May 1st, 1974, Norfolk, Virginia
Jim and I were up early due to the noise of military jets taking off overhead. Neither of us were looking forward to what we thought would be a day of hassles dealing with insurance companies. It didn’t really work out that way though. Jim made a phone call to the city traffic bureau, and they had an assessor and bodily injury expert named Mr. Logsdon meet us at Jim’s crumpled car. He assessed Jim’s car for $1675. Jim later told me that that was more than he paid for the car two years earlier.
Jim and I caught on that the city of Virginia Beach and the insurance company had agreed to be generous with us so that we didn’t raise a fuss about Maleski’s negligent driving. Right after the accident, while we were waiting for the ambulance, Detective Maleski said to us, "Well, if you’re going to get hit, you might as well get hit by a cop." Maybe Jim knew what he meant, but I didn’t. But now it began to make sense.
Mr. Logsdon had me give him my bill from the hospital ($26 for the four stitches) and told me they would take care of it. He asked me what other expenses I would have related to the injury. I told him I would need some antibiotic ointment and for someone to eventually remove the stitches. He wrote me a check for $70 (which would be equivalent to about $450 in 2025).
He had someone from a salvage yard meet us at the car where they bought it for $200. Logsdon then wrote Jim a check for $1475. He also arranged for and paid for Jim to pack up and ship most of the stuff left in the car back to Illinois. Logsdon then drove us to a bank where we could cash our checks. Jim wired a big chunk of his home. Even though things went faster and more smoothly than we had anticipated, it still took most of the day. As his final act, Logsdon paid for a room for us at the Buccaneer Motor Lodge.
If we had wanted, we probably could have squeezed them for more, but I don’t think either of us felt like drawing things out. I briefly thought about asking for a letter of apology from Maleski and a beachfront motel instead of the Buccaneer, but let it slide. It was something of a relief to have everything resolved. And, it was nice to have some cash in my pocket again.
Jim and I celebrated surviving the wreck by sharing a sixpack of Rolling Rock and smoking some of Jim’s weed. He was adept at rolling joints with one paper and showed me how to roll a joint that looked like it was machine-rolled.
May 2nd, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Jim and I were up early and took advantage of the Buccaneer’s free breakfast, limited as it was. Jim, who had picked me up hitchhiking, was now relegated to hitchhiking himself. I didn’t record where Jim was headed (other than north) but we started out hitchhiking together.
Outside of Hampton Roads we got a ride with a guy going to Buffalo. He had originally planned to go by way of DC. However, he wanted to have some company on his drive, so he altered his route to go by way of Harrisonburg, where I got out. I said goodbye to Jim, one of the best people I met during my days of hitchhiking around. I had invited him to come and meet Jamie and Peg but, since he had a long ride, he declined. He gave me a couple joints as a parting gift.
I found the house on East Market where Jamie and Peg were now living. Jamie was not home from work yet, but Peg was home. We smoked one of the joints and listened to some music on the new stereo system that Jamie had recently bought.
May 3rd, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Peg called in sick. She was switching from full-time to part-time work nursing. Since she would not be able to use sick days as a part-timer, she was using up the ones she had. Jamie came home with a big mess of ramps, which we had for dinner.
After dinner, some of Jamie and Peg’s friends came by and we all went over to Madison College to hear a band called Happy the Man. It reminded me some of Pink Floyd. I did wonder if the people sitting around us appreciated that we had just partaken of a ramp feast.
May 4th, Massanutten Mountain, Virginia
It was Saturday and Jamie and I planned to go on an overnight hike on Massanutten Mountain. Massanutten is about a 50-mile-long ridge running from near Strasburg, Virginia south to Harrisonburg. We hiked to Kennedy Peak in the more northern part of the ridge near New Market. It was about five miles from the trailhead to Kennedy Peak. It was not a difficult hike because we were mostly hiking along the ridge, although it was rocky in places.
The ridge runs down the center of the Shenandoah Valley and along the way there were excellent views of the Page Valley and the South Fork of the Shenandoah River to the southeast. Most of the farmhouses seemed to have tin roofs that glittered in the sun. The meanders of the South Fork were remarkably regular in both their amplitude and wavelength.
I was fascinated that from the floor of the valley Massanutten Mountain appeared to be one long unbroken ridge. However, once we were on the ridge, Jamie pointed out that there were hidden valleys on top of and between parallel ridges that composed the larger mountain.
Photo source: Doug Berry, Fine Art America.
A view of the southern end of Massanutten Mountain and the Shenandoah Valley. The viewpoint is from somewhere on the Blue Ridge that lies to the east of Massanutten Mountain. Kennedy Peak would be further north, off to the right of this view.
May 5th, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Jamie and I hiked back out the next morning. The expedition had been rather spur-of-the-moment, meaning we had prepared in a half-assed manner. In particular, we hadn’t taken nearly enough water and food. We were both thirsty and hungry by the time we got back to the car. We stopped at the first eating place we passed, which happened to be a Tastee Freez, where we each wolfed down a burger, fries, and a shake.
