Do You Travel?

The world of carnies is definitely its own culture.  I imagine it to be similar to gypsy culture.  Carnies are tight-knit, fiercely proud outsiders from regular society – they wouldn’t want to belong if they could.  They stick to their own and have their own traditions and slang.

One of the first things a carnie will ask another (unfamiliar) carnie is “do you travel?”, meaning, “are you traveling with the show, or are you a local, only working this one spot?”  If you don’t travel, you’re treated as a member of regular society – a Mark - an outsider to the outsiders – and most carnies will have little to do with you outside of work.

Marks are good for only one thing – their money – and carnies don’t associate with them other than to take said money.  It is frowned on for a carnie to partake of the midway – that is a Mark thing.  When we were in Winnipeg, and before I found out about this important, unspoken rule, I rode the Giant Wheel once.  I was quickly schooled that I would be shunned if I rode the rides, and I never made that faux pas again. 

As someone who travelled, I was accepted by the carnies (geez, I hope I don’t sound like Jane Goodall talking about her chimpanzees), but since I wasn’t a partier, and I wasn’t especially outgoing, I was still kind of an outsider.  I did make some friends, though… really amazing, interesting people.  In my experience, Colin and Verity’s warnings were completely unfounded.   I was never in any danger from anyone; people looked out for each other.

The Jump

Cliff Tearing Down a Joint

The jumps are the times in between spots.  They include tear-down, the drive, and then set-up in preparation for opening the next show.   On jumps we usually had just enough time to tear down, drive to the next spot, and a relaxed day to set up before the fair opened.  Concessions have it pretty easy, though, compared to the ride jocks, who have to disassemble their entire ride, drive (slowly) to the next spot, and re-assemble the entire ride.  With Groscurth’s, at least we were almost always afforded a night’s sleep (at least a short one). 

When we left Winnipeg, John had to leave his car behind, so from then on our company traveled in our usual arrangements.  Terry drove the International by himself. Sue drove the GMC, and Cliff rode with her.  John drove Terry’s van, and I rode with John.  It still wasn’t “relax time” for me and Cliff, though, our job was to keep Sue and John awake while they were driving.  John said he was never in danger of falling asleep, but he’d recline the seat way back, kick his shoes off, put his left foot up on the dash, and cruise. That scared me enough to keep ME awake and alert to do my job.  Sometimes we would all entertain ourselves by playing Trivial Pursuit over the radios.   John and I had a lot of fun on the jumps.  One of my favorite things was when we’d put on the old Dr. Hook tape.   John could do their “Gertrude the Groupie” song to a tee, making his goofy expressions for my entertainment. 

On the jumps, Terry always bought at least one of our meals for us; sometimes all of them.  On the condition, of course, that we all grab some toothpicks for him as we left.  Terry ALWAYS had a toothpick hanging out of his mouth, and we were tasked with replenishing his supply.  If the cashier was right there, we’d only grab about ten or so each, but if we were left alone at all, the entire bunch of them disappeared into our pockets to hand to Terry outside.

One of our favorite things to do on a jump was to find a Husky House.  We’d stop and have a meal, but we’d also take advantage of their showers.  For $1, you could use their public shower.  It was a great opportunity for us to get cleaned up in between spots, and I suspect, for many carnies, it was the ONLY chance they had for a shower.

Crossing into Alberta was exciting for me.  Even though I’d only been gone about three weeks, it felt like a lifetime.  I needed to see a familiar face, see familiar countryside, and maybe even my home town.  Calgary looked beautiful.  It was so close to home; and it was familiar.

Calgary Stampede

We pulled into Calgary in the evening, and just called it a day. 

The jump from Winnipeg to Calgary is a fairly long one, so the next day all we had to do was clean the joints.  Then, we had some time to go off the lot for a bit and Terry took us all for dinner in Calgary.  We went to one of Calgary’s most expensive restaurants, the Owl’s Nest.  I had brought a dress along with all the stuff I “needed”, so I put that on.  The rest of the company did the best they could as well.  The Owl’s Nest has a dress code, and all of our guys had to borrow one of the skeevy loaner suit coats provided by the restaurant so we would comply with the dress code and not offend the other patrons.  Ahem.  It may have taken a little more than loaner suit coats to achieve that.

The day after, we put the joints on location and went to work. (Right in front of the Wave Swinger, ANOTHER damned music ride!).  My voice that had first started going hoarse in Winnipeg from yelling to be heard over the Polar went completely hoarse in Calgary and stayed that way for the rest of the summer, only going back to normal after I’d returned to Red Deer.  Pretty much everyone’s voice was permanently hoarse from yelling to be heard over the midway. 

Calgary’s hours are 11AM until about 1:30AM with two mornings opening at 9AM.  It was my favorite spot.

Andy and Joanne

Lucy was staying with friends in Calgary, and she brought her friends, Andy and Joanne, to work with us. They were a young couple from Britain who had come to Canada to visit, had run out of money, and now had to make enough money to get back to England.  Sue and Cliff got Joanne; John, Lucy and I got Andy.  One of our Frequently Asked Questions in the corndog stand, after the corndog transaction was complete, was if we had ketchup and mustard.  So, as part of the transaction, we’d pre-empt the question by saying that the “mustard and ketchup are on the side” (of the joint), and point in the general direction.  Andy had a funny habit of saying “around the bottom” instead of “on the side” (“The mustard and ketchup are around the bottom”), which was fairly challenging to understand, and we darn-near killed ourselves the day his tongue slipped and he told someone in all his British accent, “The custard and metchup are around the bottom”.

