In 1972 I was 22 years old and looking back on a thoroughly
undistinguished post-high school career.
I’d played some baseball at a junior college in Statesville,
North Carolina but my academic accomplishments were unimpressive and I’d used
up my baseball eligibility. I was living in my hometown and working as a heavy
equipment operator at a nearby quarry. I was young and restless and had
no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t it.
In April 1972 I decided I needed a change of scenery. I quit
my job, emptied my meager checking account, packed a few belongings into my
1959 Ford, and moved in with friends in Statesville.
I didn’t have enough money to stay unemployed long. The
Iredell County Cattlemen’s Association held cattle auctions every so often and
was always looking for wranglers to work the sales, so I could get a couple
days work there. The job was to make sure the animals ended up in the correct
holding pens after they’d been weighed and graded and released from the grading
pen.
It was simple work—one wrangler held a pen gate open while
others kept the animal moving down the alley into the pen. The pay was pretty
good and you got free meals.
The same week as the cattle sale, a friend and I learned that
there was another opportunity for some quick cash. The Clyde Beatty Cole
Brothers Circus was coming to town for a couple of weekend performances. The
circus management was looking for roustabouts to help erect and take down the
big top.
The pay wasn’t great—a ticket to the performance if you helped
set up the big top, a few bucks cash if you helped take it down. My friend and
I had no interest in the tickets, but we did want the cash. So on a Sunday
afternoon after the circus’s final matinee performance, we showed up to take
down the big top.
The tent was dropped to the ground. Then one gang of
roustabouts separated sections of the tent and folded them up while another
gang lowered the tent poles. I worked with the gang on the poles while
my friend worked with a carney to load tent sections onto a wooden sledge.
The sledge was harnessed to an elephant, a patient,
good-natured beast that towed the sledge back and forth between the tent site
and the truck that hauled the tent sections. The carney and my friend sat on a
pile of folded tent sections as the elephant trudged along.
Seeing an elephant towing a sledge wasn’t something I’d routinely
witnessed growing up in rural North Carolina, so I often glanced in their
direction. They’d made a couple of trips between the site and the truck when
the elephant suddenly stopped and stood very still for a moment. It raised one
of its rear legs and stood balanced in that position for a second or two.
And then, with a loud, lingering, sort of moist ripping
noise, the elephant let loose a mighty expulsion of flatulence. As the gaseous
blast escaped the great beast, I swear I saw its butt cheeks quiver and the same
sort of shimmery image you see in the distance on a hot highway in the summer.
The foul-smelling fumes enveloped my friend and the carney,
and they fell over backwards like they’d been shoved by the force of a powerful
wind. They rolled off the sledge and lay on their backs in the grass and waited
for the noxious cloud to dissipate.
The elephant, relieved of its discomfort, waited patiently
for them to resume the work. Meanwhile, a dozen or so men were helpless with
laughter.
When we finished, my friend and I waited with the others for
our pay. A couple of the circus carnies approached us and struck up a
conversation.
It turned into a recruiting pitch. Had we ever thought about
joining the circus, they asked. We could use a couple guys like you.
The pay was OK but not great, they said, but there always
were opportunities to pick up a few bucks on the side and off the books. You
got to spend the winters in Florida. And if you had debts or an ex-wife, they’d
never find you.
I wasn’t running from creditors or former wives, but I’d always
secretly envied carnies. They seemed wise in a way I wanted to be. They
understood human nature and could size up people, spot their weaknesses, work a
crowd. It seemed like a waiting adventure. I may have been on the verge of
joining up.
Then they showed us the sleeping quarters.
They slept in a tractor-trailer truck that had been
converted into a rolling bunkhouse. We looked inside the trailer but didn’t enter. It was
dark and a bit dingy, and I got a sensation that the dim light concealed all
kinds of unpleasant surprises.
You’d think a couple of young guys not known for fastidious
hygiene wouldn’t have been bothered by those conditions. But I felt an internal
shiver, a primal dread, about the prospect of sleeping in there.
The carnies kept up their pitch. We leave tomorrow morning,
they said. If you want to go, be here around daybreak.
We collected our pay—seven bucks for about three hours
work—and left.
As we drove back to Statesville, my friend asked me, “So you
gonna go?”
I thought for a moment. “Nah,” I said. “Something about
those sleeping trailers.”
“Yeah,” my friend said. “Me too.”