May 6th, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Peg spotted an ad in the local paper that read. "Laborers free to travel. See the Country. Salary, meals, berth furnished. Apply to Manager, Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. May 8, Fairgrounds." Peg said since I liked traveling maybe it would be worth considering getting paid for it. Or maybe it was Peg’s way of saying I had visited long enough. I thought I would check it out.
May 7th, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Jamie’s brother, wife, and kids came over for dinner. Peg cooked a roast. We drank margaritas. I packed my bag.
May 8th, Lynchburg, Virginia
I took my pack and walked over to the fairgrounds to investigate the circus job. The ad said to apply with the circus manager but the first person I ran into, a short, stocky guy, told me to never mind about the manager, that he knew someone he owed a favor to, who needed some help. He (I found out later everyone called him Shorty) took me to the cook wagon, where he turned me over to a guy named Lou, who hired me on the spot.
Lou told me I would be waiting on tables, which, he said, mostly involved making sure there were bread, condiments, water, and coffee available. He also mentioned that I would be helping to set up and take down the mess tent—almost as if that was a minor part of the job.
Lou looked to be in his 50s, average height, stocky, with thick, graying hair. He seemed tired and exasperated, which I later realized was a permanent state of being for him. I got the impression he had been with the circus for a long time.
I was there in time to start tearing down tables and the mess tent so they could move to Lynchburg, the next town. The tables were about the size and configuration of typical picnic tables, but they were designed to be easily disassembled and packed away. We started breaking down tables and hauling the pieces to the truck, even while people were still eating. Lou knew which people would be eating last and had us leave those tables up. I soon learned that everyone ate at the same table each day.
Once all the tables were down and stowed away, we had to take down the mess tent, usually referred to as the cookhouse. I’m guessing that it was about 50 feet by 50 feet. It was big enough to hold 15 tables—six on each side and three more in the middle, oriented perpendicularly to the others. It had two interior poles and about 28 or so side poles. I already knew that there was going to be way more work involved setting up and taking down that tent then there would be waiting on tables.
I was working with two guys, Robert and Walt, to take down the tent. Lou was the head cook and exempt from that type of work. As we were taking down the tent, Walt told me to keep my eye out for a guy named John. John had, until the previous day, been part of the cookhouse crew, but because of some unspecified infraction had been reassigned to other duties elsewhere. Walt said John was hoping to get his old job back after Lou cooled off but now that I had been hired that was unlikely. Walt seemed to think John was the kind of person who might take it out on me.
After all the tables and the tent were loaded into the trailer, we were off to Lynchburg. We had to re-erect the tent as soon as we got there since it had to be ready to go for breakfast the next morning. Almost as soon as we got it up, it started raining. Lou told us to just set up three tables for the time being and we could put up the rest of the tables in the morning.
May 9th, Charlottesville, Virginia
Lou had us up early to finish setting up the tables. I learned that the six tables on the right were for the laborers and the six tables on the left were reserved for the performers. It was, it seemed, almost taboo for the performers and the workers to interact. The three tables in the middle were for the butchers and the musicians, whose caste seemed to fall somewhere between the performers and laborers. The butchers were the guys who walked around selling stuff like popcorn, cotton candy, and sno-cones.
We served three meals each day. So that people knew when food was being served, we hoisted a flag on top of the tent. Breakfast and lunch were quick, an hour or so, but the flag was up for three hours for dinner. This was because the afternoon show affected when people could make it to the cookhouse, even for some of the workers, who were animal handlers or part of the props department.
I figured out which guy was John. He was a tall, lanky guy. Every time he came into the mess tent, he glared at me. I’d been told that working on the cookhouse crew was one of the easier and safer jobs. John had been reassigned to be the ice man. I had no idea what all that involved but he must have liked his old job better. He never said anything to me—just gave me dirty looks, as if it were somehow my fault he had got demoted.
After tearing down at Lynchburg, we moved to Charlottesville, where we set up again. Except for the advance man, the cook wagon was the first unit of the circus to arrive on the next lot. The advance man had staked out where everything was to be laid out, so we knew where to set up the cookhouse tent.
It took me a couple days to get the hang of swinging a sledgehammer. The stakes were about four feet long and we were supposed to drive them in to about the height of our knees. The sledge had a fifteen-pound head and provided a good workout. The skill part involved hitting the stake squarely on the head. My aim was occasionally a little off at first. There were three of us and only two sledges, so we took turns. After driving in a couple stakes, I was ready to let someone else have the hammer for a bit, until I was ready to take another turn.
Photo Source: Jack Stubbs, Ann Arbor News. Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus | Ann Arbor District Library
We spent a lot of time hammering in stakes and then taking them back out. Unless I was hung over, I enjoyed driving stakes.
May 10th, Woodbridge, Virginia
It didn’t take long to get an idea of the work routine—serve three meals, tear down, move to the next town, set back up, repeat.
I noticed that of the six tables that were set up for performers on the left side of the cookhouse, only one of them had so far been occupied. The clown troupe occupied the table in the far corner of the tent. They would come in and eat together—eight or 10 of them jammed together tightly around the table. They were the most morose group of lunch companions imaginable. There was little conversation and zero joking around, as if that was strictly limited to when they were working.
