Corndog Redemption

Showdown at the Brinks Motorhome

The next morning I woke up early, taped my ankle, got dressed and headed out to go say goodbye to John.  Verity was up and waiting for me and called me into the motorhome. 

“Rhonda, I want to talk to you about helping yourself to breaks while the other girls were working.” 

“What?  I wasn’t helping myself to breaks.  Carrie and Tracey told me to stay with the trailer while you were away to guard it and to give me an opportunity to rest my ankle for a few minutes, but other than that, I was working the whole time.”

“We know that your ankle isn’t hurt, Rhonda, and if you want to keep your job, you’ll have to stop using that as an excuse to be lazy when everyone else is working.”

I turned and walked out, seething.  I have always been terrified of confrontation and was in a state of semi-shock at being called lazy and a liar when I had been working harder than I ever had before, complying with all of their demands over the past week.  I am NOT a liar and I am NOT lazy, I told my imaginary Verity inside my head. I stalked my way back to the trailer, vibrating with anger and frustration.  I threw my belongings into my bags as quickly as possible, cursing myself softly for bringing the stupid hairdryer and the stupid makeup mirror and all those stupid clothes.  When I was all packed up, I left my bags outside and went back to the motorhome where I told Verity that I was quitting.  I checked my waist for the pouch with my $200 safety net, grabbed my stuff (most of which I now realized I didn’t “need”) and stalked over to the corndog trucks.  

Safety Net Close-Call

John wasn’t even awake yet so I climbed the ladder on the side of the International up to his “loft” – the tiny room above the cab of the truck that acted as his quarters.   “John?  Wake up!” I knocked on the loft door relatively softly.  “Wake up wake up wake up!”  This time I pounded on the door.  The door opened and John peered out at me, no glasses and tufts of wiry hair standing straight up on his head. 

“Looks like I’m coming with you after all.”

“Huh?”

“Verity accused me of lying about my ankle and called me lazy.  I told her to stick her job up her ass so now I get to come with you.”

“Um, well, I haven’t talked to anyone about hiring you.  I’m not positive I can get you a job.”

Oh.  That was news to me.  Mr. hard-sell corndog manager didn’t do his own hiring.  Oops.  “That’s ok.  Who do we have to talk to?  If you can’t give me a job, I’ll just go back to Red Deer.”  My heart sunk at the thought, but it was still a better idea than spending any more time with the Brinks and their stupid crepe shops. 

“Um… Rusty.  We have to talk to Rusty.  We have to wait for him to get here.”  Rusty Groscurth, the owner of the Groscurth’s Original Superdog Factory stands was driving up from Florida to join us for a few days just to make sure the start of the season went ok.  He had trained a replacement manager for himself over the last few years and was phasing out of traveling.  This was his first year of not traveling with the show, and he was just coming in to make sure the new manager, Terry, had everything he needed.

I pestered John to get dressed and haul his sleepy ass down to go get breakfast with me.  John lived in Winnipeg with his parents and so had brought his own car along to Brandon . We threw my stuff into his car, grabbed a quick breakfast, and then returned to the Groscurth’s trucks to wait for Rusty. 

I was terrified that Rusty would say ‘no’ to hiring me and I’d have to use that $200 to go crawling back to Red Deer with my tail between my legs.  After an hour or so of waiting, he breezed up in a blue Mustang convertible – he was a young man, probably not 40 yet, giant (to me), with a thick southern accent.  Rusty was NOT pleased with John promising me a job without discussing it with anyone, but because John lived in Winnipeg (the next spot) he convinced Rusty to give me a try on the condition that I stay with him at his folks’ place while I was on “probation”.  I was so grateful to John for getting me the job that I vowed I would not let him down – I would be the perfect corndog girl and win over Rusty and Terry just as I’d won over John. 

Winnipeg Set Up

We pulled out of Brandon and headed for Winnipeg;  John and I in his car, and the rest following behind in the trucks.  The stretch of highway between Brandon and Winnipeg is pretty boring, so I was thankful to be going 90mph in John’s car instead of 30mph in Colin and Verity’s truck. 

