Under the Big Top: My Season With the Circus

by Bruce Feiler

  The second and much more serious problem Doug faced was the skyrocketing cost of protecting the show. In 1983 the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus paid a total of $80,000 for insurance. Ten years later that figure had ballooned to just under half a million—over $200,000 for trucks and general liability, and an equal amount for workers’ compensation. In the weeks leading up to his leaving the show, Doug spent much of his time trying to renegotiate these rates. The show had produced only $50,000 in claims in recent years, he argued, surely his rates were exorbitant. Safety was up, he asserted, risks were down. By late May he thought he had a breakthrough when suddenly the show was battered by a series of mishaps—Danny fell from the swing, Henry chipped his teeth, Big Pablo was told he needed knee surgery—followed by a series of freak accidents—man killed by an elephant, woman slashed by a bear, worker drowned in a pond. “We are not liable for these incidents with the animals,” Doug said, “especially the one in Fishkill. But when you bring ten elephants into a small town you make a pretty big target.”

  By early July, when Doug was ready to leave, business was up, but morale was down. The show was ready for its old captain at the helm. On the morning of July 4, Doug hopped into his maroon Cadillac with the EDH plates and headed south down I-95. The same day Johnny arrived in his matching white Cadillac with BIG TOP on the plate. The show breathed a collective sigh of relief. Little did anyone realize, however, that within a week the show would have its first genuine financial crisis of the year.

  KEEP OUT THE CLOWNS, blared the headline in Newsday on Thursday, July 15. ISLIP BARS CIRCUS, CITING COMPLAINTS.

  The news from Long Island stunned the show. In the nine-month season of the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus the seven weeks the show spent in New York were considered the highlight of the season, a core stretch of dates when business was usually good enough and the crowds generally enthusiastic enough to make up for the grit and grind of the City. The New York engagement was also the pearl of Doug and Johnny’s revived marketing strategy. The circus didn’t merely play New York City, it played the City’s parks. The invitation came about after years of intensive lobbying of the Parks and Recreation Department. As soon as a creative profit-sharing agreement was reached, the show moved first to Forest Park, then to Shea Stadium, Staten Island, and the Bronx, and finally this year into Marine Park in Brooklyn, a grassy lot off Flatbush Avenue not far from Coney Island. Business overflowed in most of these areas, but the red tape was nearly overwhelming.

  In most towns along the route the show would pay around fifty dollars for a building permit and maybe twenty-five dollars for a health inspection. Police and fire departments were usually willing to provide complimentary protection just so their members could stand in the wings and watch the show for free. In New York nothing was free. In fact, the circus was forced to pay more than $2,000 a lot in surcharges: $200 for building permits; $100 for food handlers’ permits; $250 for fire guard licenses; and $1,500 for fire permits covering the tent, the welding machines, the generators, the truck repair shop, and the two carbonic drink dispensers. To make sure these rules were followed, an inspector sat in the front of every show taking notes like a court stenographer. “In the past we used to resort to bribery,” Johnny recalled almost fondly. “The fire inspector would come on the lot and say, ‘I sure would like to bring my family to the show.’ We’d give him some tickets; he’d sign the sheet and leave. These days we can’t do that anymore. If they don’t like that and want to cause trouble, I’ll just follow them all over the tent and agree to the changes they suggest. They’ll usually tire of the process and leave.”

  Sometimes, however, they don’t. Early on in the show’s stay in New York one fire marshal was so peeved that he decided to shadow the ringmaster throughout the performance. “It was awful,” Jimmy recalled. “He was standing next to me and between every act he would slap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Make another no-smoking announcement.’ Finally, after about ten no-smoking announcements I got so sick of listening to the man that I turned to him and said, ‘Go fuck yourself!’ You can imagine what happened. He stormed off in a huff and went looking for one of the managers. The one he found was napping in his trailer. The fire marshal pounded on the manager’s door, waking him from his sleep. ‘Sir, your announcer just told me to go fuck myself.’ ‘Well, what do you need from me?’ the manager shouted. ‘Directions?!’”