The cook wagon, which was the size of a small semi-trailer, had four compartments. The back part was the kitchen, which took up maybe a third of the wagon. In the middle was a storage area, where all the dry and canned food was stored. It was slightly smaller than the kitchen. The other two compartments were sleeping berths. Robert, Walt, and I shared one of them. It had two iron-framed, three-level bunks, so it had the capacity to sleep six people. Lou had his own private berth, which was larger than the one the three of us shared.
Walt appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s. It was hard to tell—he had that worn look of a chronic alcoholic. He had no sleeping bag or blankets but, if it got chilly at night, he would put on a GI-issue field jacket. I suspect he may have been a Korean War vet.
Robert was a big, heavy guy with minimal intellectual capacity. He had multiple sets of clothes, which he seemed to always wear at the same time, regardless of how warm it was. I could usually see the bottom of one set of pants sticking out below those of a set he wore over them. He had thick, bristly hair—not thick as in a lot of hair; the individual hairs were thick. He was not balding but there was a lot of space between individual hairs, which gave his scalp an odd look. I sometimes saw kids who wandered onto the lot looking at him as if they were trying to determine whether he was part of the side show. Unless someone did something to antagonize him, Robert had an easy-going disposition. He was always willing to pick up the sledge when someone needed a break.
Between breakfast and lunch, I went to what passed for the circus restrooms, which everyone referred to as the doneckers [4]. Like everything else, they were on wheels. There were five or six stalls. One had to go up a few steps to a walkway that ran in front of the stalls. The whole contraption, except the vaults, was made of wood.
For privacy, the doors, at one time, could be secured with simple hook and eyelet type latches. Except none of them had both a hook and an eyelet. Someone had unscrewed them so that some stalls had an eyelet and some had a hook but none of them had both.
I was sitting there attending to business when the door to my stall flew open and a young guy appeared in the doorway. "Oh my," he said, "I didn’t realize this stall was occupied." It was clear he did. He made no effort to leave, just kind of looked me up and down, one hand holding the door open and the other hand on his hip. I told him to get lost and he hesitated and then said, "Hmmf. Well, I can see that you’re no fun."
The doneckers, of course, were disgustingly stinky. Why someone would choose that setting to try to determine if the new guy might be gay is beyond me. I found out later that a lot of the workers avoided using them altogether, opting to use any nearby woods instead.
May 11th, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland
At Woodbridge we were set up next to a railroad track. Everyone was talking about one of the workers named Gammo, who was missing. Gammo was a thin, black guy, who looked to be about 70 years old to me but may have been younger. A freight train was sitting on a siding next to the circus lot and the last time anyone had seen Gammo he was asleep in one of the boxcars.
No one seemed to know for certain, but they think the train left with Gammo still asleep in the boxcar. Someone saw Gammo asleep (or possibly passed out) in the boxcar. Then they noticed the train was gone and Gammo was missing, so everyone assumed he was still in the boxcar when the train left.
During lunch, I heard people discussing how long they thought it would take Gammo to find his way back to the circus. The problem was that the circus was a moving target. Also no one was sure whether Gammo could read, which would make it harder for him navigate to a particular place on a particular date, assuming he even knew where we would be on a given date. [5]
I asked Lou what Gammo did and he told me he drove one of the bible wagons. The bible wagons were portable bleachers that could be towed by a truck. They were towed inside of the big top and disconnected from the truck for use as spectator seating. The seats folded up when they were in transit, and they opened (like a bible) when needed.
I wondered about how Gammo could drive if he couldn’t read, but Lou said it wasn’t necessary. For the most part he said, all he had to do was follow whatever truck was in front of him. If he lost sight of the truck, the advance man had arrows posted along the route to the next town that guided the drivers.
We made pretty good time getting from Woodbridge to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, which was an army base. It was still light when we got there and there were a lot of kids around, so we put them to work. We still had to drive the stakes, but they helped hauling the pieces of the tables, except for the tops, which were too heavy for them.
May 12th, Frederick, Maryland
Between breakfast and lunch, I snuck over to the military base. I figured there would be a doctor there somewhere. I found one and asked if he would remove the stitches from above by eye. I had asked Peg to do it when I was in Harrisonburg, but she didn’t think they were quite ready to come out. The army doctor took them out for free.
Later, I asked Lou why we put up six tables for the performers when the only performers who ate in the cookhouse were the clowns. So far, it had been a waste of energy to set up and break down five tables that had never been used. The performers all had pickup trucks that towed Airstream trailers. They apparently had the capability to prepare their own meals. Who could blame them for not eating at the mess tent? The food, so far, seemed to me to be the type of food that would be served in a jail, a gospel mission, or an underfunded mental institution.
Lou decided to switch me to helping with food prep instead of waiting on tables. I sensed that he didn’t think either Robert or Walt would be much help with that. I didn’t know why, because, to that point, most of the help I provided consisted of opening industrial sized cans of green beans, corn, mixed vegetables, apple sauce etc. Most of the supplies were NIFDA foods, which stood for National Institutional Food Distributors of America.
