Freak Show
There’s been a great deal assumed about the solitary nature of farming. How often are we faced with the romantic notion of stoic, simple folk who work a vast land with quiet dignity? The fabric of America. It’s a beautiful ideal and one that’s still intact after years of living in a small farming community.
My father sold tires. He worked on the road and we lived in town on a comparatively small, one-acre yard. Thus, what I saw of farming wasn’t such a radical departure from TV. I saw men on tractors planting. I saw clouds of fertilizer and configurations of combines and trucks moving in tandem. I saw lines of trucks miles long waiting to get through the elevator. Farming is solitary work.
In late August, in Latoka, Illinois, this solitary life would come to an end for one week during the town’s annual Fall Festival. As a boy this event always came out of nowhere. Suddenly, as if orchestrated telepathically, the people of Latoka would emerge from their homes, cross their front yards, and plant themselves in a lawn chair near the road. Farmers and their families would pile into town and park on the curb. I would know to join the other kids and crouch in the ditches as if they were bunkers. The Shriners were coming. They’d grind their way down main street working their tired schtick on folks old enough to still be amused by “them crazy, tiny motorcycles.”
Then the shelling would begin. Floats and shiny cars dragging by, each filled with happy people throwing candy. Children would begin to turn on one another in an instinctual drive to gather the most goods. Each child driven to a frenzy by the converging forces of a lust for candy, a mandate to stay out of the street, and an impending sugar rush. Sometimes women, elderly and distinguished members of the town, would ride in the parade. They weren’t meant for throwing candy and it showed. The Tootsie Roll would fall short and drop in the street. What does one do? You’ve been warned about ending up under the wheels of Mayor Buchwalter’s cherry 63 Impala, but the parade is moving so slow. How could it happen? You sneak your ass out there and grab the Tootsie Roll before the monkey next to you works up the same guts-that’s what you do.
The river of life that was the Fall Festival Parade would feed into the local park and fairgrounds. There it would collect into a small city of its own. A community of shockingly stereotypical carnies, rodeo performers, hucksters as well as a band of locals intent on frying fish constantly for seven full days.
I knew that the games of the carnival were a fix and I was happy to be suckered. There was one particular game that stands out: a glass-encased table covered in quarters with a moving arm that slid back and forth across a small portion of the surface of the table. As it moved, the arm occasionally slid quarters off the edge and into a trough. Some quarters fell to the game operator, and some fell to the sucker playing the game. The object was to slide a quarter through a slot and direct it in such a way that it fell onto the surface of the table. This would create a surface tension which, as the arm slides back and forth, would push quarters off. The problem is, most of the quarters end up on top of other quarters and eventually end up permanently on display, thereby attracting the next victim. I lost what seemed like ten thousand dollars this way.
The pain of these losses offered me no insight on the attraction of the local “games of skill.” These contests were often too bizarre to be marketed in most other places. Take the much-heralded Greased Pole Climb, for example. As its name suggests, the Greased Pole Climb involves climbing a greased pole. A telephone pole, to be exact, about twelve feet high and covered in heavy, black axle grease. At the top of the pole a fifty-dollar bill was waiting. Kids of all ages lined up to pay a dollar for the chance to ruin an entire set of clothing. Sometimes grown-ups would join in the fun and, after a fish sandwich and a few beers, they’d put forth a rather lackluster pole hump. The champ would not be determined until late in the evening after much of the grease had been worn down. (The experienced climbers will save their strength and wait for the course to be prepped by beginners.) Inevitably the winner was an eight- or nine-year old, shirtless kid with an overall look that suggested the family really could use that fifty.
While some fans preferred the slow, determined pace of a good greased pole climb, still others sought the bright lights of a heart-pounding greased pig chase. Grease, it’s not just for poles anymore! It can also be applied to young pigs, which are then chased by the children of the town. The pig chase could be a difficult thing to watch, although not because of any sympathy I had for the animal. It was simply difficult to watch young kids, most in over-sized cowboy boots, stumbling around the rough terrain of a rodeo arena. The horses and bulls left the ground cratered and the pig proved far more sure-footed. Some kids tried the old “run-n-grab,” but that was always a pipe dream. To catch the pig you had to tackle the pig. You needed to dive headlong and clutch for the hind legs. And, if your aim was true, you would be the lucky one who gets to decide, “Do I sell him, butcher him, or just take him home?”