Garry and other Jointies

Garry at Pistol Darts

In Calgary, I met a guy named Garry who worked for Pistol Darts - a game in which the object was to shoot a suction-cup dart at a star and have it stick, dead-centre in the star without touching the outline.  It was extremely difficult, but not completely impossible, and Garry taught me the secret to doing it – you shoot your dart at an upward angle towards the star, instead of shooting straight-on.  If you shot straight-on, your arrow wouldn’t stick, or wouldn’t stick properly.  With shooting at an angle, success was still very difficult, but not impossible.  Of all the carnies, the jointies are the carnie-est.  With a sociopathic approach, they have to call people in, all day long, to lay down their cash to play the next-to-impossible games in the hope of winning silly prizes that they wouldn’t buy in the stores.  I think that, in the heart of a lot of jointies, everyone… public and carnie alike… are Marks – they can’t switch it off.

It's Fun to Pull a String
(This photo has no relevance to my story... I just love the sign)

Garry’s boss, Bob, was a pretty decent guy, but I sure made him mad once.  I was on one of my three-hour breaks, so I’d gone home and changed into my regular clothes.  I was walking down the midway, looking like any other Mark, when Bob tried to call me in.  Garry wasn’t there to remind him as to who I was, and he clearly didn’t recognize me (I guess all Marks look alike).  I went over, paid, and landed my dart perfectly within the star, thanks to the technique Garry taught me.  Because the dart game was so difficult, they didn’t bother with the cheap little prizes that you had to trade up from.  No… if you landed your dart you went straight to the plush (the coveted enormous stuffed animals).  I chose as my prize a giant blue plush dinosaur and went on my way, wondering how in the heck I would make room for the dinosaur in my apartment.  Later, when Bob found out who I was, he got irked and demanded that I return the prize, but since I had paid to play, and had played out of uniform, I insisted I’d won the prize fair and square and refused to give it back.  I named my plush dinosaur “Faren”:  “Faren Square”.

A Stop in the Little City

During Calgary, I was becoming quite homesick. I asked Terry if they could drop me off in Red Deer overnight on the Calgary to Edmonton jump.  He agreed on the condition that someone drive me up to Edmonton first thing in the morning the next day.  He also mocked the name of my little city.  He had, of course, driven past it many times but never really paid attention.  Like all locals, I pronounced it like it was all one word, Reh-deer.  Terry insisted on enunciating both “d”s with his southern accent: Red (pause) Deer.

John dropped me off in Red Deer on the way through.  The first thing I did was to go for a tour in MY car… my beloved 1976 Oldsmobile Omega.  It was a great taste of freedom after being completely dependent on my employer for my transport (among other things) for a whole month.  Then, I saw my family and Laura Lee.  Laura Lee and I drove down to the fairgrounds in Red Deer where Thomas Shows was just setting up.  I collected my pay that Colin and Verity owed me, and bragged to Carrie about how much better my new job was.  Mom took me out for supper that evening and then Laura Lee and I went to the bar.  I slept in my own bed that night.  Dad drove me to Edmonton first thing in the morning.

When we got to the fairgrounds, everyone was surprised to see me. They thought the first chance I got, I’d stay in Red Deer and forget all about the carnival. I guess they didn’t realize I was already sky-hook, line and sinker in love with my corndog family.

Edmonton’s Klondike Days

We cleaned up the joints the day I got to Edmonton.  We also put them on location right away, and to my surprise: NO MUSIC RIDE in sight!  It only took me half an hour or so before I longed to be right smack in front of the Polar again, though.  Our joint sat right in front of the Log Jam.  The Log Jam is a fun house, and it plays music, too – a constant re-run of an old, scratchy, banjo-music record (with only one song on it).  I began to hear scratchy banjo music in my sleep.  Edmonton was a bad spot.  Business was dead.  We were stuck out in the boonies.  (Of course we were stuck out in the boonies;  we were by the Log Jam and the Log Jam is always out in the boonies).

One of the things that helped land me on the Most Valued Employees list with the corndogs was my perfect record for showing up for work, on time, every day.  Wow!  Look at the work ethic on that girl!  She shows up for work.  On time.  Every day.  I mock, but it kind of is a big deal in the carnie world. 

Lucy became a problem in Edmonton.  In Winnipeg and Calgary she’d been staying off the lot and only working a few hours a day.  In Edmonton she stayed with us and worked all the hours.  All day long I’d have to listen to her whining and constant bickering with John.  Every morning Lucy was late for work.  No matter what Terry and John said to her, Lucy was late for work.  We found out why about half way through the spot.  Lucy didn’t have an alarm clock.  She said, “I just assumed that if you wanted me to come to work, you’d come and wake me up.”  Lucy was fired at the end of the spot. 

Terry hired two native brothers, Patrick and Ian in, Edmonton.  Separately, I loved them; together I loathed them.  Patrick and I got along wonderfully, and Ian, I just thought of sort of like a younger brother.  But when they were together, they’d egg each other on and get quite obnoxious.  I’d be in charge of the joint while John was on break, and that’s when Pat and Ian became uncontrollable.  They’d pick on me, and hurt me physically, but I’d never let them know that.  The worst, though, was just their joking around.  They’d take a Super Corn Dog and stick it up in the air at a rude angle, and make comments for the passers-by.  Terry put them into separate joints finally one day after Ian stuck a corn dog out at a girl walking by and yelled, ‘HEY BITCH, WANT A CORN DOG?’.  I was appalled, but glad Terry was there to see it and separate them.  After that, they were both gems.  John and I kept Patrick and Ian was sent down to work with Sue and Cliff.

Sharon came to work with us in Edmonton, too.  She only worked part time with us and part time in the ticket booths.  She’d been a carnie for years, and had the mouth to prove it.  She was fun to have around.

Our Gang:
Back: Ian, John, Terry, Rusty
Front: Rhonda, Cliff, Sharon, Sue