Lou said that the performers, except for the clowns, rarely ate in the cookhouse but we had to have the tables set up for them just in case some of them decided to take a day off from cooking. Many of the performers were Mexicans so they probably found the cook wagon food even less palatable than the rest of us.
It rained most of the day but after lunch. It got windy as well—so windy that they cancelled the evening show. It was too dangerous to have people inside the big top during high winds. We had to break down the tables and take down the mess tent in the wind and the rain. The tabletops were like sails in the wind.
The mess tent, once it was taken down, folded, and rolled up, formed a cylinder that was at least five feet long and four feet in diameter. We stowed it on the floor of the storage section of the cook wagon. Even dry, the tent was heavy—it always took all three of us to lift it up into the wagon. It would have been near impossible for the three of us to lift all that wet canvas. Lou had someone from elsewhere in the circus come over with a forklift to get it in the trailer.
By the time we were ready to hit the road, we were all soaked to the skin, even Robert, who wore who knows how many layers. At least I had a change of clothing. I didn’t see any evidence that Walt had extra clothes, and Robert wore all the clothes he owned at one time.
We lucked out when we got to the next town, Hagerstown. The sponsors on that end had set up a rental tent that was about the same size as our mess tent. So, we didn’t have to set up our tent, although we still had to set up tables (still raining) and wipe them down so they would be dry in the morning.
May 13th, Hagerstown, Maryland
We set up on the infield of a racetrack. It had stopped raining, but the ground was wet and muddy in places.
Shorty, the guy who hooked me up with the cook wagon crew the first day, arranged with Lou to borrow me sometimes. Shorty was the circus water man. He drove a tank truck and delivered water to wherever it is needed within the circus. When the tank was low, he had to arrange with whatever city we were in to get some water.
That usually involved having someone from the local water utility meet us at a fire hydrant, where we would attach a heavy-duty hose to the hydrant and use it to fill the tank. Shorty had one foot that was permanently at about a 45-degree angle from the other one and he walked with a shuffling limp. So, he borrowed me from Lou so that I could climb the ladder to the hatch on the top of the tank and hold the hose there while the tank filled. I noticed there was about a six-inch layer of silt on the bottom of the tank. I would try to hold the hose in a way that it didn’t stir up the silt too much, but it wasn’t always possible. Shorty said the tank held 1000 gallons, which didn’t last very long. Occasionally I would help him multiple times in the same day.
Sometimes the utility guys would let us have the water for free but usually they would screw a portable water meter onto the hydrant and charge us. However, they hardly ever flushed the hydrants first. From my perch atop the ladder, I could see that the first water that came into the tank was always rust colored. In Hagerstown, the hydrant we drew from must have had water sitting in the line for decades because the tank was more than half full before clear water started coming out of the hose. By the time the tank was full, I couldn’t see the bottom. Later in the day I helped Lou by making mashed potatoes, which involved rehydrating NIFDA potato powder. The guys eating in the mess tent wanted to know why the mashed potatoes were brown and tasted like old pennies.
Even though we didn’t have to set up the mess tent, we still had to move it out of the storage space during the day, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get around in the pantry. That meant when it came time to leave, we had to get it back up into the wagon. Since we had never set it up, it was still saturated from the night before. And, for some reason, the forklift wasn’t available, so the three of us had to wrestle the tent up into the trailer.
There was no way to muscle that tent into the truck without getting up against it, and it was still wet and muddy from the night before. So, I had one set of clothes that was still drying out and another set that was wet and muddy. I guess that wasn’t unusual. One of the guys in the band saw me in my muddy jeans and t-shirt and laughed. He said whenever anyone came on the lot and asked him where the cook wagon was, he would just tell them to look for the dirtiest guys on the lot.
May 14th, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Lou hired a new guy, Bill, for the crew. There were now four of us, not counting Lou.
Lou and I got to talking about the side show for some reason. He said everything in it was gaff, or phony. He said he could teach me to swallow swords in five minutes. I told him it would have to be gaff because I gagged easy. Besides a sword swallower, they had an electric lady, and a snake lady (actually, the same person in a different costume).
They also had a menagerie consisting of Otto, the blood-sweating hippo; a mean-spirited camel, and a troupe of what they called "giant apes," which were chimpanzees. That was technically correct but the banners outside showed something that looked like gorillas. Lou said the chimps kept people entertained because they were bored and regularly engaged in some sort of compulsive sexual behavior, either auto-erotic or in pairs. But, he said, they also kept the spectators from lingering too long because they would sometimes hurl their feces at them and they had pretty good aim.
May 15th, Liberty Bell Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The site the mess tent was on in Lancaster was all dust. By the time guys shuffled in and out for three meals the tables cloths were covered in a layer of dust. When we tried to wipe them down with wet cloths it just turned the dust into streaks of mud.
