Under the Electric Sky

by Christopher A. Walsh

  “I remember them passing it [the declaration] to him – he was on the steps coming down from his trailer – and they were all standing there,” Betty says. “And even Conklin was there. But when he got that he said, no, that was it, he wasn’t going to sell. It meant so much to him that they would do that. I know him. I mean, hell, he was … when his eyes fill up you know that.”

  A few of them got together later and presented Soggy with a plaque:

  Presented to The King of the Road

  Clarence (Soggy) Reid, World’s Finest Showman

  From the ride personnel of 1976,

  Thanks for keeping the show together.

  That October, the inquiry into the death exonerated Soggy and the Bill Lynch Shows, after Judge MacIntyre ruled that no particular person could be held accountable for the tragic events of that day. The inspection should have been carried out more thoroughly, however, forcing MacIntyre to recommend that more detailed inspections of rides should be conducted by the Department of Labour in the future.

  Soggy continued on, heartened, and ready for anything. He grew the business, eventually running up to five shows over the summer terrain of the Maritimes. The lights were shining brightly on Soggy’s back after that.

  OOO

  Betty MacLean lives in a tidy bungalow a few blocks from the Dawson House Bed and Breakfast in Charlottetown. The Dawson is an old Victorian-style manor, the boyhood home of former P.E.I. premier Joe Ghiz and if rumours are to be believed, a ghost or two still haunt the place. Betty ran the bed and breakfast for a number of years after retiring from the carnival circuit, recently selling it and moving to a more modest home. Things changed after Soggy’s death and she wasn’t the only one who felt it.

  On this late spring afternoon, around the time old carnies would be getting the itch to head back on the road, her new home is abuzz with people coming and going amidst renovations. Soggy’s brother, Johnny, sits at the kitchen table with Betty’s daughter Melissa and a friend as they reminisce about the King of the Road, whom they know better as Clare. The kitchen fills with the voices of everyone talking at once while pointing at old photos and carnival memorabilia on the table, some of them freshly dug out of moving boxes.

  Melissa hands me a photo of Soggy at Disney World with Frankie, a few other kids and Mickey and Minnie. I study it for a few seconds. At first it looks like Mickey Mouse is wearing a pompadour similar to Soggy’s between his famous ears.

  “And of course, look where he is, because he never wants to be out front,” she says with a laugh. The photo was taken on one of the trips Soggy funded for Frankie’s classmates and teachers. He took a group to Florida annually, where they stayed at a home he purchased near the famous carny city Gibsonton (or Gibtown, as it’s known in certain carny circles).

  Soggy also invited his top workers down to Florida for a few weeks during the winter for professional development and a little sun. He took care of the people close to him and the underprivileged. In keeping with Lynch’s tradition of giving back, Soggy donated untold amounts of cash to a variety of charities throughout the region, as well as ensuring kids everywhere had free tickets to the show. He set up a Frankie Reid bursary to assist university students looking to work in the field of mentally challenged healthcare, which still exists today. His work with the mentally and physically handicapped reached folk-hero-like status. Former P.E.I. Premier Catherine Callbeck remarked that Soggy “was a person with a big heart who brought joy to thousands of people. His special dedication and support to the physically challenged and mentally handicapped was truly exceptional. He touched so many people in so many ways.”

  After getting over the Paratrooper death in 1976, with the help of his crew, Soggy went about work with a newfound vigour. He purchased the best rides he could find and grew the business quickly. He never accepted having to turn down community groups who wanted to sponsor him to play their towns, so the solution was to make the show big enough to cover them all. He was running fast and free in the late 1970s’ Maritime economy and the money was pouring in as the Bill Lynch Shows expanded beyond anyone’s imagination. And at the heart of it, like the old master he had learned from, he was giving back to his people.

  By the early 1980s, the Canadian chapter of the Showman’s League of America recognized Soggy as their Showman of the Year, with a dinner in his honour at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. The kid who had dreamt the dream of a boy had made it, finally. It wasn’t easy, but he had succeeded and now his peers were recognizing him for it.

