Art, Ink and Edits

First, to all who celebrate, HAPPY 4/20!

In case I haven't mentioned this before, I am forever editing as I read. E.g., in a book I’m reading now, the author refers to Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian as Cubists. I was stunned. NO, they were most def not! I may have been a crap student in college but I remember my 19th and 20th century art history…or I think I generally do. I looked it up to be certain—it’s been a lot of years since art school, ya know.

What did I find out? While Klee was influenced by cubism, his work falls way more in line with Expressionism, Bauhaus and Surrealism. 

Paul Klee (1879-1940) has been called many things: a father of abstract art, a Bauhaus master, the progenitor of Surrealism, and—by many an art historian…a very hard man to pin down….

Klee’s body of work isn’t easily bucketed into a single category, thanks in large part to the system of throbbing forms, mystical hieroglyphs, and otherworldly creatures that he developed to populate his compositions. (source)

Mondrian? He was a founder of the art movement called De Stijl which was related to Neo-Plasticism (in Dutch—Nieuwe Beelding i.e., New Visualization).

By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.
~ Piet Mondrian

Sounds kinda sci-fi, no?

An artistic philosophy that called for the renunciation of naturalistic representation in favor of a stripped-down formal vocabulary principally consisting of straight lines, rectangular planes, and primary colors. First articulated by Piet Mondrian in the journal De Stijl (The Style),  (source)

Most def NOT cubist—neither of them.

Why didn’t the author’s editor catch and correct this? I mean, isn’t this basic, recent (as in just this past century!) Art History? I can understand the writer, who was relatively young and probably majored in English, being confused about artists and genres but the editor? The majority of book editors are well past 30 years of age and, with all their experience, should know better.

I’m also assuming here that because I know what styles and movements these painters were a part of, well, simply everyone must! I think, as usual, I’m guilty of underestimating my knowledge levels. I’ve always done this.

At least I’m consistent, eh?

By the by, who were the Cubists? Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and George Braques to name a few.

By the by Take 2: Back in my carnie days I thought I'd get inked. I was the only one on the lot sans skin art (the horror!) AND there were tattoo "artists" on almost all the midways. This was well before tattoos became the art form they are today so I wanted to keep it really simple—no Hygieia from Klimt’s Medicine for me. *sigh* I figured I'd get Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie (seen above, right) on my ass. Did I? Heavens no. I knew myself well enough to understand that I'd be unhappy about my choice moments after the last ink was inked.

Also, what if I gained weight? The art would be nastily distorted. More reason to nope out.

Carnival Days

I was texting with a friend yesterday. We were talking about what books we’re each reading right now. Me? I just finished Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (definitely recommend). Mark’s reading a collection of novellas by Stephen King. I mentioned that I first read King when I was on the road with the carnival in the mid-late ‘70s. I wasn’t into horror fiction (still not) but, in rural Texas, it was impossible to find books anywhere but the local chain pharmacies and supermarkets, which only carried mass market romance horseshit, thrillers and horror stories.

Given how much I talk, talk, talk, I was surprised to read that Mark didn’t already know I’d once been a carny. Frankly, I’m surprised I’d been with it—for the better part of three seasons too. Those were different, weird and, thankfully long ago times. I sent Mark a few (or more) links to give him an idea of what I did, what life was like.

No, I was never in a sideshow like the girl turning into a gorilla show. More’s the pity. That might've been more fun. Here, below, are some of my tales.

I’m Gonna Run Away and Join the Carnival
     How I got there.

Goat Ropers, Corn Dogs and Hey Rube
     We rolled into Hoxie, Kansas in early August—a town with a feed and grain, three Baptist churches, two bars and a laundromat. Things looked somewhat less than promising...

NOT a town I’ve ever been tempted to revisit.

Carny Roommates

Carnival and Chicago Punk

Born to be Mild
     We were playing some tiny town just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska when word came down the midway that bikers were passing through town and headed our way, to the carnival. I got the definite impression from my fellow jointees that this was supposed to inspire me with fear. Being 19, too trusting of folks who didn’t fall in with the mainstream and interested in whatever new experiences could come my way, I was intrigued. That and, being short on experience and imagination, I was wondering why, in god’s name, carnies would fear bikers...

Carnival Kidnapping
     This was at the end of my first season with the show and I was majorly sick of the 1950s-esque restrictions. You know, “don’t sleep with any of the guys unless you’re gonna shack up with him for the season.” You see, everyone would think I was nothing but a stone whore if I just went off for a one night stand. Christ, I thought I’d escaped high school tiny brained male/female horseshit!...

Nope.

Northline
     The close of my carny years and a close encounter with an evil, slime breathing yet charming and attractive pimp.

In another month or two, it will be 43 years since I came off the road. It all feels like a dream or like events that someone else lived through and told me about over more than a few strong cocktails one night.

Geeks

Let’s talk geek. For those of you not in the carnie know:

Geek was originally an early 20th-century term for a carnival worker who was so unskilled that the only thing the worker could do at the carnival to entice an audience was to bite off the heads of live animals (Ed. note: usually chickens or snakes). (source)

Just FYI, I was NOT a geek during my three years with various shows nor did I meet any.

