Employed 17 part 2

From the very beginning of our time , actually working in the very midst of a real life, on the road circus every one of my daughters had real PAID jobs in the show. During the show, they each did their special jobs (detailed in E17 P1).
In the final parade, they all appeared standing on Baby Sue's back. From the beginning, my kids and the other kids present, really enjoyed themselves, being in and actually working for a move every day travelling show. Every one of us had an income, and we liked doing our jobs. Paula had, by far, the biggest job in the side show;her patriotic costume : a gold lame, two-piece swim-suit, trimmed with Old Glory's colors and the cash-collection can which she offers to everyone entering. In the sideshow, our show's Ringmaster did a magic act, in which a young woman is seen to vanish into thin air.The next act, also performed by Mr Dundee was just a set-up to put Paula into her Electric Lady act. ln my pitch, to get people out of the midway and into the sideshow tent,     l told the tip (people standing in the midway resisting me) that Paula  had first showed signs of her immunity to electric shock when she was about eleven months old. The story was, that she , crawling on the floor of her bedroom, she came  upon some bare electrical wires where an electrician had left his work with bare wires easily accessed. Paula happened along and "went to work"on the bare wires. When the electrician returned to his work, he paniced and grabbed Paula. Of course, he suffered a few shocks trying to seperate her from the bare wires. Since then, all the tests that might have told why Paula is immune to electric shock, were to no avail. lt's still a puzzle: at least to most people. Probably most any electrical engineer knows how it's done. For my self, l understand that particular adjustments to a 110,120v or a 200  220 circuit can be made harmless but extremely wild visually, even though shockless.

Paula loved doing The Electric Lady. She was the only act, in the sideshow that drew spontaneous applause at every show. ln the few months that my daughters and l worked in the show, Paula was interviewed by local media after almost every sideshow. She told them all the same story: She was about three years old and with her mom in the kitchen. A plugged-in extention cord was connected to the vacuum cleaner. She tried to pull the two apart. Failing that,          she pulled the negative end of the extention cord far enough apart from  the positive end of the vaccum's. supply cord
She tried to pull the two apart. Failing that, she pulled the negative end of the extention cord far enough apart  from the positive end of the vacuum's supply cord that she was able to touch the end of the bare end of it's  cord. apparently
she was unable to release herself from the pulsing current. But when she was taken from the live current, there was nothing to suggest that she might have sustained any injury or discomfort, then, later , or even when she was a member of our sideshow.

l would need the permission of the show's owners before l could share the real story with anyone. Besides, l like the story that Paula always told the the media.
Paula was said to have come to our circus from the "Believe it or not" museum"in  San 
Francisco.Bill Dundee, our Ringmaster said that claim lent credence to her storyand her believability

Sandy's work at bounce house really suited her. She did so good there , so soon that she was in charge of it before she had been there a week.
 Chris, with next to no experience, found her self flying with the prime Acrobatic show. All of them just did great work, every day. Should we leave, we would
leave a big hole.

Actually, it was just the girls that were missed: l turned out to be the world's worst Barker. My first few days on the   job, l knew l was in trouble. l didn't bark;l talked. Somewhat loudly. l bought a rather barkey outfit, it didn't
help; l needed bark and l didn't have it

Actually, l had done a very poor job at all the jobs l had had with the circus.  As a booking agent, my percentage of success was below 50%. As  a Home-improv
salesman, some years earlier, l steadily closed over 80%
One day, Paula and l were talking about how much fun she was having in her job .She got  a big kick talking about all the media coverage she was getting and how it was a lot pof fun just talking to the media. As we talked,l remember we talked  about the many media outlets that had interviewed her. l said something about her being discovered.God, l never thought about it before....
What if Paula's Grandma were to see her. (Some one interviews Paula, they show the footage to their station manager at a time when network bigshots
are present.they decide to put Paula on their network. Now the grandma sees the footage.....
Returning from a town trip, later that day: Directly opposite the sideshow, an
older man, fairly loudly is chanting in what sounds like sideshow barking! Or at least how it should sound. l approached him. l shook his hand and told him that he should be the barker.
Most of my work experience found me among the better employees in. the company. Whatever the job, l was to be found among the best. ln the circus
l was a loser.