Beyond the clamor of the games, and just out of the range of the bright lights of the rodeo, there were always two dimly lit tents. One of these would be a standard House of Horrors. You’d pay your two bucks and wind your way through dark halls spiked with pre-recorded screams, costumed goons, mirrors, mannequins and body-sized lumps to walk over. This tent was much beloved by the high school kids who were looking to prove themselves after a twelve pack of beer and a couple bongs. I was always scared of that tent.
I should have been scared of the tent that always accompanied the House of Horrors. This tent didn’t have looped soundtracks or acid inspired banners. This tent was a quiet, seductive exhibition of freaks and oddities. In some years, it would feature live shows consisting of a cage with some clown school dropout honing his acting skills by portraying the sad savagery of “The Wild Man” or the cold, diabolical demeanor of “The Executioner.” It would, of course, make perfect sense that state and federal authorities would seek to alleviate the population pressure on our toughest penitentiaries by loaning serial killers to travelling carnivals. “And I hereby rule that you are to serve out your ten consecutive life sentences by traveling throughout central Illinois and frightening the townsfolk for the sum of two dollars a person.” Men, women and children who had not been to town for months would shuffle through these tents and observe the wonders, and degradation, of the world beyond Latoka.
Many years there would be no star attraction at the freak shows. Instead, these tents would simply house shelves of jars. These were the years I truly enjoyed. Despite all the obviously evil things one could conceive of when thinking about life in a low budget traveling carnival, there was something sweet about the idea of someone gently packing, transporting and unpacking an entire tent of ten-gallon jars, each filled with a heavy formaldehyde mixture. It seemed like such an ancient thing to do. During these years there was often very little interest in the freak show and I could wander through the aisles alone. I could take my time and inspect each jar carefully. Some jars held snakes and spiders and other monstrous examples of nature’s horrors but many jars held babies. Infants who hadn’t made it far past birth and who were often disfigured or joined to a twin. Some were fabricated out of plastic and these were pretty easy to pick out. Their jars would be newer and, after years of soaking, the plastic would bleach out. Other times, the bodies would appear real. Sometimes the bodies would be normal in all respects, but have two heads. I don’t know if this has ever actually happened to a human and, in every case, you could discern the stitches that held the superfluous head in place. The real horror lies in the realization that someone removed the body from the jar, “doctored” the corpse, and replaced it in the jar to be added to the collection; someone who may have taken your ticket. In other jars, terrible deformities were exaggerated further by glass too old and green to allow light to pass through unchanged. Their lids were corroded and free of tampering; these jars were authentic. They held tragedies so profound that further study was a solemn necessity.
Where did these jars come from? It was, perhaps, more a question of “when” as opposed to “where.” There was, apparently, a time when men of authority made the call in such moments of calamity. When the physician present sought to preserve, in the name of science, a life and death which families moved past and would not mention again. It’s possible that some of these jars were from the collections of medical schools now defunct. Or maybe there was the occasional town doctor whose particular area of interest inspired a number of “private holdings”. As these doctors retired or passed-on, did their possessions find their way to the tents of a travelling show? Were these jars acquired out of the same towns the carnival visited annually? Or out of the state institutions nearby? What was clear was that these tents held true exhibitions; exhibitions of the monumental events that quiet, solitary rural folk don’t find it polite to discuss, but could always recall.
So once a year the call went out to farms in every direction. Once a year the town celebrated another harvest with fried fish, games, rodeo clowns and a visit to the freak show. Parents would take their grease-covered kids by the hand and stroll through the aisles of jars to view the remnants of extraordinary misfortune. They would stand and gaze in amazement at the extreme distortions of the human form and no one seemed to question whether it was important to distinguish what was real and what was fraudulent. It was tradition to, at least once a year, face up to the dark possibilities that no amount of solitary, hard work could completely shield you from. When bad things happen to good people the result is most often deemed evil. As far as I know, trailers and trucks filled with countless jars of evil still travel along obscure circuits through the Midwest, presenting their exhibits to people who generally keep such truths to themselves. In my recollections, I’ve sometimes imagined a scene in which an elderly farmer’s wife stands frozen in the dark corner of a tent. Inspired by one jar in particular, she relives, privately, a moment of pain and loss and despair too great to ever fade; too great to be lost in a lifetime of harvests and Fall Festivals.
