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."