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Employed 17 part 1 Home sweet circe entirus

lt was after dark when we arrived at our next stop for the Great American  Circus. The four acre was empty when we arrived,  but totally clean and ready to welcome our town on wheels.  We yawned, smiled and set out for the spot we had rented for the spot we had rented for the nite  about twenty miles north of Fort Collins, Colorado. About half-way to our overnite spot it began to rain. lt  was still raining, when we woke in the morning, but heavier. The circus trucks trailers and employee cars ha arrived and parked in their designated spaces , before the rain started. lt was daylite before anyone with the circus stirred. By then, the rain was very heavy.All of the circus vehicles were sunk to the axels  None were able to drag themselves out of the knee-deep muck, let alone itself and one other. 
Any circus worth it's salt will have at least one elephant. The Great American had three, the oldest, a female named Babu Sue. She was very young when she came to stay with the  GA, but she was full-grown then and stood about nine feet tall. As l watched from the sidelines, eight  circus hands quickly fashioned a harness for Sue using rope and leather strap. She was then backed into the front of a 30 foot Winnebago attached to a 20 foot utility trailer. Somebody shouted "Go Sue! She lowered her head to near the ground, pushed hard against the deep mud. Once she broke it loose, she virtuly flew from the muddy field to the surrounding, paved surface. She catches her breath and on her own,returns to the rope in all the mud. Before anybody thought to put the two younger elephants to help Sue, she had already finished the task. l'll never forget the image of Sue trotting thru deep mud, nearly dancing, dragging car after car after truck thru the deep mud, to the safety of the paved areas nearby.
Much more of Baby Sue, later.
Since there was no place near Fort Collins where a circus could played outdoors, it was presented indoors at the high-school auditorium.
My first assignment with the show was as a photographer. l was given a 16mm movie camera and two still 35mm cameras. A new Big top had been delivered to us at Fort Collins, and Management wanted lotsa pictures. For more than a week
we did nothing but take pictures. We took hundreds, even thousands of stills and way lotsa movies of every aspect of the show. But mostly of the big top,
So new itself  and with all the support buildings  up-graded (at least newly painted)
Not only were my daughters very helpful to me, as always, but they began their regular jobs just as we left Fort Collins. R's job was the biggest in our family:
Beginning when the sideshow opened, she held a three pound coffee can at the entrance and encouraged the crowd to put their quarters within and enter the show. She then led them inside and escorted them thru the several shows that
culmanated
 in her act "The Electric Lady", in which she sits on a seat charged with 150,000 volts, and throws bolts of lightning all over the place and herself. To end her part of the show, she throws lightning at the fire-eater to light his torches. Her act always brought spontaneous applause.
S was virtually in charge of the bounce houses in the midway, directly across  from the sideshow. She was ten years old. l think the management had her figured at about 15. R was 13, then; management probably had her figured at about 18. O, who was then 9 worked with a family of acrobats. Her job was to be thrown and caught over what seemed to me like a long, long way. she had no problem doing it, though. 
The Circus layout is always the same. Each facility is always placed in exactly the same place relative to every other one. You probably did not need to know that since any other plan would be madness. The advance crew finds the Prime Marker on the site (described in contract) and are able to place the entire circus city foundations in an hour or two. That just leaves the rolling stock to be parked on their individual foundations  and the big top erected in it's spot. lt is all (usually) in it's place and ready for the crowd by 10:00 AM.on opening day.