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel
To be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone.
~ Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited

More broadly, outside the world of traveling carnivals, a geek is a skeevy, icky person who lacks social skills and smarts. You know, a fucked up nitwit. NOT someone you’d invite to your birthday party.

Examples?

Don Junior
Marge Traitor Grease
Boobert
Gym Jordon
Elise the trump-asslicker Stefanik
Paul Nazi-admirer Gosar

And the list stretches beyond the horizon.

Why are ex-prez Cheeto and RFK jr not on this list? They’re grifters not geeks. There’s a difference. Both Cheeto and Junior are slimy narcissistic nitwits who, if not for their rich daddies, would assuredly be selling broke-ass used cars in a shifty lot in the desert outside Reno (OR biting the heads off chickens at a Texas sundown town carnival). With their family cabbage though, they were able to buy degrees from fancy schools. This gave them their starts as high octane con artists.

You may well be wondering, WHY the fuck you have geeks on the brain this morning, Donna? Well, ya see…Jen’s headed to a big-ass family reunion down in Connecticut today. She’ll be gone ALL damn day which means no tea time (which means NO Star Trek and prosecco for yours-whiny-truly). I suggested, in a joking tone (because I’m only trying to help and am NOT a monster!), that if she gets tired of all the socializing she can tell her cousins and aunties that, since the last gathering, she’s renounced vegetarianism and has become a side show geek.

That’s kind of a conversation stopper, no? Eh, maybe not. Possibly I’ve given advice that will make her the absolute center of attention, the toast of the fête. This would defeat the whole purpose of getting her home in time for “tea.”

Oops.

I only mention it but language shifts and evolves. Britannica Dictionary defines geek as:

1: a person who is socially awkward and unpopular : a usually intelligent person who does not fit in with other people

     and

2: a person who is very interested in and knows a lot about a particular field or activity

So, no more dead chickens. 

Also, NO chickens were killed in the making of this morning's post.

Silver

My silver Vans came in! Yes, yezzzz, I already have a pair of silver Chuck Taylors. They're totes hip BUT old now, beat up AND they’re not Silver Surfer Vans mega SWEET.

I mean...just LOOK at those fresh, fab babies!

Did I ever tell you about the Halloween night from my last carnival season? All us jointees dressed up. Me? I coated my skin, clothing (a body suit) and hair in bright, metallic silver powder and paint – I WAS the Silver Surfer.

We were playing Northline – a Houston shopping center. It was the last spot of the year AND a guaranteed jackpot. I needed a big score since, right after we sloughed, I intended to bunk off on my new adventure as an honest to chiclets, big time, real adult. (there was a serious delay but that’s another story or three).

I was running the bushel baskets – a kiddy game (calling, in a heavy drawl, “one in and you win” and “you cain’t win if you don’t play!”). Just FYI, "win" at least back then, on the midway, was pronounced as TWO syllables, not one. Like "wi-un" – short i, short u.

A black family came up to the counter and, after some happy patter, asked me about my silver skin – how’d I do it. I looked them up and down and, with a big, snarky smile, replied “That’s just rude. Have I asked you how you achieved your beautiful dark chocolate hue? I was BORN this way – weren’t you!” Lucky me, they laughed – they got that I was making an attempt at humor. PHEW!

So yeah, I guess being the Silver Surfer has been a lifelong dream….and shit.

“I am not a god. I have never created life... but I have lived. That is enough. So I will fight to preserve that same opportunity – to love, to dream, to soar among the stars – for all those yet to come. Many lives will be lost in the battle ahead – but their efforts will ensure that some remain to remember their deeds. And, like the gods, they will truly live forever... even after they are gone.”
~ Silver Surfer  (source)

Ya Dude, I can SO dig it!

Torridity Town

I believe someone made a grievous mistake when summer was created; no novitiate or god in their right mind would make a season akin to hell on purpose. Someone should be fired.
~ Michelle Franklin 

I love, love, LURV spring! Summer? It depends. How hot is it?

I just canNOT bear the heat. When temperatures crest the upper 80s and then surge into the 90s, I wilt along with the once proud and upright sunflowers. Yup, just like!

On these blazing hot, steamy summer days, I’m certain that the word enervation was crafted just for moi. Possibly lassitude as well.

It was 90º and humid as Hell just before a gully washer. Donna was sinking into an unconquerable lassitude, a level of enervation that not even a blast from Mr. Freeze’s ray gun could chill out.

See?!

After my carnival years, much of it spent in the sweaty South, what I wanted more than anything was a crisp cool breeze coming off the ocean to the north – way north. I, seriously now, ached for blissful summer nights where a light quilt was an absolute necessity. So much so that, in my last season on the road, I bought a cheap air conditioner and put it in the window of the tiny truckbed camper in which I was living. I’d crank it to the max, put on my eight-tracks of More Songs About Buildings and Food and Aladdin Sane (volume set to 11 of course), crawl into my sleeping bag and pretend it was October in New England not Texas.

I don’t know how my friend Jenny does it. She lives in Phoenix where 110º days are not unusual AT ALL. That’s just plain painful – excruciatingly so. I suppose, in winter, she wonders the same thing about me. How can you possibly survive AND thrive in 20º snowy weather! Ya know, sometimes that's a puzzler for me too.