  “The Premier of Prince Edward Island [Jim Lee] flew from Florida to Toronto to get there,” Johnny says from across the table. “See, that would be quite an honour for a Prince Edward Islander to become Showman of the Year in Canada. It was quite a thing. It meant quite a bit, to have the Premier come down and honour you with his presence even though you weren’t in your hometown and especially because the Premier was away on vacation.”

  Premiers don’t do a lot of celebrating with their constituents anymore, I let slip out.

  “No, they won’t even go to your funeral now,” Johnny quips.

  Betty says the premier flew to Toronto because Soggy had earned the respect of people outside of the carnival business as well as those involved in it. He had started from nothing and worked his way up, like a typical Horatio Alger character and so had the premier.

  “They both came from nothing and made something of themselves,” she says.

  Soggy got involved in charities because he wanted to make life better for people. He had made it to the big time, but he never forgot where he came from.

  “Well, we came from nothing, from very, very poor,” Johnny says. “My mother, at supper time, we’d go along the railway tracks and she’d cut dandelions. We’d take them home and she’d salt them and fry them with olive oil and onions and we’d eat it with pita bread. That was our supper. When ya got nothin’...”

  Soggy went further with the charities than most people. By 1980, he was involved with an annual telethon that aired on Island Cablevision 10 every February, raising money for handicapped children’s camps in the province. Although Soggy took Lynch’s lead in staying out of the charity spotlight, the fundraiser eventually came to be called The Soggy Reid Telethon. Soggy worked the phones, which is to say he called people and “asked” for donations.

  “Clare would call people, his friends with money and tell them they were donating,” Betty recalls. “He didn’t ask. People would just donate after he told them to. That was the strength of his personality.”

  “You know, I think Frankie, when he was born, everything in the family shifted and made you realize really what was important in life,” Melissa adds. “I think that’s maybe where his thoughts were when he became involved in the charity work.”

  Later that night, I stopped back by Betty’s to drop off some papers she had loaned me. The house that had been buzzing all day was quiet. We sat at the table and talked a bit longer about Soggy. Betty is a kind, friendly woman who still misses her brother.

  “It was just such a shock to everybody when he died,” she said. “Melissa loved him so much. She used to say she didn’t have anything to worry about and felt safe when Clare was around. After he died, she never felt the same.

  “There was always something about him, ya know? His personality. He had that something some people have that you can’t explain.”

  Upon Soggy’s return to the church after Frankie was born, he met Father Mac, the “carny priest”, one winter in Florida. Soggy would have him perform a service for the workers every year in Charlottetown. It wasn’t that everybody had to go, but as one old worker said, “You go to church or you’re in trouble.”

  “When Frankie was born it was a shock to everybody,” Betty admitted. “But we loved him right away. And Clare was the best father ever. He loved Frankie, he was his life.”

  A
wail sounded out from downstairs, prompting Betty to her feet in a flash. For a woman in her 70s, she is remarkably spry. She moves quicker than a lot of twenty-year-olds when provoked into action. She went downstairs and came back a few minutes later. It was Frankie. He had made a mess and after she cleaned him up, she brought him upstairs for an introduction.

  Frankie Reid is now forty-three years old and healthy. Betty has been looking after him since Eleanor died, a year after Soggy in 1996.

  “We love Frankie and I wouldn’t trade him in for anything,” she said, after the introduction.

  Frankie enjoys playing bingo and when the fair is in Charlottetown, you can find him walking the midway with a hereditary interest. In a sad twist of irony, Campbell Amusements out of Ontario, the company that has the contract to play Old Home Week these days, actually charge Frankie admission.

  Betty shook her head.

  “Everything changed after Clare died.”