One of the Elephant tenders , who we'll call Rod had at some time past developed a mighty distaste for elephants. One wondered how a guy that hated any particular beast would choose to work with or around it. But for whatever reason,  "Rod" hated elephants, but chose to work with them. One clue might be relevant. While Rod was about three inches short of four feet tall, our elephants were about nine feet tall. l'm told the logic is thus: l am 4 feet tall:l am good   .Elephant is 9 feet tall, it is bad. You would believe  this if you had seen the look on Rod's face when he was "tending" our elephants. (fearsom hatred!
 One day l was watching Rod move Sue down the main circus road on his way to put her away until the next show. When he and his charge were less than fifty   
feet away, Sue extended her trunk and very quickly and wrapped about two to three feet of it around Rod's right ankle. And tightend it up. Rod's  head, (front and center/right, hit the pavement,hard. Sue followed thru and pressed his head against the pavement again, but by then a gang of humen 7 or 8  appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and saved Rod's  butt. Actually, his life. lf she hadn't been stopped there is no way he could have survived.

The sideshow tent was also home to the elephants and it was kind of my office so l spent as much time with them as anyone. l learned that if you  spent considerable time with them and you were good to them, they would like you a lot. Whenever l visited them or just past thru the place they would up a small ruckas in my honor. And l was not alone. So far as l know, everybody, save for Rod and one or two others loved all of the circus animals and most of them loved the elephants most.

My job barking the sideshow was actually the smaller of my two main jobs. The other was what they call "Town Man". He is the guy whose main job takes little time to go to town to get nine one thousand watt light bulbs, rolls of electric wiring , rope , paint , a hundred gallons of anti-freeze, rope, paint. That's just a few that l remember. at the time it seemed like a huge job. l was barking the sideshow as the first step in training to become the next ringmaster of the Great American. The then-ringmaster had not yet given his notice, but told me that he expected to leave it to me within the then current year. So, since l wanted the top job in the circus and the sideshow was the way to get there, it became my place. Also l loved visiting the elephants. The time l spent with them was amazing. l was a cigzr-smoker at that time . At my first meeting alone with the elephants. l was holding a lit cigar as l approached Sue. She showed instant interest in the smoke. l moved the smoky end toward her and she took the cigar
and held it by the ends of her trunk. Then she rubbed the hot end against one of her front knees. The hot coal on the end of the cigar hit the floor. She then held
the cigar by it'sintake end while, a bite at a time, she ate the entire cigar. Two fresh ones , from which l removed the packaging, and dropped the cigars on the floor were instantly  consumed .

Employed 16 Part 6 East Coast Bound

We took about four and a half days to reach Washington D. C. and we arrived  there on a Tuesday in mid-morning. We decided to do some of the  touristing before we started our work and the first place visited was the
 National Gallery of Art. Actual acres of paintings, sculptures and jewels of many kinds. Later, that day We signed the D.C. part of the National Parks Police and made an appointment with the Silver Spring , Maryland Police Department for the next day. Another sale there  and yet another  one in Alexandria, Virginia.
Baltimore and Glen Burnie both said "no".

 l had always had good visits, and fun times in New York. l expected it to be good to us, for the Circus. Altogether, we pitched the circus in New York eight times, over two weeks and closed only one, the little town of Freeport on Long Island.

l was beginning to wonder just how great a salesman l am  (or not) The boss provided plenty of back-up. And moved us through Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,  Arkansas and Missouri with some successes.

As we moved North, into the upper parts of the Mid-West, we signed some good
 towns like Little Rock, Memphis, S pringfield, Kansas City,De Moines Minneapolis and St.Paul
and Duluth. l met with a Sherriff who had brought a couple of his sons who kept company with my daughters while he and l discussed how his organization

would make thousands of dollars by sponsoring our one-day event. My girls came away from their meeting with another kind of success, an ounce of cannabis, as good as we had had, since California, and priced lower than  what we had paid for something comparable. We traveled in a truck that had been fitted with a small trailer. lt was very well constructed, both the truck, which got 17 miles to a gallon of gas; and the trailer,which was tightly insulated and fitted
with 8" foam rubber mattresses.

After a few months of calling on circus prospects, George called me one day and asked if my girls and l would like to travel with the circus. We would all have our own jobs;Paula would be the Side Show greeter;Sandy would be the Bounce 
and Big Top cashiers. l would be Side-show barker and Town-Man. l guess the  girl's jobs explain themselves, as does my barking the side-show. And "Town  
Man" is the guy that goes after light bulbs, tire repair and the like. The girls and l thought it would be much better than writing sponsor contracts and we jumped on it.