  Despite occasional breakdowns like this, the aboveboard bribes that the City demanded hardly hurt the circus’s bottom line. As soon as we hit New York the show stopped its policy of giving out discount coupons; it added a third show on Sunday evenings (though salaries were not increased); and it raised ticket prices by a dollar. Still we couldn’t keep people away. In Marine Park the community was so overjoyed that a circus would venture into its isolated neighborhood that families thronged the lot at all hours of the day and we turned back nearly a thousand people every night. All fears that New Yorkers would be hostile and cynical were, for the moment, laid to rest. In fact, several days after we left the City the following letter appeared in the Daily News:

  CAN’T (BIG) TOP THIS

  Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages, I witnessed a miracle in Brooklyn! I saw families sitting together, laughing, having good clean fun—no violence, no nudity, no dirty language. Where was this rare occurrence? At the circus in Marine Park. A big thank you to the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus and N.Y.C. Department of Parks and Recreation.

  E. Francis

  The show was still savoring this unexpected bouquet when the bombshell arrived from Long Island.

  “Where does a two-ton elephant sit?” quipped Newsday in the opening line of its article about the circus being banned. “Anywhere it wants to—except Islip.” The article went on to report that the Islip Town Board had voted 4-1 to deny a permit to the circus “based on pressure from animal rights activists and a recent incident where a man was killed in a freak accident at the circus.” “Animal lovers have come out of the woodwork,” said the town clerk, whose office received a reported one hundred letters and thirty phone calls protesting the show’s alleged cruelty to animals. Complaints included inadequate food and the use of cattle prods, the report said. Also, protesters cited the incident in Fishkill as proof that animals are potentially dangerous. “God forbid [the elephants] should break loose here,” one board member was quoted as saying. “About fifteen years ago at a Republican parade here, an elephant was scared by a car that backfired. It broke loose and trampled the car.” The one dissenting vote came from a member who said stories of animal abuse are “greatly exaggerated,” much like the story of the Islip elephant. “Every time I hear that story the elephant gets bigger,” he reportedly said.

  By the time the news arrived on the lot the elephant had gotten even bigger and the impact even larger. Johnny Pugh was irate. Meltdowns this serious weren’t supposed to happen on two weeks’ notice, especially on Long Island. Johnny had even hired a fixer for the area, a man with widely touted connections, who was supposed to escort the show effortlessly through its three-week stay on the Island—a place with well-known political and family rivalries. Now the system had broken down. In the days after the incident was first reported the details became clearer. Johnny believed that one particular animal rights activist from Islip was behind the circus being canceled. She had been bothering the show for years, he said. This year she demanded that she be allowed to speak before zoning boards in Commack and Yaphank. In Commack she was denied because the flea market where the circus plays is zoned for circuses. In Yaphank she reportedly stood up and read for twenty-five minutes from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories.

  “Listen, I’m concerned about animal rights, too,” Johnny griped. “Hell, my wife spends a lot of time running after stray cats and dogs. But this is going too far. When I was a child I used to have an original copy of Kipling with gold on the pages and a piece of tissue paper over every drawing. I wish I’d never given it away. Maybe that would show them I car
e.”

  At this stage it probably wouldn’t do much good. The debate itself had already become part of the absurd theater of American political life, with each side posturing, sloganeering, and even threatening legal action over the other’s head. In one corner were the protesters. “We welcome the clowns and acrobats,” one mother in Islip had said in the meeting, “but please spare us and our precious children the spectacle of animal torment.” In the other corner was the circus. Johnny and Doug told their lawyer to consider bringing suit against the organizers for slandering the circus, disrupting business, and generally being a nuisance. In the middle were the politicians. Worried it might have failed to give the show due process, the town of Islip began bending over backward to appease the circus. The media, of course, were all over the story. Radio stations in the area began blasting the town board, especially after they learned that proceeds from the show’s three-day run were to benefit the Talented Handicapped Artists Workshop, known as THAW. Several lawyers in the area who regularly took their children to the circus went so far as to contact the show and offer to sponsor a class-action lawsuit against the town. The circus is supposed to bring its own entertainment to town, but with bumbling local officials, grandstanding lawyers, bleeding-heart protesters, and heroic handicapped artists, the cancellation of the circus brought out a far more interesting sideshow of modern American freaks and gold diggers. The publicity was priceless.

