"I see ya wear white panties," Homewrecker Smith tells me. "When I see ya again, wear pink."
A few days with a traveling circus.
It’s August, the traditional time to run away to the circus, and almost forty years ago, I did. I went on the road with an outfit whose tent was so tattered you could look up in the middle of the day and see hundreds of points of light. That’s more poetic than calling them holes.
“You don’t want that one,” the circus association person told me when I was searching for a traveling outfit to write about for The Washington Post. “It isn’t much of a show. They’ve been having legal problems, we’re not even sure who the owner is, their tiger just got impounded…”
“That is exactly the one I want,” I said.
(Note to J. School Young ‘Uns: Success is boring. Get ‘em on the way up or the way down. Also: No conflict, no drama. Also: Glamour is good, but cheesy glamour is better. It’s got poignancy. Slick packs a stadium, but it has no heart.)
The traveling circus in the story I link to below was in even worse shape than expected when I found them: the hyena, monkeys, leopard, and tiger were languishing at the ASPCA. The owner, Hoxie Tucker, was recovering from an accident in which the elephant fell on him with a constant infusion of whiskey and water. There were many questions he declined to answer.
“I ain’t a talkin’,” he said, more than once.
Hoxie was, however, a fine storyteller, as was the show’s road manager, Homewrecker Smith.
How did Homewrecker come by his name?
"I get lucky when nobody else can and it's usually with good-looking married women and I don't pick up trash," he told me.
Many, then, must have been the adventures in his past.
"I have crashed through bathroom windows, left my hat and shoes," Homewrecker began, in the epic story-telling style of Ulysses. "I made love once to a famous country and western singer. She was a lonely lady. Met her in a bar in Nashville. When I left her, she wasn't lonely no more. Don't ask me to tell you her name."
That quote from Homewrecker that’s the title of this column never appeared in my story; they were his parting words to me as I left the show. But apparently, they made an impression.
I’m taking a few days off.
But here’s your ticket to a rag-tag circus. Hit the link to take you to the story — and enjoy the show.
Love the last line, about getting too close. Maybe that's what is wrong with all of us. We never get too close to anything real anymore. Brilliant, Joyce. And long. Today a newspaper would cut it to 500 words, explaining that "people" (meaning those under 40) don't read.
A masterpiece. A perfect American newspaper story. Mark Twain would drool.