Once reacquainted with the circus, I set out to find the perfect show to join. From a friend, I learned of an organization called Circus Fans of America (its motto: “The Greatest Hobby on Earth”); from its treasurer, Irvin Mohler, I learned of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin (the original home of the Ringlings); and from its librarian, Fred Dahlinger, I received a list of every circus in America, which was a surprising four pages long and contained 117 entries. At the outset I narrowed myself to tented circuses, ones with greater mobility, deeper access into the country, and more grit. This cut the number to thirty-seven. Next I aimed for large, high-quality shows, with a wide variety of acts and a full cast of animals. This reduced the list to six. I wrote letters to each of these shows and told them of my plan: I would like to travel with their circus for a season. I’d be prepared to do my part—pull ropes, shovel manure, whatever they needed—but most of all I would like to perform.
I sent off the letters in late November and sat back to wait. To my surprise, all six shows called back almost immediately and said they were interested in hearing more about my idea. In order to decide which show was best, I ventured out a month later on a circus parade of sorts—from Washington, D.C., to New York City; from Sarasota, Florida, to Hugo, Oklahoma. It was during this trip in January 1993, on the two hundredth anniversary of the American circus, that I arrived in the sleepy town of DeLand, home of what had always secretly been my first choice, the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus, largest tented circus in the world.
“Sit down. Welcome to Florida. Let me buy you a drink.”
I met Doug Holwadel at the Lobby Bar, across the hall from Sonora Sam’s Restaurant in the Holiday Inn & Convention Center on Route 92 in DeLand. Feeling somewhat like an actor on audition, all day I had wondered what to wear. Would the owner of a multimillion-dollar circus be a slick Hollywood promoter, a bumpkin country lawyer, or an uptight Wall Street investor? To play it safe I wore my most middle-of-the-road preppy casual attire. Fortunately I guessed right. Doug, a salesman at heart, was wearing his button-down best. He was also drinking Chivas on the rocks, and for the first three rounds of our twelve-round night I struggled to keep up (and keep sober) as this former concrete dealer and longtime circus fan told me how he was invited in 1981 to join former acrobat turned administrator John W. Pugh in purchasing the show. In a little over ten years, Doug boasted, the two partners had completely redesigned the show’s twenty-seven trucks and 3,000-person tent, solidified a eight-month route that ran the length of 1-95 from Florida to New Hampshire and back again, and increased their lagging attendance to close to one million people a year. During this time, he noted, they had accepted invitations to film commercials, documentaries, and hundreds of local weathercasts. However, they had never accepted an invitation from a writer to travel with the show. He wondered why they should change now.
After Happy Hour, Doug took me to dinner at Pondo’s Restaurant & Lounge, just up the road from the thirty-five acres of land where the show resides during the off-season. At the table, he ordered another round of drinks as I examined the menu. Later I learned that this was a test of sorts to see if I was an animal rights provocateur and that my whole plan might have been jeopardized if I had ordered “just a salad.” Fortunately I ordered duck (he had lamb), and the two of us began to talk. No, I was not a plant from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; yes, I remembered the first circus I saw. No, I was not an IRS spy; yes, I could live in six inches of mud. As soon as I laid to rest his initial concerns, Doug began to open up. My letter had intrigued him, he said. He was an amateur historian. He liked to read. He relished the opportunity of seeing his circus captured in print. Also, he said, he couldn’t help noticing that I wore a Brooks Brothers shirt.
As we sat for a fourth after-dinner drink in our next stop, the Neon Armadillo, I finally got around to asking if he was amenable to having me travel with his circus. Without hesitation, he said yes. After another round, I asked if he would let me perform. To this he bluntly said no. “If this is just a ploy to get a joyride in the ring,” he insisted, downing what would become his last drink of the night, “then we’re going to have to say no. We get hundreds of requests a year from people wanting to be guest clowns in our show. Some even offer to pay us. We are professionals. We don’t cotton to amateurs.”
The next morning Doug drove me to winter quarters to meet John W. Pugh, his partner and the president of the circus. By the end of the previous evening I had persuaded Doug to change his “no” to a “maybe,” but still he had made it abundantly clear that Johnny, who was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the show, would make the final decision. A short, stocky man with a boater’s tan and boxer’s handshake, Johnny Pugh was a former trampoline artist and stuntman who had served as Richard Burton’s stunt double in the film Cleopatra. He patted me chummily on the back, invited me into his roving office, then sat back and watched as a group of senior officers filed in to meet me—the vice president, the treasurer, even the boss canvas man, a former addict turned crew chief who was responsible for putting up and taking down the tent in every town. All of them were pleasant, considerably more informal than Doug, but still extremely skeptical. What if I saw the mess inside the cookhouse? they wondered. What if I heard that the workers did drugs? Johnny listened carefully to these concerns but didn’t say a word. He didn’t care what I had written in the past, he didn’t care what I might see in the circus. In over fifty years in show business he had dined with kings and wrestled with murderers, and he would read me for himself. At the moment he was mum.
It was not until later in the morning, with the arrival of the marketing department, that the mood began to change. “What a great idea!” said the national marketing director in a voice I soon recognized was taken as the word of God. “Just think of all the publicity we can get out of him.” Almost instantly I could see the idea gaining strength as it nodded around Johnny’s paneled office in the mobile ticket wagon, Truck No. 33. “I don’t see why not,” one said. “He does have a lot of performing experience.” Finally Johnny spoke up: “We consider this circus to be one big family,” he said with a faint English lilt in his voice and a defiant twinkle in his eye. “Everybody works hard, and nobody gets rich. And I warn you: once it gets in your blood, it never gets out.” He stood up and stuck out his hand. “Welcome aboard,” he said with a smile. “We start in two months.”
That evening I was invited to have dinner with Elmo, the show’s producing clown, and several of his friends. We were looking through books of famous clowns for inspiration in designing my face. I had a lot to do before opening day on March 25: find a camper; learn to fall; tell my mother. As I sat on a couch making notes to myself, Elmo was watching Jeopardy! and calling out the questions. Just before dinner the Final Jeopardy answer was flashed on the screen. The category was “Odd Jobs,” and the answer:
It was the profession of Lou Jacobs, model for a 1966 postage stamp, who died in Sarasota in 1992
.
The question, which all of the contestants and all of the people in the room got right:
What is a clown?
“Damn, her toenail sure is big.”