I was not positively impressed with the new guy, Bill. He was always talking. Although he was a big guy, when it came time to lift the tent into the wagon, it didn’t seem any easier than when it was just Robert, Walt, and me.
After Lancaster, we jumped to Liberty Bell Park in Philadelphia, where we were set up right outside a horse racetrack [6]. We would be staying there for a rare 12-day stand. Lou said that always meant trouble because once the big top was set up, the roustabouts would have nothing to do for 12 days, except find trouble.
We were sharing the lot with a carnival, which had already set up. A few of the carnies came by and helped us set up the mess tent. Really, I think they just wanted to show off how much better they were than our crew at driving stakes.
Some of the circus roustabouts who had been working a long time setting up the big top, could drive stakes swinging the hammer in a big circle. They would hit the stake on the down swing and let the momentum carry the hammer around in a circle above their head. I had seen that and tried it a couple times but with mixed results. I stuck with just lifting the hammer back up after each time I hit the stake. I was less likely to miss the head of the stake and it was good exercise. Bob and Walt swung the same way as me, although Walt said he could do the circle swing if he felt like it.
All the carnies who came by were pretty good at swinging the hammer, as well as tying knots so we had the mess tent up in record time. I thought the circus workers looked like they had led hard lives, but the carnies were even more corroded looking. I don’t think the three who came by had enough teeth for one full set between them.
May 16th, Philadelphia
We suddenly found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. I still had to help Lou with the meals, but the tent and the tables didn’t have to be put up and taken down, which seemed like two thirds of the work.
I heard there was a stream [7] nearby so Walt, Bill, and I walked over to check it out and possibly wash up. That was a big issue with the circus—there was no easy way to clean up. Workers would sometimes get a bucket of water from Shorty and go into the woods to take a bucket bath. During a string of one-day stands though there often wasn’t much time to get a wash-up. And if there were no woods near the lot, there wasn’t anything in the way of privacy for washing. So, it was welcome news to hear there was a creek nearby.
I got along fine with Walt and Robert, but I could only tolerate Bill in small doses. He presented himself as an expert on everything. He had been hanging out with some of the carnies, and they told him about a good swimming hole on the creek. Although he had never been there himself, Bill told Walt and me that the only way to get to it was by wading up the creek bed. I poked around and found a well-worn trail though that took Walt and me right to it. I got some satisfaction when Bill finally reached the hole about 10 minutes after Walt and I had arrived.
I had quickly come to the realization that the circus was a kind of skid row on wheels. Not everyone, but many of the workers were chronic alcoholics. To keep them functional, the circus sold them cans of beer and little bottles of diluted whiskey. The whiskey was put into small, recycled cough medicine bottles that everyone called mickies. They conveniently fit into a shirt pocket and I would occasionally see guys taking a swallow. Walt usually had one in his pocket.
It appeared that the circus attempted to dole out the alcohol in a way that kept the alcoholics in a state that was somewhere between withdrawal and full-blown, non-functional drunkenness. It didn’t always succeed. It also looked like, by selling the workers beer and mickies at high prices, they were recovering most of the meager wages they’d paid them. Most of the workers only had money in their pockets around pay day.
Lou told me the circus had a recruiter who got paid by the head and he would round guys up at homeless shelters and soup kitchens. I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. I had spent a couple nights in gospel missions though and it seemed plausible.
May 17th, Philadelphia
It didn’t take the workers long to find out there was a bar within walking distance. It was in a little strip mall several blocks from the circus lot. In the evening, I walked over with a black guy named Youngblood, who was one of the roustabouts who put up the big top. The bar was called "The Round Table" because it was on Knights Road and it had something of a cheesy castle motif.
Almost everyone in the bar was from the circus, mostly roustabouts. A handful of the carnies were there as well. The bar tender was openly contemptuous of us. There were more people than usual and we probably kept him busier than he wanted to be. The bar had a couple dancing girls—not strippers, they just danced around in bikinis on a little stage, which struck me as a little anachronistic considering the castle theme. One of them came over between dances and sat at the table for a while with Youngblood and me until the bartender came over and told her not to. I heard him tell her to only sit with the regulars and she told him there weren’t any. We may have scared the regulars off.
A guy named Mike, also a roustabout, joined us at our table and later when the bar closed—I think the bar tender may have closed early to get rid of us—we walked back to the lot together. Mike had some weed and we sat in the darkened big top and smoked a joint.
Photo source: Clyde Beatty Cole Bros Circus
A view of the interior of the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers big top. I wasn’t all that interested in the show. However, I was impressed that a bunch of malnourished, misfit alcoholics and potheads could put this tent up, take it down, and move to the next town in one day—and do it day after day. It was big enough to seat between 2000 and 3000 spectators.
During the time I was with them, the CB-CB circus was still using a canvas big top like the one in the photo. Johnny Pugh, the circus manager, was later credited with developing a more highly engineered big top that did not need as many interior poles, which improved visibility for the spectators. It was vinyl rather than canvas.
