working props on the Cristiani show I came in contact with the chimps, the owners wife had the chimp act and she always tipped me for helping her with her props which consisted of small chairs, a table, a small sliding board and tricycles.

She smoked cigarettes and had to be careful not to set a cigarette down and turn her back or the chimps would pick it up and start smoking it. And they wouldn’t take small puffs they would inhale it all at once and the cigarette would burn all the way down to the filter in less than two seconds.

Captain Harry was in charge of the Animal Department on the show and sometimes the chimps would act up and run up the center pole and refuse to come down. Then it would become a good cop bad cop routine between Norma and Captain Harry to try to get the chimps down, Norma would be saying, “come down my sweet baby”, and if that didn’t swerve them Harry would be there saying , “come down you rotten sonofabitch or I’ll break your stupid simian neck”. Sometimes it would be worse than that and Norma would tell Harry, “Remember there are children present Harry” . That would be difficult for Harry when he had a hold of the chimps arm and the chimp was sinking his teeth into Harry’s hand.

Chimpanzees as they grow older become more unmanageable, I’ve been told their brains grow faster than their skulls and this causes them to get crazy. I don’t know if that’s true but I do know they get very hard to handle and eventually they have to be permanently caged.

They had a pit show on the Cristiani show featuring the “wild man from Borneo” , It had a double cage on one side was a kid dressed in a loin cloth like Tarzan and on the other side was an unmanageable large chimp. The kid would put up the pit show then change into his costume until it was time to tear down the show, then he would drive the truck to the next town.

One night as we were getting ready to settle up in the concessions wagon I a lot of screaming and looked out of the concession office door to see the chimp had escaped its cage and was running down the midway. It jumped up on the counter of the hot dog stand and grabbed about a dozen hotdogs and bit into them.

I had the popcorn stand at the time and was in the office with my friend Pat who had the cotton candy stand and the concession manager, Never Worry Murray.
“I think the hotdog stand may come up short tonight”, I told Murray.

We kept counting the days take when suddenly the chimp ran up the steps and entered the office with us. Suddenly the door slammed and I heard someone say, “we got him trapped inside”.

It was a terrifying scene, the chimp was scared and screaming because he knew he had done something wrong. We looked at him and he looked at us, he screamed and bared his fangs, they looked like Count Dracula’s to me, all three of us crept into a corner as far from the chimp as we could get. To no avail, the chimp grabbed a box of cracker jacks and bit right through the box. “Let him have anything he wants, boys”, said Murray.

I could just imagine that chimp biting me, I started looking for an escape route, there weren’t any. I saw a barrel of peanuts in the corner I said, “Hey Murray, how about if I empty that barrel and put it over my head?” “Leave the peanuts alone”, said Murray”

The concession truck had shelves on both sides with concession equipment and stock, I climbed up on the shelves as high as possible in hopes of getting away from the chimp, the chimp followed me whining and screaming as if to say help me, help me. I climbed down and got back behind the peanut barrel.

The office door suddenly flew open and the chimps owner came in and the door slammed again before we could get out. The chimps owner had a rope and a club in his hand. “Come here, nice monkey”, he said.

The chimp wasn’t going for that line of talk, he knew better, he ran screaming to the far end of the truck. He was really wild now. “If I cant’t catch him I’ll whack him,”, said the owner. He raised the club and the chimp started screaming.

I’m beating on the door, yelling “let us out of here”.When someone outside, it turned out to be Congo the bigtop hand, cracked the door open and said, “What’s going on in there?”

That was what we were waiting for, Murray, Pat and myself hit the door and sent Congo flying. They slammed the door and left the chimp inside with his owner.

As we were brushing ourselves off, Steve the balloon man came by, he didn’t know what was happening, he asked Murray, “wheres my balloons”. Murray told him, “one things for sure, you will not be selling any balloons tonight”. I said, “Murray, we left all the money laying on the desk in there”.

“Let the monkey have it “, he said, taking a big drink from a half pint of rum he had in his coat.

Finally the owner managed to get a rope around the chimp and return him to his cage but it was a night long remembered by many people .

Later on I heard Pat telling someone,”Bob’s a regular spiderman, you should’ve seen how fast he climbed to the roof of the office.”



We had another chimp that had to be caged all the time, we went into winter quarters in Florida and the caged animals were kept in the back part of the grounds where Captain Harry would go around and feed them every day. We were painting trucks and repairing equipment when a friend said , “look at that”. I loked over to see Harry at the chimps cage, he would open a door at the bottom of the cage just big enough to get a tray of food through. He opened the door after setting the tray down, then leaned over to pick up the tray, we saw the chimps arm come out the tray slot and slap Harry right on the top of his bald head and down he went. Harry jumped up with his fists balled up., the chimp jumped to the back of his cage, probably grinning.

“You…you…you.. “ said Harry, all red faced and in a rage, “I’ll show you, I won’t feed you for the rest of the winter, you rotten no good asshole, you're gonna starve” .

Everybody that saw it was dying laughing.



We were in winter quarters and had a month before hitting the road again. My friend Gary the snake show operater decided to get a room at the hotel across the street from winter quarters. I went over to see him one afternoon and as I neared his room I saw his spider monkey chained to a post out front. I knocked on his door and he opened it and said, “Hey Bob, come in and have a drink”. I told him I didn’t think the motel owners liked guests having pets and the monkey would probably create heat for him. Gary grinned and said, “I like heat”.

I sat down with a rum and coke and while we were watching the evening news we heard a horrible screeching scream. We ran out the door to discover the monkey had climbed the pole he was chained to and had grabbed the neon sign on the rooftop. Blue sparks and smoke was flying off the monkeys fur. Gary was aghast, “my monkey, my Monkey”, he yelled. He looked around and saw a mop leaning against a wall, he picked it up and swung at the monkey knocking it loose from the neon sign , breaking the M on the motel sign.

We took the monkey in and gave it some water and after a few minutes it seemed to be recovering. “Well, you said you like heat, looks like you got plenty now”, I told him.

Gary, scratched his head and said, “Guess I’ll have to pay for the neon sign”. The sign now said “OTEL”. I returned to winter quarters, the next day Gary came over, I asked him, “Did you have to pay for the sign or did they tell you to get out”?

“Neither”, he said, “they said oh, the poor monkey, we hope its ok.”

But after that we could hardly get near the monkey it would try to bite us if we got close to it, I guess he associated us with that jolt of electricity that surged through his brain.

There was a cute waitress at the hotel who had a crush on Gary, he told me a few days later that she had come by his room and he was in bed with her giving her a passionate kiss when the monkey came flying across the room and landed on his bare ass.
The waitress said,”Isn’t that sweet, he’s trying to protect me”.
Shortly thereafter we were leaving winter quarters for our opening spot. I saw Gary and asked him where his monkey was.
“I gave that little trouble maker to the waitress at the motel”, he said.