We got to the Winnipeg fairgrounds and sat and waited for the rest of the company, who, of course, had been travelling a lot slower than we had.  When they got there, Rusty took us all across the street for supper.  That was where I met Terry, my real boss.  Rusty didn’t always travel with the company; Terry was his right-hand man and ran the company for him.  Terry was quite tall, had graying hair, and he, too, had the southern accent.  Everyone accepted me into their little group as though I was “one of the family.”  I had a strong feeling I’d made the right choice.

The next couple of days were real lazy ones, especially for me.  There are three days between the Brandon and Winnipeg spots and only two or three hours worth of driving to do.  The day after we reached Winnipeg was spent cleaning the two corndog joints.  (One was a Roll-Off and one was a Pull-Behind:  A concession stand that is on wheels and is moved around by being pulled by a truck).  Rusty “ordered” me to sit around and not work so I could rest my ankle. 

We had cleaned and prepared the joints in the parking lot, not in situ.  I asked John if he knew where we’d be placed on the midway and he said he didn’t know.  We could end up anywhere, and we just had to wait for direction from Conklin before we’d find out, he said.  I think that was a load.  John had already worked for Groscurth’s for several years and, generally speaking, the placement of the rides and concessions wasn’t changed from year-to-year.  I think John was giving me my first lesson in going with the flow and not feeling like I had to know everything that was going to happen and when; an important lesson if you’re going to be happy traveling with the carnival.

The next day the joints were put on their locations and made ready for operation.  Right on the Conklin midway.  Right where all the ACTION was.  Once again, I was “ordered” to sit around and just watch for the sake of resting my ankle.  I was very grateful.  My ankle stayed swollen all summer and only healed once I was back in Red Deer, but the couple of days of rest helped a lot.

Conklin Shows

View from the Giant Wheel in Winnipeg

Conklin was the cleanest and best organized of all Canadian midways.  They had a dress code for their employees; no beards allowed, employees must be clean looking, and everyone wears clean uniforms which Conklin supplied.  A uniform office issued two uniforms to every employee, and every morning, each employee would line up at the uniform office to bring back the dirty uniform that he had worn the day before and exchange it for a clean one in his size.  Anyone who was wanted by the police was not allowed to work for Conklin Shows. 

The man in charge was Frank Conklin.  In 1987 he was only about 26 years old, but already worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  He inherited the show from his father, who inherited it from his father.  I never did meet Frank Conklin, but I do remember seeing him now and then walking around the lot like a celebrity in his full-length Australian Outback coat.  And I remember how some of the carnies disdained the Australian Outback coat, but after awhile there were plenty of carnies walking the lot with their very own Australian Outback coats. 

Dammit, We’re not the Circus

1987 was the 50^th anniversary of Conklin playing the Canadian National Exhibition.  To commemorate the occasion, the company made up a carnival year book, which was designed and organized much like a high school yearbook. 

One thing that I am forever clarifying for people is that the carnival is NOT the circus.  We have no big top… or elephants or tigers… although one could say we had plenty of clowns.  Conklin’s yearbook says:  “We all know what a carnival is, but the general public keeps mixing us up with the circus.  A carnival, therefore, is a group of rides, games, food booths, novelty stands and shows which may or may not include a circus, which travels as a unit to festivals, celebrations, fairs and still dates.”

Groscurth’s Original Superdog Factory

The Winnipeg show opened.  I had to wear a Conklin uniform shirt, a Groscurth’s apron, and (horrors) a baseball cap.  I even got my own Conklin picture ID so I could come and go from the Lot freely.  “The Lot” is short for Carnival Lot, and used to refer to the entire structure that is the fairgrounds.  For example, “I’m going off the Lot on my break today”. “Do you stay on the Lot?” (translation: “Do you have living accommodations on the fairgrounds or do you stay someplace else?”). 