Ten and I had a long sit on the seawall steps at high tide yesterday. That's when the lovely, chilly waves slosh right up and over. I can simply sit there – don't need to expend an ounce of energy (that I don't actually have anyway) and cool off. If my laptop was waterproof, I could have sat there, working, all day.

Finally, late in the night after a big, fat thunder storm, the heat broke. It’s funny/not funny – during the big booms, Coco vigilantly sits just outside our bedroom door. She’s clearly On Duty and can’t be moved – not even into my comforting, protective arms.

What up? I suspect, as she’s not hiding under the bed, she’s fiercely guarding us from the malicious and marauding thunder.

Could be!

When the Carnival Comes to Town

They arrived yesterday morning or maybe it was Sunday night after we’d had our last sip of Chianti and crawled under warm, late summer blankets. The carnival’s back!

It used to be, when the show came to our town, it rained. Always! Torrential downpours even. Often for the entire week. This was when they played a spot on a busy intersection just down from the town center.

The midway would turn into a swamp of mud. Awful. I felt so sorry for the jointees. If things are the same now as when I was with it, jointees get paid based on how much they bring in. If no one plays your game or you’re swamped out by a surprise monsoon season, whelp, you’ll be eating out of the apron—using your start up cash for a dinner of corndogs.

Yech and cringe.

The lot where that big show set up is now a soccer field—part of the new high school. Now, they set up on the field behind the Catholic Church—just a few blocks from us here in Valhalla.

Either this is a different group or it’s a wee subset of the rainy day carnivalers. There’s still a bunch ‘o’ rides—the Arctic Blast (named the Himalaya in my day), Pharaoh’s Fury, The Thunderbolt and, of course, the Jenny (the carousel), to name a few.

My fav ride—not that I’ve been on it, I just like the big, bright green beasties—is Dizzy Dragons.

The Dizzy Dragons is a family-friendly kiddie ride in which the whole family can ride together in one of four dragons!  Riders are able to control the spin of their vehicle to make their ride as enjoyable as possible!

There are games too—the usual assortment of Ball in a Bushel Basket, Pop the Balloons, Whack-a-Mole, Hoop around the Soda Bottle. As of last night, the joints aren’t set up. The rides were just being wheeled into their midway spots. The food wagons will be rolled in later with their assortment of sugary sweet drinks, fry bread, corn dogs (hurl), cotton candy, popcorn—you know, all that great shit that’ll rot out your teeth before you can even step off the midway.

This truck (below) really piqued my interest—The Ultimate Illusion. What is this? I didn’t see anything about it on their website. Yes, I’m imagining some Neil Gaiman-ish fantasy, mystery where I’d walk in as 57 year old deaf broad and exit as a Great Grey Owl.

It could happen! I’ll need to wander over there later today—take more pics and dream.

How Do You Make Friends?

For those of us of a certain age — you know who you are — I ask, How did you make friends when you were in your 20s?

This is what I’m thinking (from Bustle):

The minute you graduate college is the very moment your social life inevitably tanks. You go from effortlessly surrounding yourself with people you love 24/7 to most likely moving back in with your parents in a town you now find totally alienating and barren. Or, perhaps you luck out and find an awesome job in a city… only to move there and realize you know no one except that one girl who was in your AP English class in high-school.

Me? I finished school, did my final earn-$$$-so-I-can-afford-to-move-out-of-rural-Western-Pennsylvania tour with a traveling carnival and was ready to fly.

I wasn’t following the same path as the Ready for Jobsville business, engineering or education majors. Nope, I’d graduated with a degree in fine art which prepared me for a stunning career in waitressing and carnival barking. The send-out-a-bunch-of-resumes-and-go-where-the-job-is option didn't exist as far as I could tell.

Joy.

My BFF, Kevin, had joined the Navy so I couldn’t camp out on his sofa until I figured out what to do next. I couldn’t/didn’t want to stay at my parents house (due to a violent and toxic sibling) and I didn’t think I had other art school chums with whom I could make plans.

Like the Bustle article’s author who had her high school English classmate, I had my friend Craig. He was at MIT and warmly, wonderfully introduced me to all his friends. Instant social group! This was fabulous BUT I wanted to meet folks like me — struggling artists and such.

I asked my Aunt Mary Ann — How did you make friends when you were my age?

She made them through work. Mary Ann was in publishing, a children’s book editor. Doh! Of course she'd meet like minds there!

I was working at a small print shop in Harvard Square at the time. I did have artsy work mates but they all had solid, written in stone social lives. We’d very occasionally get together outside the shop but that was rare. Everyone seemed settled with no room for newcomers.

Mind you, I wasn’t a comfortable, laid back person. I’d never made friends easily and was, frankly, afraid. Being judged and deemed insufficiently smart, talented, canny, interesting, chilled out, mature and/or accomplished was my fear. How could anyone be keen on me when I wasn’t so thrilled about me?

Eventually I ended up at a downtown Boston printing company, one with an exceptionally vibrant, artsy social scene. Most of the band Mission of Burma, the bass player from The Flies, couple of dudes from Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and so many more cool musicians worked there. The dudes I worked with were all aspiring writers. We had an informal book group (this was well before book groups were the thing to do) in that we all read John Gardner’s Grendel, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor together. We'd discuss them at work and over inevitable, endless pints at The New Place (a truly awful dive but we were there every Friday night if not more often).

