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.