The Winnipeg spot has good hours.  It stays open quite late, closing around 2:30AM, but it opens late, too; some days as late as 3:00 in the afternoon.

The Big Joint in Winnipeg

I worked in the “big joint” with John.  He was being trained to manage it, and Sue was the manager of the “little joint”.  Sue's main help was a young guy named Cliff.  In Winnipeg, the big joint sat right in front of the “Polar Express”:  the noisiest mother of a music ride I’d ever heard.  One of the songs played over and over again on the Polar was the “Boom Boom Boom,Let’s go back to my room, so we can do it all night, and you can make me feel right” song.  I hated that song.  It was funny sometimes, though, in the evenings when Terry would work with us, he’d sing along and make fun of it. 

Sue and Joanne in the Little Joint

Working with John and the corndogs was a completely different experience from Brinks Concession.  It was great.  When things weren’t crazy-busy, John ran the big joint and I was his right-hand minion, but when things were crazy-busy, Terry would step in and run the joint, at which point John became the right-hand minion, and I was the right-hand minion’s right-hand minion.  I heard tell that Sue was harder to work for than Terry, but Cliff seemed to do alright and I was happy to work for John and Terry and not have to find out for myself.

As promised, I got much longer breaks, which sometimes were spent sleeping in John’s “loft”, but most often spent walking around or in the staff cook-house which was a real haven to get away from the herds of Marks.  We had some extremely hot and humid days during the Winnipeg spot.  You could wipe the sweat off your brow, and before you were done wiping, you were just as soaked as you had been to begin with.  Those days, my breaks were spent inside the air conditioned exhibits building. 

We were allowed to eat as many corndogs for free as we wanted, as long as we marked them down in the book.  I was trying to save money for college, so it was a great deal, but I still limited myself to one corndog per day for the summer.  One day, towards the end of the season, when I was feeling particularly broke, I had two corndogs… which quickly brought my free corndog binge to an end.  It was just too much corndog too soon and I couldn’t eat another corndog for several years after.  In addition to corndogs, we also sold lemonade as a distant afterthought to the real reason we were there.

John was a great friend and made me laugh a lot.  One of my favorite things was when “Big Time” would come on one of the music rides near us and he would sing along and make his goofy face at the end singing “big big big big big big big big big!”. 

Lucy in the Big Joint

Terry was equally great.  He taught me things and teased me, and I was happy to learn (and be teased).  Terry had three facial expressions: mean, mean and mean.  One was just his normal expression.  Another was when he was ticked off about something. The last one was for when he was on the verge of laughing (which was most of the time).  He loved to prank people and Lucy (who did three stops with us) was his favorite target.  She would do whatever she was told without asking a lot of questions.  So, he could easily send her to a joint across the midway in quest of a “bucket of steam” or a “sky hook” and off Lucy would go. 

Terry and his wife, Sue, became sort of like family for me.  Sue had her pet ferret, Squirt, along for the summer, and she was the one I went crying to when I learned that my poodle, Buffy, the coolest dog ever, had passed away while I was gone.

It was a happy day when Terry handed me my keys to the staff shower, and the room at the back of the truck. I was hired to Travel for the whole summer. 

The accommodation I was given was Lee’s old “apartment”.  Lee used to manage the big joint, but she had since moved on and her apartment sat empty.  The apartment was a small room at the rear of the truck that was mostly the managers’ (Terry and Sue) home.  It was a whole room!  Tall enough to stand in, with a single bed, a cupboard and the ultimate carnie luxury… my OWN PRIVATE TOILET!  I’m sure I was the most privileged minion traveling.  No one else besides managers got that luxury.  I know John was ticked that I got the apartment while he stayed in his tiny cubby above the cab of the truck (no toilet there).  He’d worked with the company every summer for the past six years and I was new.  He was being trained as a manager and I was a minion.  But I was a girl and the decision was made for me to have the apartment.  I was happy... way too happy to have that apartment, with its own private toilet, to speak up on John’s behalf, and I quite happily took it.