Hello Darlin' (7 page)

A short ways into the trip—and mind you, it was snowing and sleeting the whole way;
it was just a damn shit storm is what it was—I realized those tiny Pekingese could
not stand the Great Dane and he could not stand them. There were problems right away.

The trip was supposed to take three days. Sinjin had given me $150 to ensure we slept
comfortably at night. I started down the New Jersey Turnpike, wishing either the Great
Dane would eat the two Pekingese or they would annoy him into jumping out the window
and hitchhiking to Florida on his own. I had never heard noise like that in a car.
And that was the pleasant part of the trip!

About three hundred miles later, somewhere in Delaware, I got my first blowout.

Boom!

“What was that?”

Yap-yap-yap-yap!

Grrrrrrrr!

“Is everything okay?”

No, it wasn’t. It was about two in the morning. It was colder than hell, it was snowing,
and I did not have a spare tire. I walked about three miles in the dark to a filling
station and bought a new tire and a used spare. Changing tires in that weather was
a real learning experience.

Ready to go, I drove a couple hundred more miles down the highway before finally stopping
at a motel for the night. When he gave me money, Sinjin had not figured the cost of
a flat that would require me
buying two tires. Nor had he figured the cost of motel rooms for so many people.
And never mind the dogs. None of the motels we stopped at would take them.

“But, Larry, they can’t sleep in the car,” Millie MacKenzie, the choreographer’s wife,
said. “They’ll freeze to death.”

So, after everyone settled into their rooms, I had the two chorus girls come on to
the motel manager while I smuggled the dogs into the rooms.

The next day, following a short night’s sleep, I told everyone that I wanted to make
up for the time we lost the previous day. I drove as fast as possible in the terrible
weather. Spirits in the tightly packed car were not quite as high as they were the
day before, when they had been extremely low. People did not get along as well. Neither
did the dogs. Somehow, though, all of us managed to tolerate one another until we
crossed the line into Georgia. That’s when we suffered another blowout. Unlike the
last time, no one asked what that noise was. The dogs did not growl. We knew. There
was a collective groan.

Oh no.

Again, it was nighttime, cold, and miserable. I saw a light from a filling station
far ahead, and as I tried rolling toward it another tire slowly lost air.

Oh shit.

Luckily a guy came along in a pickup. He stopped to see what was up with us. He saw
the chorus girls, who were bundled up but had beautiful faces. I saw they triggered
his interest. I stepped up and introduced Willard to the girls, who by this time knew
the procedure. They whimpered helplessly, and I said they needed help.

“Yup, I’ll give you a ride down there to the fillin’ station,” he said.

I walked in and the man running the place, one of those Southern mountain men who
had no teeth and wore overalls that barely covered him, was sublimely drunk.

“Whatchay need, boy?” he asked.

“Tires.”

“Well, we got tires here,” he said. “What kind you want?”

“The kind that won’t blow out,” I said.

“Well, what kind of car you got, boy?”

“One with pretty women in it,” said the guy who picked me up, smiling hopefully.

*   *   *

About an hour later we had been driven back to the station, the car had been towed,
and I was back in the office talking to Jethro.

“Where y’all stayin’?” he asked.

“We need to find a motel. Know of any nearby?”

“We’ve got a motel right here,” he said, eyeballing the chorus girls. “In fact, we
got two rooms open.”

Just two, I thought. But what were my options?

“Okay,” I said. “How much?”

Whatever amount he told me was more than I had when I added in the tires and the money
I would need for food. Ignoring the surge of panic I felt, which might have convinced
me that I really was an actor, I struck a deal with the guy, promising to be out of
the rooms by noon the next day. Then he gave everyone a taste of the local moonshine
he said he made and we settled into the rooms.

They were adjoining rooms with a dank smell. I put the MacKenzies, their Pekingese,
and the chorus girls in the larger room, which had two beds, and then the secretary,
Frances, and I took the other, smaller one, which had only one bed. Frances promptly
claimed it, and her Great Dane hopped on just to make sure I knew my place was on
the floor—the cold floor again.