May 18th, Philadelphia
I was a little hung over in the morning, but functional. However, I realized I couldn’t continue to go drinking with the others. We got paid so little [8] that I had easily drank a couple days' worth of work the previous night. I had already decided that I didn’t want to stick with the circus too long and wanted to have some money to travel on after I called it quits. If I spent too many nights drinking, I would be broke when it was time to leave.
During the dinner hours, Lou asked me to take over in the kitchen for him. Everything was already prepared, I just had to plate it and hand it out the back of the wagon to people. Among other things, Lou had made Salisbury steaks, which were just hamburger patties in gravy. He had a big pan that was about two feet square and sat over multiple burners on the stovetop. He told me to give everyone two patties plus the other entrees and that he would be back soon.
Not long after, one of the guys came back to the cook wagon thoroughly pissed off. It was the same guy who had opened the door on me at the doneckers a while back. I think his name was Eric. He shoved his plate at me and I could see the meat patties I had given him were raw on the inside. I could tell he thought it was payback for the doneckers incident.
About that time Lou returned and asked what the problem was. Eric told Lou, "He gave me raw meat." Lou responded by saying, "What do you care? You have raw meat in your mouth every night." Oy. Eric dumped the food in the trash and stormed off.
It wasn’t until later that Lou explained that he had a system for cooking the patties. Because workers showed up for dinner spread out over three hours, he put the patties in the gravy to cook several at a time, starting in the front of the pan. As he handed some out, he pushed what was left to the front and added new rows in the back. That way, none of them were overcooked.
He hadn’t told me any of that though. Instead of taking the fully cooked patties from the front of the pan, I had just been fishing them out randomly, but mostly from the middle of the pan. Those patties would have been done on the outside but not in the middle. I realized that I had probably unintentionally given at least several guys raw meat, but Eric was the only one who had bothered to complain.
After dinner, Lou had us take down some of the tables in the mess tent. Some of the Mexican performers wanted to have a party in the tent after the second show. We left three or four tables up for them to sit and eat and drink at. They brought in some sheets of plywood to lay on the ground for a dance floor in the open space. I didn’t see any of the dancing, but it sounded like flamenco style dancing with a lot of percussive foot stomping and people shouting ‘Ole.’
It was extra work for us but worth it because they tipped well. The cook wagon had a tip jar. Considering the food quality and how little the workers got paid, it amazed me that anyone ever put anything in the jar, but they did. However, the amount of money in the tip jar took a big bounce upward after the performers’ party.
May 19th, Philadelphia
While Lou and I were serving lunch, a girl came by the back of the wagon and asked if there were any jobs on the cook crew. She was slender, wearing a halter top and jean shorts. Lou told her, "Absolutely not, my guys would be all over you." "No, we would NOT," I objected. Lou said, "The guys working for me are a bunch of animals. You’d have to share a berth room with them" "We are NOT animals," I said. Lou was adamant though and she walked away disappointed.
Lou must have seen I was disappointed as well. He said he couldn’t take any chances, that she was probably a runaway. She looked at least 18 I told him. "It isn’t like she could help driving stakes or carrying tabletops," he said. "She would have done wonders for crew morale. Plus, she could probably help you more than I can," I told him.
After lunch, I went over and caught part of the afternoon show. Later in the evening, Walt said he was going to the Blue Room, which is where the guys go to buy the circus alcohol. I was curious so I asked him if I could go with him. It was a small tent, maybe 12 feet by 12 feet, with no obvious entrance. The side wall canvases went all the way around. Walt showed me where two of the side walls overlapped a couple feet and how to get inside by moving sideways between them.
Inside there were a few beat-up, folding chairs, a single cooler with some iced beers, a box of mickeys, and someone to take the money. Both a mickey and a can of beer were a dollar, which was an exorbitant price in 1974. The mickeys were in four fluid ounce medicine bottles. Walt said anyone could tell they were watered down.
May 20th, Philadelphia
Between breakfast and lunch, I went to grab something from my pack in the sleeper and found Youngblood hiding there. Whispering, he told me he was hiding from Johnny Pugh, the circus manager. He told me not to tell anyone he was there.
He told me that he had gone to The Round Table again the night before and the bartender was becoming a bigger asshole when it came to the circus people. He was insulting and refused to serve some of them. Youngblood decided to get even by taking one of the elephants to the bar. This was a serious offense because Youngblood was not an elephant tender and even an elephant tender would not be allowed to take an elephant off the lot like that. He was, however, smart enough to take Bridgette, one of the more docile elephants.
I heard more details later from a guy everyone called Slow Motion, who happened to be at The Round Table when Blood brought Bridgette inside. Because the bar had the hokey castle theme going, it had huge double doors that were supposed to resemble a portcullis. They were more than wide enough for an elephant to enter, although she had to stoop down a bit. Slow Motion said Blood paraded the elephant around the bar room a couple times while the bartender threw a fit and called the cops. Bridgette pooped on the floor and Blood led her back out. I wished I could have been there.
Slow Motion walked with Blood and Bridgette back to the lot and said it was crazy because the Philadelphia Flyers had just won the Stanley Cup that night and the whole city was out celebrating. In between the Round Table and the circus lot, Knights Road crossed over a major thoroughfare that was jammed with hockey fan traffic and when people saw an elephant on the overpass everyone started honking. There were so many other shenanigans going on in the city that night that the cops never appeared.