Finally, in my mid-20s, I’d found where I belonged. And then I met The Amazing Bob (poetry man), Jen (painter), Oni (tenor sax man).

Is making friends easier now with the internet? Are there meet up groups for young people or is that more of an older person thing? Did those exist way back when I was having my struggle?

Me, Mork, Butterflies and the Show

With Robin Williams' demise my very own Mork bubbled up in the ol' brain pan. This was originally posted in December of 2011.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 It was 1979 and Morris, my carnival boss of giant spliff and Jackson Brown by way of young Keith Richards fame, had us booked into a show playing the south side of Chicago.  We played a different neighborhood, a different set of projects each week.

Almost immediately upon hitting the midway, fellow carnies told me of this ride jock who had gone to college. It was really sweet. While I was still the outsider in a world of outsiders and still, most certainly, the College Bitch™ they were trying to find me a friend — someone I could relate to. That just warmed the little cockles of my tiny misanthropic heart.

The crew called him Mork after the Robin Williams character on the show Mork and Mindy. He had a rapid fire, somewhat surreal, comic communication style and something else which totally intrigued me — the tattoo of a butterfly on his schmeckie. C’mon, who could resist checking out that stunning, hopefully stunning, example of self abuse/art in the face of excruciating pain/sideshow attraction splendor?

I went over to the Trabant and introduced myself. What followed was a half hour long, back and forth conversational free range riff on music, art, the absurdity of...well, everything and music. Doug, Mork’s real name, asked me if I’d like to hit O’Banions, a punk club, after the show shut for the night. Of course!

O’Banions was at the northeast corner of Clark & Erie in River North — at that time a decidedly gritty neighborhood. The bull necked, leather clad doorman was supremely intimidating but the bartender was 20 kinds of divine. She was tall, lithe, fierce and spike haired — wearing nothing beyond a large, clear plastic drop cloth which she periodically had to open and re-wrap as it slipped down in the heat of the club. As we made our way to the back room (dance floor/stage area) a leashed man being led around by his, presumably, girlfriend passed us by. I was most certainly not in small town American any more — mega cool! We sat on the floor, watching the parade of intriguing, creative punks while absorbing the sonic storm from the speaker stacks.

 A few years later I saw the movie Liquid Sky and felt certain O’Banions had been the inspiration for the club scene — eerily similar.
(trailer video for Liquid Sky here)

I eventually did get to see the butterfly tattoo. I’d love to say it was all that and a bag or three of chips but tatts just weren’t all glorious and awe inspiring back then. This was a proficient but wholly uninspiring line drawing with ink faded to that nasty navy blue/greenish old color.

Ah well, we can't all have a Tintoretto tattooed on our lovely cazzone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that my Mork had shuffled off this mortal coil as well. He was a wild man, a total free spirit and a reckless adventurer. Grittily incandescent. I wish there was a way to learn his fate but, ya know, I never knew Doug's last name. It was a carnie thing...yo?

One Man's Ceiling

Sherman Alexie tweets:

Fuck ferris wheels, roller coasters & free-fall drop machines.

Yeah, what Mr. Alexie said!

Just in case, on that very odd, off chance I’ve not popped off about this already -- I currently hate, have always hated and am certain that I'll never find carnival rides anything other than wholly repugnant.

Perché? Warum? Pourquoi? Why?
What in Bast’s name makes me such an all fired, bloody wet blanket?

Eh, I was a fearful, over serious kid. Still am I suppose. Except for the ‘kid’ bit, that is.

From Annenberg Lerner/ Amusement Park Physics:


You've bought your ticket and boarded the roller coaster. Now you're barreling down the track at 60 miles per hour, taking hairpin turns and completing death-defying loops. Your heart is in your throat and your stomach is somewhere near your shoes. The only thing separating you from total disaster is a safety harness...but are you really in danger?
The designers of the roller coaster carefully crafted this thrilling ride to be just that, but you're actually in less danger than you think. You face a greater threat of injury playing sports or riding a bike than you do on a park ride. Amusement park rides use physics laws to simulate danger, while the rides themselves are typically very safe.

From the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) site:

* Modern-day ride designers employ a steady stream of advances to create new, unique, and safe amusement rides and attractions.
* Amusement ride manufacturers applied the industry's biodynamic knowledge (collected over years) as it relates to g-forces to the design and construction of rides to ensure a safe experience.
* While technological gains have led to the development of bigger and faster rides, overall g-force levels have generally remained the same because riders’ tolerance levels have not changed.

Look, I get it. The rides are designed to instill fear and thrills. You know, a safe flirtation with the scary trauma shit without actual catastrophe.

Fine. For someone else. Not me.

And then there's what I see as the adult version of disaster flirtation.

Back in college, a drawing teacher took us on a field trip to a bit of woods with some wee cliffs for an afternoon of rock climbing and sketching. The idea was that we’d scale the bluff, get to the meadow above and draw.

Cute concept. Scared the fuck outta me but I did it. Why? I was afraid of my classmates' potential derision.