  On The Lot and In The Air, New Minas

  The real carny often has that simple terrifying directness. He has long ago met and resolved an equation that most of us must decide. Just what are we willing to sacrifice for a goal we wish to attain? For carnies the equation often shakes down to a fixed abode, a clean collar and clean hands vs. a chance to turn a buck during a 24-week season. By their lights perhaps many of us allow the amenities to chain us to modest circumstances. Not carnies.

  --Fred H. Phillips, Mayfair Magazine, October 1958

  Carny, to me, well, that’s me in a nutshell and that’s my friends. But for someone else to come out and say that to me...You know, you go into a bar and it’s ‘oh fucking carnies’; it’s almost the same as being racist and it really bothers me.

  --Bill Durham, carnival worker, on the lot in Halifax, 2008

  The rain has finally stopped and the music is blaring from all speakers inside a tiny New Minas bar as the glaring yellow and red lights from the karaoke stage slap Amber – Amber Dawn – in the face as she readies to sing her verse of the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow duet “Picture.”

  Larry, another carnival worker, is already attacking the first verse with his best Johnny Cash impression. In that little space between the ends of the handlebar moustache, a small hole belts out the tune in as deep a tone as he can create through decaying teeth.

  “Livin’ my life in a slow hell, diff’rent girl every night at the hotel,” Larry sings along in an unidentifiable twang as the words appear on the screen in front of him. “I ain’t seen the sun shine in three damn days...”

  In the back of the bar, away from the flashes of the stage, six eerily illuminated faces hover above a dark table, absorbed in the tunes. A beam of fluorescent light slips through the noise and ambience from the front of the bar, striking this group with unflattering clarity. The picture is almost haunting.

  “Been fuelin’ up on cocaine and whiskey. Wish I had a good girl to miss me, but I wonder if I’ll ever change my ways,” the song chugs along.

  The frightening countenances at the table start to expand and it becomes clear they are attached to bodies with names. Ian is one, an almost Lilliputian character who’s been on the carnival since it was called the Bill Lynch Shows. Marc is next to him, a Frenchman from Quebec with warm, clown-like eyes who’s starting his second year with Maritime Midways along with his girl Tina – the Candy Girl. Bobby, forty-seven, the only Black guy on the show this year, carries a strong ex-football player build with biceps that stretch his shirt sleeves to the tearing point. There’s also Wayne, sporting a fantastic moustache that makes him look like an Old Western movie character. He’s been on the show so long he knows everybody in every town, they say. At the end of the table a red-headed man named Pissy Fingers is eating wings and still offering salutations and catching up with everyone. Pissy has joined back up with the show today. A few years ago, he says, he served nine months in a New Brunswick jail for selling crack and just recently beat a separate charge, so he’s back to work for the rest of the summer.

  “I called you last night in the hotel. Everyone knows but they won’t tell. But their half hearted smiles tell me somethin’ just ain’t right,” Amber belts out on the multi-coloured stage, her soft, clear vocals mixed with extra percussion from pool balls smacking together on tables in the back of the bar.

  The door revolves continuously throughout the night as different carnies take their shift at the table for a beer or a round of pool. A block and a half down Commercial Street, shrouded in darkness, lies the carnival, set up after a day-long struggle in the rain and muck. The rain they had hoped was left behind in Halifax had returned earlier in the day, causing problems and further agitating the workers.

  That’s the old story in Maritime towns for the carnival. Everybody knows the line and everybody still says it like they’re the first clever enough to come up with it: “Well, the carnival is in town.” Chuckle, chuckle. “I guess it’s gonna rain. You guys bring it with you, don’t you?”

  Everyone is sick of hearing it, but a few of the friendlier carnies have learned to just smile and roll with it. “I’m sure New Minas wasn’t a desert before we got here, but yeah, whatever.” In every town throughout the summer, from Yarmouth to Grand Falls, these Maritime rain kings will be greeted by raving meteorologists with accurate forecasts. “It’s gonna rain – the carnival is in town!”

  As much as they are all sick of it, that stale, trite forecast had proven accurate so far this year. It had rained everywhere and Bill Durham was taking it personally. He was yelling at anyone who slacked off for even a minute while setting up that morning.