I asked Blood later how he pulled it off and he said he bribed Bridgette’s handler with some weed. He also knew that the elephants loved bread and he came by and lifted five or six loaves of stale bread from the cook wagon breadbox. (It was true. Some of the tenders would come by and we would give their elephants stale bread—they would eat it plastic bag and all.) Blood led her over and back by giving her some bread occasionally.
No matter how bad someone screwed up, no one ever seemed to get fired. The worst that could happen is that you would get reassigned to a worse job. Since Blood was a big top roustabout, that would have been difficult. Everybody seemed to think that Johnny Pugh would punish someone less once he had a day or two to cool off, which was why Blood was hiding in our sleeper. I pretended I never saw him.
May 21st, Philadelphia
I started getting bored being in the same place. Slow Motion and some of the other guys asked me to go out drinking with them but I didn’t want to spend too much of my slowly earned money. They had already found another bar nearby. When they went to The Round Table, there was a sign on the door that said, "No carnies or circus people."
I caught part of the evening show. I hadn’t seen the whole thing straight through but had seen all of it in pieces.
May 22nd, Philadelphia
Somebody didn’t like the clowns. Lou and I had just started serving breakfast when one of the clowns came to the back of the wagon. He told us that somebody had shit underneath their table. Lou had Robert go borrow a shovel and get rid of it.
In the afternoon, some of us went over to the creek. Some of the tenders brought the elephants over for a dip. It was nice to see the elephants enjoying themselves. They got worked hard—not just performing but helping erect the big top and hauling stuff.
Photo source: Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus | Ann Arbor District Library
The elephants were the only members of the circus that were both laborers and performers. In wet weather it wasn’t uncommon for one of the trucks to get stuck in the mud and for the elephants to pull it out. They were also used to put up the big top. They did not have easy lives.
May 23rd, Philadelphia
More boredom. The high point of the day was going with Shorty to fill the water wagon a couple times. On the plus side, one of the performers had a baby shower in the mess tent so there was more money in the tip jar. Lou let his crew divide the tips. He said he didn’t take any himself, but he decided when it got split.
May 24th, Philadelphia
Bill quit today. I was glad to see him leave. He hardly did any work and never stopped talking.
Lou asked me if I was going back to the creek, whether I would mind taking Nino with me. Nino was about four or five years old and the son of some performers. I figured that his parents had asked Lou if I would watch him for a while. There was a rather complex web of people doing each other favors. Sometimes money was exchanged and sometimes it wasn’t. So, Lou was doing the parents a favor and I was doing Lou a favor.
I took Nino (I had no idea what his real name was.) with me to the creek. It must have been a major adventure for him because he was even more animated than usual. He spoke no English, and I spoke almost no Spanish, but he seemed to have been instructed to stick with me.
We were there for about a couple hours when some of the carnies showed up. I was vaguely aware that over the course of the week there had started to be some friction between the carnies and the circus people. Some of that had carried over to the swimming hole and at one point it looked like there was going to be a gang fight. Nino got scared so I brought him back. Lou gave me a couple dollars for watching him.
May 25th, Philadelphia
While Lou and I were serving lunch, we heard the guys cheering in the cookhouse. Lou sent me over to see what was going on. The guys were celebrating because Gammo had found his way back! I had forgotten all about him. He said he knew the circus had a 12-day stand in Philadelphia so if he could find his way to where we were in Philly he thought he had a chance. He admitted that when he woke up, the train was moving and when it stopped, he had no idea where he was.
That evening, I broke down and went to the new bar with the guys. They had been working on me to come along and I was bored and didn’t want to be anti-social. There were fewer guys out drinking because most of them had run out of money. Afterwards, we went into the big top to get stoned but there was what looked to be a high-stakes poker game going on there that included Johnny Pugh, so we went somewhere else.
By the end of the evening two of the roustabouts had propositioned me. I guess, as they say, familiarity breeds attempt. It made me realize that homosexuality was more widespread than I thought, because I wouldn’t have suspected either of the guys who came on to me were gay. Part of it, I think, is the near total absence of females on the workers’ side of the lot and the insularity of the circus.
May 26th, Philadelphia
Someone shit under the clowns’ table again. That seemed to confirm that whoever was doing it was specifically targeting the clowns. The clowns were not happy—although, to be honest, they didn’t seem any glummer than usual. Lou had Robert go get the shovel again.
After breakfast, I wandered over to the big top and watched the performers practice. That was more interesting to me than the performances. Three girls called the Verdu Troupe were practicing their rolling globe act. They moved around, each balanced on a giant ball, moving and positioning the ball with their feet. The climax of their act was when they maneuvered the balls up a spiral ramp. I’d seen them perform it twice and both times it took them two tries before they were able to do it successfully.
Watching them practice, I realized that the failures were staged to make the act appear more difficult and to add some suspense. They were practicing their pretend failure to make it look more convincing. It was probably the hardest part of their act.