The entire time, as I was frantically digging for handholds, I was certain that a very painful fall (with much gushing of the old AB positive and a few pulverized bones) was imminent.

Yeah, that was the one and only time I tried that. And, by the by, when we got to that meadow? Did we whip out our sketchbooks and get all creative? Nope, the doobies came out while we studied the awesome blades of grass, butterflies and how the breeze felt as it riffled through the hair on our arms. My fav part of our adventure of course.

Jen has a batch of very close pals who regularly climb. Hells Bells, they're the queens and kings of their climbing gyms -- they live for this shit. At the same time that I truly think they’re a bit nuts, I envy their fearlessness.

Mind you, I suppose I’ve done a few daredevil-ish things in my time, what with my carnie years, traveling alone, without a guidebook, in countries where I didn’t know the language (OK, that was just plain harebrained), plunging into brain surgery at 23 years of age.

Dunno. None of that seemed so brave at the time. It all felt logical.

One person's wild thrill is another's disastrous mayhem.
One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor -- Paul Simon

Shelter from the Storm

Or meanwhile back at Mister Thomas Wolfe and You Can’t Go Home Again....

 OK the carnival wasn’t my home. Rather, it was my home but for just three short years. I came off the road for a lot of reasons. NOT just because a certain jerkwad was threatening me with a gun and not because I got sick of the rest of the cretinous, lowlife, grifter, skankbrained, full of themselves folk either.

I had this dream, see, of a calm, stable, fun-without-the-crazy home. A sanctuary that didn’t pick up and move every few days. I dreamed of having friends who wouldn’t give me a raft of shit for using words of more than one syllable in any given sentence. I imagined being surrounded by fellow artists, writers, readers and musicians. And indoor plumbing (duh!).

I found all that.

While chatting with a couple of jointees at the little carnival happening up the street this weekend, I remembered another bit that I was keen to escape.

Carnies aren’t the happiest people -- not by a long shot. Many (most?) are on the lam from one thing or another -- the law, a bad relationship, terminal ennui, themselves. They’re not at peace within their own respective skins.

Happiness is within us. It’s not a destination ('I’d finally be happy if I moved to San Francisco/NYC/Berlin') or a commodity you pick up at some darling little curio shop while you’re playing a spot in New Mexico. or Southern Illinois.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

― Abraham Lincoln

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

― Mahatma Gandhi

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

― Mark Twain

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

― Helen Keller

One running joke, usually said on slow, low mark nights ‘I want to run away from the carnival and join a home!’

I did.

“Child, child, have patience and belief, for life is many days, and each present hour will pass away. Son, son, you have been mad and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all the dark confusions of the soul - but so have we. ”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

Bob Dylan -- Shelter from the Storm

Heat and the Show

Yesterday was hotter than a kiln approaching a cone 10 melting point (that’s 2345º Fahrenheit, just FYI and all. Hyperbole? It’s what’s for breakfast!) and today’s supposed to bring more of the same. ENOUGH! This isn’t Texas, y’all. It’s Massachusetts and I want some of that fine late, late summer low 70s/upper 60s shit. Stat!

Wut? That’ll be here by tomorrow?

oh.

OK then!

While triking around yesterday, I passed Our Lady of the Most Blessed Greeting Card, the local Catholic Church.

There’s a carnival setting up there!!!

Now, it’s a bazillion and one half years since I was with it (as the carny term goes) but I still just love wandering the midway, taking pics and, if possible, chatting with the jointees. Jen’s gonna have to go with me to ‘terp. Or to keep me from, possibly, running off to catch of few late season spots.

Last night, when Hillel and I were tooling home from a fab meal of enchiladas and flautas at La Paloma we passed the small lot where the show’s setting up.

There were rangy, filthy, ragged dudes, all looking like they’d sweat the last drop of moisture outta their skinny ass limbs, sitting on the grass at the edge of the church field/now midway. They appeared practically giddy with exhaustion and, perhaps, the knowledge that they totally looked other, a little dangerous and imaginably exotic.

And that was me 33 years ago.

One Man's Ceiling

Jeff and Scott, my fab bartenders when Wendy's off

Boston Public Library

So, I met Jen for a post work adult bev at The Frog and Peach yesterday. While waiting, I asked Jeff and Scott (Wonderful Wendy was off duty) if here, the Quincy/Boston area, is more or less friendly than where they grew up.

‘The same,’ they both said. Where did they grow up? Quincy and Weymouth (one town over). Ahem...so yeah, no noticeable difference.

I asked Jen. ‘About the same,’ she said. She grew up in Scituate, a few towns to the south.

OK am I the only ‘stranger’ in these parts? The one newbie? Can’t be.

I asked The Amazing Bob. He feels it’s definitely friendlier here than it was in his hometown. Where was that? New Bedford.

STILL not too far afield.

Do I find Boston more or less amicable than where I grew up?

Em, this isn’t such an easy question since my childhood was spent, mostly, on the move. The longest stretches in one place were in rural northern New Jersey (Peapack-Gladstone) and a small coal mining/college town in Western Pennsylvania. There was a year in Townsend, Massachusetts, one in Providence Rhode Island, two in Bloomington, Indiana and more. And then there were my years with a traveling carnival. While we were all over the Mid West, the states we played most were Illinois, Indiana and Texas.