A few hours later I heard a noise that sounded like moaning. My first thought was
terror. I thought maybe Jethro or Willard or both had sneaked into the room and were
molesting Frances. I turned on my little flashlight and raised my head just slightly
enough to see that Frances and her Great Dane were in the midst of a—uh—well, they
were having a moment together. In truth, it was more than a moment.
Frances had her eyes shut tight, was having a wonderful time, and it made my jaw
drop lower than that Great Dane’s.

I put my head down, covered my ears, and thought, Oh God, what am I going to tell
Mother when she asks how work is going?

“How was your night?” Jethro asked the next morning.

We were in the bar for breakfast. He had clearly been up all night. I could see our
car in the garage. It looked almost refitted with tires. After scrambling up some
eggs and frying bacon, he went back outside, leaving us to eat in relative peace and
quiet. Everyone looked tired, except the Great Dane, who, I swore, had a smile and
looked like he might want a cigarette.

But apparently his mood wasn’t that good. When one of the Pekingese went after a piece
of bacon that dropped on the floor, the Great Dane thought it belonged to him and
started chomping on the little dog. The other Peke attacked the Great Dane. And all
hell broke loose. Chairs and dishes toppled and broke.

Jethro heard the ruckus and came in.

“You aren’t getting ready to leave, are you?” he asked.

At some point he had fallen in love with Frances. Now he sidled up to her, real close,
and gave her a goofy look that showed he was truly dangerous.

“How’s it going with the car?” I asked, knowing we had to get out of there.

“Coming along,” he replied.

“We just needed two tires.” I was being bold. “It should be ready by now.”

Somehow I convinced him to tighten up the final lugs on the tires and we took off
faster than Napoleon fleeing Moscow. I ended up borrowing gas money from the MacKenzies
and cash for food from the chorus girls. But we finally arrived in Saint Petersburg.
I phoned Sinjin to say we’d made it and to ask for more money to pay everyone back.
But he beat me to the punch by asking how much cash I had left over.

“Left over?” I replied. “I had to borrow like a hundred bucks from these people to
feed them.”

Sinjin was incredulous.

“I didn’t tell you to feed them,” he said. “They’re on a per diem. They feed themselves.”

Whatever. I was pleased with myself. This was my first professional job in the theater,
and I’d been successful. Though it would take me six weeks to pay back the money I’d
borrowed, Sinjin was a great teacher. I got everyone where they were supposed to go
in one piece—except for one of the Peeks, who was missing a small chunk of his right
ear.

I
n Saint Petersburg, I had one of the best theatrical experiences of my life. Sinjin
staged good solid musicals like
Desert Song; No, No, Nanette; Die Fledermaus; Showboat; Up in Central Park;
and
Carousel
under a tent large enough to hold fifteen hundred people. Based on my successful
jaunt cross-country, he made me the assistant prop man—at no increase in salary, I
might add. I still made only twenty-eight bucks a week. He also put me in the chorus,
letting me sing, dance, and play bit parts. Sinjin knew how to get his money’s worth.

Sinjin also thought I should know how to put up the tent and maintain it, so in addition
to everything else, he assigned me to work under the tutelage of the tent master,
Joe Pelican. He’d learned all there was to know about big tents from years with the
Ringling Brothers Circus. I learned how to drive nine-foot stakes into the ground
while swinging a fourteen-pound sledgehammer from the top of a ladder. That was another
learning experience. You miss the stake, you go flying off the ladder. After a couple
of misses, I had perfect aim. I’m not kidding.

Between setup, daytime rehearsals, and nighttime performances, plus two matinees a
week, tent maintenance, and numerous other assignments,
I crammed thirty-five hours of work into twenty-four—and somehow I still managed
to get in some playtime with one of the chorus girls.

She was a bona fide nymphomaniac. I remember telling Sinjin I liked her a lot! Smiling,
he said that he did too. So did the general manager, the carpenter, the head parking
attendant, and several of his assistants.

“I like working the winter down here,” I told her.

“I like the work you do down there too,” she replied. “Now hush up, cutie, till I
tell you it’s time to take a break.”