May 27th, West Chester, Pennsylvania
We finally got to leave Philly. Even though there is more work when we are moving every day, I would rather move. It was a short jump to West Chester and we had the cookhouse tent up early.
We’ve had a box of two dozen steaks in the freezer for some time. Lou kept saying that some evening he would grill the steaks for the workers, but never did. The steaks, he said, were a gift from one of the local food distributors for placing a large order. I’d been present when we got meat deliveries and usually we just got big loaves of baloney or processed ham that Lou had me slice up to make lunch sandwiches. I was a little puzzled about why a distributor would reward us for buying baloney by giving us steaks.
One of the roustabouts, Tom, asked me if I would hang onto his bag of weed for him. One of the other roustabouts, an older black guy called Bear has been selling liquor out of the roustabouts’ sleeper. That upset Johnny Pugh because it undermined the Blue Room, meaning the circus had less control over alcohol intake and also collected less cash. Tom said Bear’s illicit liquor sales meant the roustabouts’ berths were now subject to random searches. He said he would reclaim his bag once things cooled down.
May 28th, Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania
In Gilbertsville, we had to set up on an asphalt parking lot, which meant driving stakes through the asphalt. Most of the stakes are dull from hitting rocks so Lou keeps a special stake set aside for when we set up on asphalt. It has a sharper point and he had us drive it in until we could tell it had made it through the asphalt. Then we pulled it back out and drove in one of the regular stakes. That process slowed us down getting the tent up. The advance man came by and helped us out some.
May 29th, Reading, Pennsylvania
Getting the stakes back out was harder than driving them in. Usually, we hit the stakes back and forth on different sides to loosen them up but that didn’t help much. That was probably the longest it took us to get the tent down.
It was dry all the way to Reading but the moment we got out of the truck it started raining. Frank, the mechanic, forgot to fill the tank for our generator so we had to put up the mess tent in the rain and in the dark. Right around the time we finished, Frank pulled into the lot.
A new kid helped us put up the tent. Lou is trying to convince him to join our crew, but he doesn’t seem too thrilled about it. Maybe he has heard something.
May 30th, Allentown, Pennsylvania
The new kid didn’t join us. John the iceman must have messed up again because the new kid replaced John as iceman. So at least now, John will probably be giving the stink eye to the new kid instead of me.
We did get a new crew member though, Joe, a little Puerto Rican guy from New York City. He seems like a good guy and pitched in right away.
Walt found a bar nearby called Peg’s and came back wasted. He regularly visited the Blue Room but this was the first time I had seen him this drunk. He was loud and semi-belligerent and woke up Frank, whose camper is always parked next to the cook wagon.
When he finally got in his bunk, Walt, who hardly ever talked much, kept repeating, "I’m drunk. I’m downtown." The bunks have a piece of plywood in place of bed slats. Walt had one of the bottom bunks and Robert had the bunk above him. Walt kept pushing up on the plywood above him, which lifted Robert up in the air. Then he would let go and the plywood and Robert would come crashing back down. I could tell that Robert was terrified. I asked Walt to stop and he did, but later he would start up again. It was Joe’s first night in the sleeper and I was wondering if he was wondering if this happened every night.
Photo Source: Ann Arbor News. Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus | Ann Arbor District Library
A typical morning scene on the circus lot. The tent in the background is the side show and menagerie tent. The big top is laid out on the ground but hasn’t been hoisted yet. Although this photo was taken in 1968, the trucks that were being used during the time I was with the circus were of the same vintage as those in the photo. The wagons were painted red with mostly yellow lettering. The trucks were a sun-faded shade of royal blue. The guy in the foreground is, I think, one of the props department roustabouts named Schneider. He was still with the circus in 1974.
May 31st, East Brunswick, New Jersey
Walt was still too drunk to help us for most of the day. Lou told him to go back to sleep it off. We served all three meals and tore down without him. Slow Motion came by and helped and Joe did a lot. For such a little guy, he could swing the sledge pretty well.
Ordinarily, on the way to the next town, as the senior member of the crew, Lou had Walt ride shotgun in the truck and everyone else rode in the sleeper. To punish Walt though, Lou had me ride shotgun going to East Brunswick. Lou asked me to keep an eye out for the arrows and let him know if there was a turn coming up. It was something Lou said Walt didn’t always do very well.
The arrows were on pieces of thin cardboard about four or five inches long. The advance man posted them on telephone poles along the route between cities so drivers were less likely to get lost. A lone arrow pointing up meant to "continue in the same direction." A horizontal arrow, pointing either left or right, with an arrow pointing up underneath it meant a "turn is coming up." A horizontal arrow, pointing either left or right, with an arrow pointing down from above meant to "turn now." Lou probably needed the arrows more than anyone. Since the cook wagon was the first to leave the lot, he couldn’t just follow whoever was in front of him.
Walt tried to help us set up the tent when we got to East Brunswick but he was still too wasted to be much help. Robert, Joe, and I got the tent set up without him. He was back to being quiet through the night.