  “We didn’t want it to happen this way,” Johnny said after he extended our stay in Staten Island for three days and then booked the same lot in Islip for the following year. “But in the end this case may bring us more good than harm. The truth is, I’d hate to see the animals disappear. Look at the audience. When they think of circuses, they think of animals. They can see acrobatics or gymnastics on television. They can see sports anywhere they want. But they have no chance to see trained animals. Even the ones at the zoo don’t do anything. That’s why they come to the circus, and that’s what they remember when they go home. A circus without animals is just not a circus.”

  For all his breathless enthusiasm, Johnny knew those days might soon be over. Animal acts, like the circus itself, are being pressured out of business. Human acts, even the interesting ones, can hardly fill the void. People are much less reliable than animals…and much harder to control.

  Second Half

  9

  The Star of the Show

  Elvis came back to life in Queens. Big Man met him at the gates. For the two loudest crooners on the show—actually whiners is more like it—the great showdown finally occurred in New York when they battled each other grunt for grunt in the only ring that isn’t round. It was the brawl of the year on the blacktop lot around Shea: “Blue Suede Shoes” meets “Jailhouse Rock.”

  In fairness, Sean and Big Man weren’t the only ones whose blood was boiling in New York. By late July we had reached that time of the season commonly referred to as “that time of the season.” Johnny was mad at Jimmy for paying Sean to usher (most performers were required to do it free). Jimmy was mad at Sean for implying his contract didn’t demand it. And Sean was mad at Elvin, who ultimately concluded that Sean should stop complaining and give back the money. The Rodríguezes, meanwhile, were mad at the Estradas for not letting the Quiroses borrow their tumbling mat, while the Estradas were mad at the Quiroses for not cleaning the mat when they borrowed it the first time. Everyone, of course, was mad at the clowns—for spilling water in the ring, for splashing water on the swing, and for getting so much applause without ever having to usher. “It’s called the midseason blues,” said Henry, the cryptic sage of Clown Alley. “You feel like you’re taking these long strokes and you don’t know if you’re closer to the beginning or the end. Then suddenly you realize you’re about to drown.”

  Drenched in self-pity, the show arrived in New York at the same time as the most devastating heat wave in a decade. For most of our first week—in Forest Park and the Bronx—the seats were mostly empty as the performers struggled through a liquid assault much more deadly than mud: humidity. The temperature in the rings was well over 100 degrees: near the top of the tent it was closer to 115. Mari Quiros nearly fainted while doing a split on the high wire. Her husband, Little Pablo, nearly slipped from the trapeze when the chalk on his hands turned to milk.

  The clowns, once again, probably had it the worst. With the number of shows now at seventeen a week, we were required to be in makeup nearly twelve hours a day, an exercise that is best likened to soaking in a tub of congealed perspiration consommé. Grease may be repellent to water, but greasepaint is not repellent to sweat. In fact, by the time I put on my stocking, skullcap, T-shirt, dress shirt, gym shorts, trousers, socks, shoes, bow tie, jacket, gloves, and hat, just the mere act of opening my eyes brought torrents of chalky white perspiration gushing from my powdered pores. That, of course, is when the white stays on. You can always tell a clown in heat by the rash of pink flesh peeking out of his white upper lip or the beads of red moisture dripping off his vanishing nose. Naturally the worst thing for a clown is to reveal to the world his true colors.