So, how do I respond to my own question? Boston is more genially sociable than that town in Western Pennsylvania. It's nicer, more welcoming than anywhere in the state of Indiana and def demure in comparison to Texas.

Boston, from our side of the bay

All those years ago, when I’d decided that my last season with the show would, in fact, be my final season and let a dart pick Boston as my future stomping ground, my fellow carnies were surprised. Shocked even. Horrified would not be an exaggeration.

‘Everyone’s really nasty and rude as hell up there -- you’ll be so unhappy. It’ll be awful!’

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. One person’s ‘rude as hell’ is another person’s ‘graciously reserved.’

A few years or so after settling here, deciding Boston was definitely Home, I was back in Texas visiting my BFF, the late great Kevin Alexander Scott. He was stationed in San Angelo at the time.

In need of some sort of snack for our evening video viewing, I stepped into the quickie mart near his apartment. Immediately, the clerk was all up in my grill (damn, I love that phrase -- possibly because it’s hilarious for a white-ish, middle aged, deaf broad to voice this. OK, OK, it’s a laugh riot to me). The skinny, pasty-pale man in the garish 24 Hour Mart uniform and cap was all ‘Can I help you, what are you looking for, how’re you doing today,’ and on and on.

I walked out. Had to. This was affable overload for me.

One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. One person’s ‘affable overload’ is another person’s ‘nicely mannered, charm.’

One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor -- Paul Simon

Galveston, Oh Galveston

It was January of 1979, off season for the show/the carnival. I was hitching around south Texas with a fun, yet dodgy fellow carnie (there’s possibly some redundancy in that statement). We were in Galveston with plans to sleep on the beach and lay about in the sun. Drenching rains and decidedly untropical temperatures threw a huge-ass spanner into our glorious half-baked scheme.

Being cold and wet makes me cranky. Being overheated and all dessicated-like makes me cranky. Hell, I may quite possibly be an all over cranky babe.

In an effort to thwart my infernal crankitude, Doug scored us an invitation to stay with folks (who we’d just met), at their apartment in the historic quarter. He had the gift of likeability and humor -- within moments of meeting, he could make anyone laugh and smile. Plus, it was the ‘70s. It just simply happened that you randomly met people on street corners, shared a jay, cheer and then invited them home/got invited home to continue the chilled out time, the grins.

Was that this planet? Was it even this star system?

It was pretty cool but, after a few days, I was itchy to move on -- things were getting weird. Doug had begun selling his blood in order to buy booze. Me? I bought food.

I wanted to be a pleasant, fun memory for these very gracious people who were letting us crash on their sofa NOT a ‘remember those total skanks we invited home? You know, the ones who would NOT leave?’ kind of a thing.

 Doug suggested we head for New Orleans -- before joining the show, he'd been a street musician there. On the way to the highway where we’d start hitching, we came upon a bunch of pecan trees. Mein Gott this was awesome! Pecans were/are my favorite and here they were FREE and plentiful. We stuffed our pockets and continued on.

Doug’s plan, once we got to New Orleans was to go to some mission or other. We could stay there until he could score us other digs. To my, undoubtedly, horrified look he said ‘oh it’s not bad. They’ll probably want to give you a de-licing shower, we’ll have to sit through some ‘come to jesus’ sermons’ and you’ll be sleeping in a room with the other women and me with the men -- but we’ll get food and a bed there.’

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT no -- not an appealing adventure in any way, shape or form. This was not the walk on the wild side that I wanted to take.  On top of the ick factor was this -- I wasn't a down and out person in need of help and I didn't want to play that role. Not only would it feel like I was tempting fate, it'd be cheating/scamming for a prize I did not want -- de-licing, sermons and a cold, thin cot. Nope.

We got as far as Spring, Texas (just north of Houston) and I bailed. I’d hidden away, in a clever little pocket within my duffle, enough cheddar for a Greyhound back north. I’d learned the ‘always have escape bucks stashed and available’ lesson during my first crazy carnival season.

Missions, detention homes, orphanages, places where you’re at the mercy of folks who are underpaid, ill or untrained OR are holy rollers -- smug and superior in their limited view of the universe... //SHUDDER// The often bitter and resentful staff see you as a number, an inconvenience, a beggar, a leach on the system and treat you accordingly.

Having said that, I know there are good shelters in Boston, here in Quincy too, with tremendous caring, nurturing staff. I’m sure New Orleans has them too.

If you need the help, get it!
The Pine Street Inn
Rosie’s Place
Father Bill’s Place
Bridge Over Troubled Waters

The Last Time

The last time I was unemployed was 32 years ago nearly to the day. I’d arrived in Boston on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving 1980. This was just two and a half weeks post shotgun inspired, express exit from Texas and a visit with my folks in Western Pennsylvania.

My buddy Craig, from high school, picked me up at the Trailways bus station in downtown Boston. I’d called him the previous day, on Thanksgiving, to see if I could take him up on his long standing invitation to visit and, by the way, ‘can I crash at your place until I find a job?’!

Incredibly, (damn, I’m a lucky thing!) he was actually AT school over Thanksgiving vaca and ‘sure you can stay with me. When are you planning to come to Boston?’

‘Em, in about 14 hours. My bus is due in to South Station at 8 AM.’