Oh, one last thing. My three girls and one  more ride and walk on the elephants
during their performance. 










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Employed 16 part 4

Sy, and his wife, Ditty owned the circus , but their two sons ran it. George, then nineteen, ran the ticket pre-sale, the division in which l worked when l started. All the booking agents (five or six of us) were George's team and he was in touch with each of us, by phone, at least once every day. Matt, 17 ran the physical big-top circus and all that is in it. When the circus is active, he is with it, and with him are a half-dozen old-time , deep-socket, know-it-all; do it all
real circus guys who totally have Matt's back. Considering his age and the 
"weight" of the job, Matt was a truly great boss. Those who worked in the show loved him like their own son.

My first assigned town was Fresno, then Bakersfield, then Riverside and Anaheim. ln the previous year, those four cities had hosted our circus, each
with either fire or police sponsorship. Prospective organizations are told that the circus will leave the grounds on which it is played as it was before  we arrived. l would learn that that was almost never done; post-holes are left where they lie
and even trash containers are left overflowing. That made it near impossible to book the same town in two consecutive years. (Some townspeople told me that they would never host "The Great American Circus" again. George said people are going to complain no matter what you do. Tell 'em we'll try to do better next time.
So, our first week as circus booking agents was a total bust. George said we just needed a change of scene. "Your application shows that you lived in D.C. for a couple of years in the 50s. You might do well there.  
End of E16 P4


Begin E16 P5
This piece is a little out of place, since it happened during the last couple of years that we were on Divisadero Street .

One day in late 1970, a young couple came to visit us, on the recommendation of friends  of theirs who had been a part of our place on D street a year-or-so
earlier. The new couple stayed with us for perhaps a couple of months or so.While they were with us they loaned us their van, (a near-new Ford Club Wagon) to move our people and their stuff to other parts of the city. Our guests,
who were planning an extended visit to China, where they intended to do a lot of exploring. They didn't want to take their van with them, but intended to put it in storage in San Francisco, while they rented a van in China.
During their stay with us, they noticed us and our work and decided to leave their van with us until they returned. That was a great gift for us because we had only an old Chevy Camaro that barely ran and was not much for moving people and their stuff. That Club Wagon did help us immencely. lt could carry all the people and stuff that needed moving.

We heard from our friends three or four times in the year that followed. But, in the year after that....nothing. By 1972, we had moved to the big property in French's Valley and the Club Wagon was still with us. We had come to regard it as our own.

l was in
Laketown  one day, on business and using the van. l made a Uturn on the town's main street and learned that such a turn is nor permitted. l got my ticket and went on my way.
The next day l was in Laketown again,but barely, when l saw more police cars than l would have thought present in a town much bigger than Laketown. And...
l was their only interest.

Of course, l was arrested (by then the authorities knew me and my record and they knew the van l was driving, was stolen.) The couple visiting China was never heard from again.
When we lived on  Divisadero Street l built good relationships with our neighbors. Most everybody on our block was a personal friend and l kept them all aware of what was happening in our place. That turned out to be a good thing, since everybody l was in conversation with, knew the van's owners, where
they were, and how l happened to be using it. 

Because of my record, everybody in the SanDiego police establishment was sure that l was guilty, including a sheriff's lieutenant that interviewed me. But that was not the end of it; l told the lieutenant about our friends, who left the van with me, and gave him a few of the names and phone numbers of some of the folks on D street. He went away for about  and hour and when he returned, he was smiling and had the key to my cell at the ready. l was out of jail and on the bus North in the blink of an eye.




