  Besides the heat, we still had to grapple with the trials of producing a circus in the middle of the Big Apple. Arriving in New York dramatically increased the level of tension on the lot. One clown started sitting out every gag to watch over the Alley, while Sheri from concessions bought a two-way walkie-talkie system to communicate with her children, whom she kept locked in her trailer during the show. Dawnita even placed a sign next to her door that said: DANGER: BEWARE OF LIVE COBRAS. While some of this anxiety may have been misguided, much of it was well founded. Driving into Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge, crossing the Bronx on a two-lane, two-story pockmarked thoroughfare, passing into Queens over the thoroughly clogged and completely unmarked Throgs Neck Bridge, and driving down Flatbush Avenue through Little Havana, Little Haiti, and Little Sicily might be expected to produce a certain amount of stress even under ideal conditions. But imagine doing this in the middle of the night, on an empty stomach, with a child in your lap and a map on your dash, after walking on a high wire all day or playing the trombone for ten straight hours, all while driving a thirty-five-foot mobile home with a teeterboard in the kitchen, a tractor-trailer full of hungry elephants, or the world’s largest cannon. Even my twenty-three-foot Winnebago, which took most of the bumps in stride, responded to the relentless abuse by spewing out my paper towels in a knee-high serpentine mulch and tossing my microwave onto the floor. Anyone who dreams of running away to join a circus should take a test-drive first.

  When we arrived at Shea Stadium at the end of our second week in New York, the collective tension was beginning to show. On Friday, Marcos and Danny were walking home from a movie and just missed being hit by two bullets fired at random from a passing car. On Saturday, Kris Kristo had a near-crisis with a woman he picked up in a bar. “We went back to her place and screwed, went for a walk, came back, and went to screw again. Only that time I couldn’t get it up. But the great thing is, around here when you get cable you automatically get the porno channel. So when I was lying on top of her and couldn’t get hard, I picked up the remote control, switched to the porno channel, jerked off, blew my load, and switched the channel back—all without her knowing it.”

  By Sunday afternoon the silliness and sordidness brought on by the City finally came to blows. It happened in front of Clown Alley.

  Sean stepped out of the tent just before intermission of the 4:30 show. His cannon suit was unzipped to his waist and pulled down off his shoulders. His hair was freshly combed with the new winged bangs he had recently adopted. “I never used hair spray before in my life,” Sean had remarked. “Now I can’t get enough of the stuff.” His hair spray was indeed glistening in the sun, which itself was careening off the lights in Shea Stadium, where the last-place Mets were due back for a home stand the following day.

  “It started during the first show,” Sean said. “I sat down next to Big Man on one of those sets of t
hree red chairs. There was a magazine on the seat, so I put it in the chair between us. He looked at me and said, ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ I said, ‘Is that yours?’ He said no, but looked at me real funny. He has had that attitude ever since he stole those tapes in Willingboro and I told him to watch what he did.”

  Sean left the tent without incident. An hour later he returned.

  “During the second show I sat down beside him again. Once again he looked at me real aggressive, and when I went to help lead out the horses he put his hand to his crotch and pretended to masturbate. That pissed me off. He said if that was how I felt I should just come and fight him right there. I wasn’t in the mood, so I got up and left. The next thing I know he followed me outside.”

  As soon as Sean stepped out of the tent Big Man stalked out after him. Sean turned around and stopped in place, and for a moment the two men just stared at each other like dogs staking out territory. Shimmering waves of heat floated up from the pavement. The sun beat down on Sean’s exposed back and Big Man’s broad neck. A small crowd began to gather. After several tense moments Big Man began to dance, bobbing up and down like a mock prizefighter with his fists in front of his face. Sean kept his arms at his side but began to bob and weave as well. At the time it looked like simple posturing. Big Man was considerably taller and heavier, but Sean was much quicker on his feet. Perhaps sensing this, Big Man feinted several times in Sean’s direction before dropping his arms and turning away. For a moment the episode appeared to be over, until Sean—unexpectedly, inexplicably—pumped his arms, lifted his fist, and swung at Big Man’s head.