This was not an easy gig, though. The show was closed when a hurricane hit and ripped
the tent apart. The enormous tent poles, weighing over a thousand pounds, were blown
down and one of them landed on the wardrobe mistress. That tragedy, combined with
dreadful box office sales, convinced Sinjin to move the show to Miami, where he had
another tent on the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway.

After what little remained of the lighting equipment was packed up and shipped off,
I found myself with a two-week break before I would be needed again. I also found
myself without a salary, as the always frugal Sinjin stopped paying me those weeks.

So on the way to Miami a few of us stopped in Sarasota, the winter home and headquarters
of the Ringling Brothers Circus, which I’d always loved. With a few days to kill,
and broke, I found one of the managers and asked if I could work for a couple of weeks.

“We need a ticket taker for one of the sideshows,” he replied.

“Done.”

On my second day of work, the circus staged their annual winter parade through town,
advertising the start of the winter season. It was about a hundred degrees, one of
those Chamber of Commerce days when Floridians put on their Bermuda shorts while the
rest of the country is snowed in. A guy told me they needed some help with the animals.

“Animals? I’m pretty good with animals,” I lied.

“Good, try this on.” He gave me a lion’s suit.

At 10
A.M.
I got into my suit, practiced a few growls. The parade started. It was hot and humid.
By ten-thirty, I swear, the temperature had passed 140 degrees inside my lion’s suit.
I do not recall how long I managed to keep growling and marching. I remember sweat
poured off me. I was wetter than when I had showered that morning. Next I remember
about halfway through the parade being on my back and looking up into a clown’s face.
They had taken my head off and thrown a bucket of water on me.

“What’s going on?” I mumbled.

“You got heatstroke,” the clown said.

A lot of people had crowded around, apparently thinking it was exciting to see one
of the lions passed out on the asphalt. As I staggered up, pausing on all fours, some
kid sprinted out from the crowd and ripped off my tail. It was no easy task. The tail
was so long that it had a wire that ran from my neck to my ass to keep it in the air.
But he snatched it right off, almost strangling me, and I was too groggy to give chase.

“Where’s your tail, lad?” the costume guy asked later on when I returned my suit.

“Some kid ran off with it,” I said.

“Well, that’ll cost you thirty-five dollars.”

“I’m not even making thirty-five dollars a week. Not even close.”

“I know,” he said with a smirk. “I’ll give you a break. You’ll have to work here another
week for nothing.”

I was quickly learning that theater and circus management have something in common—they’re
all heart.

*   *   *

Once I got to Miami, the intensity of everything, from the work to my life, ratcheted
up. You could not live in that city for my salary, $28 a week, so I bunked in the
men’s latrine. I threw up a cot between the urinals and put up a tent of mosquito
netting. The latrine was a major
breeding ground of Miami’s mosquito population. I dated a member of the corps de
ballet whose father was a U.S. Customs officer, and every two weeks he confiscated
a stalk of bananas for me. She kept me alive. All I did in my time off (ho-ho) was
drink rum, eat bananas, an occasional hamburger, and that pretty little dancer.

My day started at 6
A.M.
when I checked the tent to see if the wind had come up at night and caused any damage.
Then I sat in on rehearsals in my various capacities as chorus member, actor, assistant
prop man. It was a lot to do, and yet I felt lucky to have the job. These musicals
often boasted a talented cast headed by Elaine Stritch and solid characters like Iggy
Wolfington and George Britton. My night didn’t finish until very late, and I somehow
had the energy to party all night, drinking and dancing and so on.

I’d never been as poor, tired, or happy. I had a lot of stamina. After all—I was nineteen.

Toward the end of summer, the area suffered a freak cold wave. There was even a sleet
storm. Not surprisingly, between sleeping in the latrine and the crazy hours I kept,
I came down with pneumonia. I felt like I was going to die. Iggy and George took me
into the little house they rented and got me to a doctor, who gave me a shot of penicillin,
which was still a relatively new drug. That got me through it.

By the time I recovered, though, the season was over.