Unphased and undaunted, Craig was there to pick me up. He took me back to his MIT frat house for a brunch of leftover turkey and trimmings.

When he said ‘frat,’ when he told me he was in a frat, I was a bit freaked and ready to hit up the YWCA for lodgings. You see, the frat houses at my alma mater were infamous for their Animal House-ish (but nowhere near as sweet or tame), horrendous, serial abusive behavior towards female guests at their parties.

One of the first things I was told, by a fellow music major who overheard me being invited to a Sigma Chi party, ‘don’t ever go to frat parties or, if you do, be sure to go in a group of friends and stick with them the whole time. Don’t ever let them get you alone.’

‘Why?’

It was great sport to get the womenfolk, especially freshman, roilingly drunk and rape them -- sometimes in front of an audience of frat brothers and sometimes the ‘brothers’ joined in the ‘fun.’

At the time, I suspected this was urban legend but then it happened to a couple of my chums. I steered well clear of frat row.

Craig quickly and thoroughly dispelled my fears and well founded prejudice. You see, Epsilon Theta was and still is a coed fraternity. To my initial arched eyebrow response, he explained that this was more of a ‘living group,’ a house where a lot of like minded souls dwelled.

Okey dokey then.

And the place WAS different. I’d occasionally go to the big Saturday night dinners with alumni and other guests. After supper there’d be Dungeons and Dragons, chess and, my total fav, LEGOS! While I was making reproductions of Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, my playmates were creating fully functioning models of the Space Shuttle Enterprise. Oh yes they were. 

We were, between showing off our respective creations and starting on new ones, studying each other like intriguing alien species. This beat all hell out of sitting on the Jenny at 2 AM swigging cheap ass beer with a bunch of folk who made fun of me because I knew what photosynthesis was and could use the word accumulate in a sentence.

You know, just for example and all.


So, I'm unemployed for the first time in a zillion years. What now?

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Billions of years ago, when the earth was still cooling, Donna Summer was queen and I was on the road with the carnival, there was absolutely fuck all to do, after the show shut for the night, in Hoxie, Kansas, Liberal (a complete misnomer, mind you), Kansas, Lovington, New Mexico or the myriad other tiny hamlets we played.

In these towns we were the big night out fun entertainment. Yup, we were it. Poor sods. OK, there was more...barely. Usually it was a dusty, decaying bar with a pool table and too many rednecks. That is, these joints existed as long as we weren’t playing a dry county.

Dry Kansas counties are red, wet are blue and mixed are yellow

"A dry county is a county in the United States whose government forbids the sale of alcoholic beverages. Some prohibit off-premises sale, some prohibit on-premises sale, and some prohibit both. Hundreds of dry counties exist across the United States, a majority of them in the South."

Barbaric. I know.

Now, at 19, my idea of a fun time was, unsurprisingly, planets and light years away from what farmers, cowboys and feed and grain clerks found interesting or exciting. PLUS, a back country farm town of 9,000 souls isn’t going to attract or support a weekend folk singer. Not even a monster truck rally, a 'psychic' or, god forbid, a dance club.

I wasn’t expecting Studio 54, O’Banions or The Rat. Astoundingly, I was smart enough to fathom that nothing like that would be on the menu. I hadn't anticipated the full on monastic environment though.

Even in the small, rural, western Pennsylvania town where I went to college there was always, on nearly any given evening, a boy or girl in a corner of the bar plunking the guitar while singing Rickie Lee Jones, Loggins and Messina or Neil Young covers. A university town, even a tiny one, will always have more nightlife, ANY nightlife. I grok that. Truly I do.

This is the where I grew up -- a dozen different college towns across the Northeast and Midwest. It's what I knew. It's what, silly me, I expected. To me, this was civilization.

Hello and welcome to the big wide world of Culture Shock.

Understandably, not being into Cow Tipping or Goat Roping, I got my punk/folk/rock/classical music loving ass off the road while the getting was good.
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere -- Neil Young

Panic in DE-troit

Always pronounced just like that too.

That song, off the album Diamond Dogs -- which was another absolutely KILLER tune -- always brings me back to Dime Box, Texas. This was the last spot we played, during my last season on the road, at the end of a long, too long, series of circus jumps (A difficult move between lots, usually calling for tearing down, driving, setting up and opening for business on the new lot without time to sleep). The town was beautiful, the lot, the midway, was positively bucolic -- so different from the scrub grass desert-ish spots we’d been playing over the last few months. We were set on a lush, green, tree covered undulating hill (which made the the Tilt even more Tilt-y).

And it was October. This was the first and only Autumn I’d spent in the South -- I was homesick for scarlet and amber colored trees, 50 degree temps and people who didn’t think I was a freak just because my vocabulary went beyond two syllable words (on rare occasion).

We skirted Austin on our way to Dime Box but, sadly to me, we didn’t stop. I’d been seeing the gimme caps all season with the legend ‘Austin -- Nothin’ But Steers and Queers’ and figured this’d be my kind of town. An oasis in a sea of swaggering cowboy wannabes, goat ropers and mincing, Maybellined and Aqua Net soaked bouffant babes.

