The Dog Says How by Kevin Kling

Author:Kevin Kling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2009-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

circus

When I was twenty-six, I ran away to the circus, toward the marvelous adventure that awaited anyone who answered the newspaper ad for auditions. What was promised was six months creating a circus and performing in towns down the Mississippi River, from Brainerd, Minnesota, to New Orleans. What it foretold was adventure—Huck Finn–style, lazy days, and hanging out with river folk, and the wild and romantic life of a circus performer.

I called the number. “I’d like to audition.”

“Oh, alright.”

“Are there animals?” I asked.

“No animals, we’re not that kind of circus. It’s a puppet circus,” said the man.

“Okay. Do we live on the boat?”

“No boat, we have buses. We’re looking at a boat.”

“Oh.”

“The pay is $25 per week.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“We will provide housing; tents mostly.”

“Oh.”

“And food. All you can eat.”

Say no more. I’m there. This is better than I hoped.

At the audition I told them I could puppeteer, walk stilts, and play the baritone horn, and they were thrilled. I left confident enough to quit my job at the chow mein noodle factory, find a horn, and someone to teach me how to walk on stilts. And that’s how I became part of the Heart of The Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre Company and the “Circle of Water Circus.”

One morning in May we all met in a church to move supplies to a farm outside of Alma, Wisconsin. There we would build the circus. I looked about the room at my fellow performers. They looked like people from another time. “Hippies,” we had called them. I thought the last one had died of the disco fever in 1978. But here they were, probably the largest gathering of their kind in the area. Except for one man, dressed in a suit on a hot day. He sat directly across from me, hunched over, smoking, his “Type A” leg shaking violently. Did he have to come? These hippies were one thing, but this man scared me.

I discovered he was married to the trombone player, who seemed very kind. Maybe she knew how to calm him with kind words, a song, or a cookie if he got agitated. Still, I would keep a watchful eye on the man with the shaky leg.

We spent the morning loading gear, and then we had our first meal. I was starved. Then out came what I call the “terrible Ts”: tofu, tahini, tabouli, and tamari. When we finished I was starved. What, a vegetarian circus? My God, we’ll die.

We were told to start loading equipment and I noticed the man with the shaky leg loading a Weber bar-b-que grill. I imagined he was going to cook up bar-b-que along the river—pork shoulder and seasoned ribs, steaks and chops and brats. He turned to me and said, “Just in case we see any wild monkey.” I didn’t care, and I realized suddenly I would have to befriend the scary man.

And I did . . . on the farm. During the day, we built puppets and rehearsed the show. At night we took bike rides to the local tavern trying to stretch out our twenty-five dollars.

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