  “Goddamnit! Just hold this here and don’t move it,” he was yelling at one of the guys, while a group of them assembled the Scrambler. Another guy was yelling back an affirmative through the rain. Bobby leaned over to me as I helped out holding a cylinder in place.

  “It’s the rain that gets everybody crazy,” he said. “They’ll all be fine later.”

  Amber was hauling dozens of thick cables through the mud puddles around the lot as the rides were set up. It was a strange sight, considering most of the females on the show help out with light work like setting up game trailers or stands and carrying small boxes of plush toys and other cheap prizes. But here was Amber hauling heavy cables she referred to as “horse cocks” and assisting with the rides just like the guys. She is not a large girl but she is strong, a direct result of growing up on a junkyard her father owned.

  We had met a couple weeks before when I was lingering around the lot in Dartmouth getting to know everyone. Amber works the cookhouse, grilling burgers, hot dogs and cheese sandwiches for workers and customers. She has two kids she doesn’t see anymore due to various circumstances and fell into the carnival a couple years back for the same reason a lot do: to get away.

  Amber is a no-nonsense woman and can pull out the junkyard dog routine if she feels backed into a corner. She was once a kickboxer, but now, at twenty-four, only gets physical when it’s necessary. She has a few old prison-style, homemade ink-and-knife tattoos on her arms that connect to remarkable hands. For a girl as slender as Amber, her hands are large and disproportionate to the thin arms that frame her body. Her knuckles are scraped up like a streetfighter’s from an assortment of chores around the carnival, making her hands appear more rugged than a lot of the male workers’ hands.

  I caught up with her after the horse cocks were put away while she was drinking a pink cooler back at the bunkhouse and trying to clean up. It was payday after all, and she told me she needed to get off the lot.

  “I haven’t left the lot for weeks,” she said with frustration dripping off her tongue. Under the faint eyebrows her eyes were burning. “There was nothin around the Ex Grounds to go to. I gotta get away from some of these people for a few hours. There’s a bar down the street me and Bobby are going to. You can come if you want.”

  I did.

 
There are rules for carnies when they venture off the lot. Any carny who drinks too much is expected to leave the bar and go back to his bunk. This is policy brought down from the top to avoid inconvenient misunderstandings with locals. The legendary and inevitable barroom brawls over the years have left carnival workers with a poor reputation in small towns the world over. Bar owners address them the way mall owners do, that is, with careful observance. Even the carnies get it and are charged with the task of monitoring themselves when they go out. The policy was reinforced earlier by carnival management when everyone was reminded not to wear their “show shirts” off the lot. But that rule is just for appearances. The bouncer recognized us when we entered. He could tell.

  “Where are you guys from, anyway?” he asked Ian. “I haven’t seen ya around here before.”

  The answer was obvious. It was like Ian was waiting to jump into his showman persona: We’re just good people looking for a drink, sir, and you know that carnival that went up down the street? Well, we’re with that. And why don’t you bring your kids over this weekend? Come see me. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.

  The bouncer looked a little leery but said he would, and “Remember fellas, let’s not have any problems tonight, eh?”

  I instinctively understood there would be problems tonight, but I kept it to myself. The scene was too conducive for violence in some form. Here we were, a group of carnies on a payday Wednesday night at a local bar in the heart of small town Nova Scotia.

  I do not necessarily believe carnies go looking for fights and in this case they didn’t, but conflict has a natural way of finding them. It’s in their blood, as they say, and I knew it was inevitable. I once covered a brutal brawl amongst locals and carnies for a newspaper I was working for in Stettler, Alberta. One local kid who had thrown a few punches told me later he was sick of “these assholes coming into town and sleeping with our women and giving them STDs.” Other carnies were shaking down kids for pot in an outreach school, teachers claimed, and there was a group of conscientious CAA members in town accusing them of breaking into their vehicles and absconding with change.