Years later, a bunch of my band playing buds made an annual pilgrimage to Austin, to play and compete at South By Southwest -- the annual music, film, and interactive (interactive what? what does the ‘interactive’ refer to? Isn’t interaction intrinsic to all music and film?) conference and festival.

Much envy. Now, here in the present, my GRAND niece (how, in the name of all that is transcendent, did I end up with grandnieces???!!!) is graduating from high school, in Dallas, and moving down to Austin. Naturally I’ll need to visit. Visit and, undoubtedly, embarrass the crap outta her. Nothing like having your 53 year old Grand Auntie down for a visit -- the one who wants to hit all the live rock clubs and **shriek, horror** DANCE! Yes, yes...deafies can rock out. We can dance to the music. As long as there’s a solid beat goin’ down, I’ll feel it. If I feel it, I gotta move. No choice -- it’s how I’m wired.

In any case, back in 1980 Dime Box, TX, after a long blisteringly hot, yet profitable, carnival Southern summer, I decided to blow some of that hard won cheddar on an air conditioner. Yeah, I was livin’ under a cap on the back of someone else’s pick up truck but, dammit, I’d had all the steam bath level nights I could take. I got the frosty freeze hooked up, cranked to meat freezer in the Yukon levels and told everyone I was simulating Autumn in Maine. And YES, of course there’s frost on the windows in Boothbay Harbor in October!

Ahhhh, sleeping in 50 degrees, pulling my sleeping bag tight up under my chin with David Bowie on the 8 track.

Heaven. Of course.

Panic In Detroit -- David Bowie

Carny "Roommates"

I suppose these 2 qualify for worst roommates evah! but, really now, they were also fascinating glimpses into other, even crazier worlds, from my own.

It was my first season out on the road with the carnival. I was “living” in the back of a fellow jointy’s pick up truck. (all definitions are from GoodMagic.com and their dictionary of carny  lingo. Jointee or Jointy — An agent, a person working a game -- AKA a joint) He put in a Twiggy-width, one inch thick, foam “mattress” and a small light -- you know, so I could read at night after the show closed. Honestly, it was great -- it was a place of my own to escape. This was much more than I would have had otherwise.  If not for this generosity, I’d have been sleeping on the ground, in the joint at night. Amongst other obvious discomforts, just imagine how it would feel to sleep where you work every night. Not that the pick up was more than a 2 minute walk away at most spots.

There was also a cap over to keep out the rain and bugs. In the September Houston heat this also served as a sauna. You know, it was awesomely posh if you stretch your imagination around the world and back.

And then...and then....they gave me roommates. I suppose truckmates would be more apt.

The first was a girl, Jessie, around 21 to my 19 years of age, who’d just joined up. She’d been a  truckstop stripper/hooker but was getting away from all that. She was movin’ on up to the ultra swank carnival lifestyle.

My first thought on hearing of my new roomie was “Gee GOSH, fascinating! I really want to understand where she’s coming from.” My second thought, upon meeting her, was “wow, total skank but still, this could be interesting.” After three days of sharing the back of a pick up? “You bitch! You borrowed my shorts without asking and now you’re telling me you have crabs so I better burn them and take the ‘crab cure’ too, just in case?” You can well imagine how much this endeared me to her and her to me.

No worries, in short order she found some sugar daddy biker who, inexplicably, found her appealing, wanting her to move into HIS pick up truck bed. I wished her well.

My next roommate that season was a huge step up. OK, he seemed a step up in the beginning. Nice, respectful, hard working guy. At first. He was awesome on set up mornings -- up and in the truck throwing the lumber (the bones of the joints) without me having to clobber him awake, as was necessary with the rest of the crew. (Waking the crew was my job and yes, I was born an annoying morning person. It’s in my DNA). He helped drive stakes (incredibly, this isn’t a Buffy reference) and even helped me flash my joint -- one of the largest on the midway. (Flash as a verb: "to flash your joint", to make your joint more visible and attractive, and/or to set up an attractive display of prizes. One former carny said, "Flash is everything - the prizes you put out there and the way they are arranged.")

As we all got to know Jimmy better, we found out that, like a lot of other carnies, he’d blown probation. He was on the run. Hiding out. Sure, I got a few interesting prison snippets (such as ‘NEVER sit at the head of someone’s cot.' This was either a profound show of disrespect or a come on. I forget.)

In any case, it didn’t take long before, at spot after spot, there were plain clothes cops trolling the midway. They were looking for Jimmy of course and asking each of us all about him. A big shrug and “gosh, the name doesn’t sound familiar” were our standard responses.

Around the same time it was discovered that Jimmy had stolen some money and property from the boss. Jimmy was DQed (D.Q. — Short for "disqualified" (probably from wrestling parlance). To be thrown off the lot and ordered not to return. Might happen to a rowdy mark or to a worker who steals or messes with something he should leave alone, or causes more problems than he's worth. An employee fired from one joint can consider himself d-q'd, because no one else will hire him).

This trip into an alternate universe with it’s attendant major annoyances, was worth it -- fascinating shit. Better still, in the larger view of life, the annoyances were intensely brief.

I can very well imagine that we’ve all had bad, inconsiderate, crazy roommates without the extra, added, crazy, yummy benefit of them being carnies.

Tell me you stories, please!