   
































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Employed 16 part3

ln late 1971, the relationship, and marriage of Dahlia and l fell apart as did our "business" at 1914 Divisadero St. The decision of the divorce court, 100% in her favor, allowing me not so much as a phone call, let alone any shared custody or visits. They and l discussed our situation, after which, l decided to disobey the court.  We would meet a few times in our secret spot in the woods near Dahlia's
house.  We had several meetings and much discussion before we decided to run
away. We left a note that said we were gone but ok. We also told her that my Dad would be a go-between for us, receiving letters from us and forwarding them to her; then receiving from her , then forwarding to us. lt seemed like a good idea to us (the kids and l) but none of the kids' communications ever received an answer'.

So l went looking for a job that would allow me to keep moving, and moving constantly would necessitate getting a better car than the one l was using then.
l also needed at least one new suit for job interviews. And a new identity, including a driver's license, actually issued by a State. My friend Dom, a really good mechanic, sometimes acquired cars he had worked on. He was my first (and only) stop. Luckily, he had just finished re-building the transmission in a
'73 Mustang with 188,000 miles on it . The time was early August,73. This car first saw pavement in October 72 and immediately began making round trips 
between San Francisco and Miami carrying Colombian and Jamaican cannabis.
lt had made forty-two trips when it was retired and replaced. l bought it by paying for the trannie overhaul. Dom put four nearly-new tires on it for $75.
When l told him what l was about to do, he turned me on to a guy (Floyd) who was involved with an organization that supplies complete ID including copy of birth certificate, Calif driver's license and teamster's union card, all in the name of Michael Stewart Harrigan. He was actually deceased and his name stolen from him. l was told it didn't hurt him a bit. The organization that supplied the new identity, did so without charge, and without questions. As l drove out, Dom
shouted "Try Goodwill for suits.

At Sally's cafe,the morning paper is served to customers with the welcome. l was in Sally's phone booth, responding to an ad l saw in the paper before the kitchen even started my "two, over medium,ham and hash browns". The opening was for an experienced booking agent for the Great American Circus.
l was scheduled for an interview at 3PM the next day with Sy Spencer, the show's owner

There were no one-on-one interviews; Sy had the six-or-so of us sit around his desk. He would ask a question then point to each of us in succession for our reply. l was responsive to questions but saved details for a one-on-one. Two days after that meeting, l called Sy and  told him that l was a bit surprised that he hadn't scheduled me for a one-on-one.
"You want a one-on-one, huh? OK, 1PM tomorrow, same place.
The next day, Sy listened to my pitch and hired me to book the Great America Circus. lt's a three-ring circus under canvas taking up more than an acre of ground that can be erected in a couple of hours. lt could be taken down, rolled up, flattened down and hoisted  onto six completely enclosed trailers,drawn by 
three short chassis tractors with engines totalling more than 2,000 horsepower.

At my next meeting with my kids, we had something to discuss. At that point, if we decided to act, we had a very good chance to succeed. lt was then just a matter of showing up. But is everybody ready? We decided to vote and l decided that if it wasn't unanymous ,we wouldn't go. The vote was unanymous; yes we will go!
l think all the girls had some strong reservations conserning the leaving of their mother, but they wanted her to be aware that they  loved her and wanted to be with her but they wanted to have some time with their dad, too. And they believed their absense from her , for weeks or months would bring her around.
Even knowing the extent of her hatred of me, l too thought my having them and her knowing that l had them and she didn't, might possibly ruin her resolve

The girls were some excited that we would be working for a circus. Before it was over, each of us would have a real paid job in the" Great American". As a booking agent, my job was to contact the officers of organizations like the local Police benefit Org. or the firemens widows and orphans fund. The Lions; and other civic organizations like them are eligible but the commission paid for their contract is lesser than fire or police sponsors. More on that later.

So, the girls and l left the vicinity of their mother's house in Vallejo in the afternoon of a day near the middle of July, early in the 70s
                                        

Notice Preceding Employed 16 part 3

Now l'm going to skip, in time from about late '71 'til mid-'73 which covers ground already presented in the early blogs. (See anything in the early archives).

Employed 16 will find the girls and l deciding whether or not we should all run away, together to force Dahlia to ask the court to give the kids and l regularly scheduled time together.