You've Got To Hear This

A funny thing happened on the way to the show....

We had this school bus it was the home of Simon Metz (a.k.a. Schlitze the Pin Head) and his nurse Dick, I can't remember his last name. They were riding in the cab of the truck, it was a semi, and Jimmy Long was driving. We had just finished some fairs in Massachusetts and for some reason Jimmy had let his drivers license expire. He needed to get him a new one, it used to be that in some states that you would go into, or when traveling through the state you were in, if you needed a license you could just stop by the local state highway patrol and they would write you out a new license. That was how I got my first license in Arkansas. So Jimmy had this Massachusetts license they got stopped for something, I believe it was in Maryland, the police officer came up to the cab of the truck and of course he wanted to see Jimmy’s license. There was something on the license about him needing to wear glasses. Jimmy talks a little funny, in fact he has been with me for thirty nine years and I can't understand most of what he says. I have to ask Chris to interpret, I tell him "you have to interpret for me we’re listening to Jimmy Longezzz." (SMILES AND LAUGHS)

Well anyway, this police officer asked him, “it says here you are supposed to wear glasses, do you wear glasses?.” Jimmy said “Ya! I do I do sometimes, I wear glasses I do I do.” The officer asked him, “then why aren't you wearing glasses now?” He said “I don't need any glasses now, I don't, why should I wear any glasses now? I only wear them when the sun shines and it’s night and I wear sun glasses I do I do.” All the time this police officer is going through this routine with Jimmy, Schlitze is sitting in the cab. Schlitze had this way about her, she had this little way she would shake her head, grin and shake her index finger at someone. She was sitting there shaking her finger saying “you see, you see, I told you see, you see, you see.” The officer was looking at Jimmy trying to figure out his license, he looked over at the pin head and asked, “who or what is that?” Jimmy said “that’s Schlitze!” just ‘matter of fact’ it’s like saying that’s my wife, my girl friend or my mother, that’s nothing unusual (SMILES AND LAUGHS) for Jimmy, it was just Schlitze!

The officer looked even more perplexed and he said “I will tell you what, get back in the cab and get this thing out of here.” (SMILES AND LAUGHS)

This is not the most convenient time to be asking!

We had a strange thing happen with Poohba (little Pete), we had a lot of strange things happen with Poohba but this one thing in particular.

You probably have never met anyone that is obsessed with doing their laundry. Pete always enjoyed doing his laundry, I think that may be because when he goes to the Laundromat the woman will fawn over him or something like that you know! We were making a seventeen hundred mile jump from Regina Saskatchewan to Toronto Ontario Canada. We were on the number one highway from Western to Eastern Canada. But that’s not saying a hell of a lot in 1983 it was just a two lane highway. We had five semi’s on our show that year, we had this guy I don't remember his name right now but we called him the 'Polak', because he was from Poland. He was driving along out in the middle of nowhere, way out in the middle of the woods. He dam near ran off the road, well actually he did run off the road and almost went over a cliff with the truck. He was pulling our office and living quarters. Chris came along and said "what are we going to do? If we move it I'm afraid it is going to go over the cliff." Finally someone found a phone or Chris used a radio and called it in. After a while they finally sent these two big wreckers out and it took both of them to get the truck back on the road. One of the wreckers was hooked onto truck to stabilize it, while the other wrecker was used to pull it back upon the road. We had all these sideshow people traveling with us and the worst thing you can do is to have all these people under your feet when you are trying to direct this kind of an operation. Or each of them trying to get their two cents into the conversation. There was this big rock over on the other side of the road, so Chris ordered everybody to go over and sit on that rock. You need to picture this, In the middle of this operation, (SMILES AND LAUGHS) the semi is just about to go over the cliff and these two big wreckers are trying to pull it up. Well, Pete came over and pulled on Chris’s pant leg, Chris stops and says to Pete “yes what do you want?”. Pete said “could you take me to do my laundry right now?” (SMILES AND LAUGHS)

This is not the most convenient time to be asking either!!

Now I want to share another story about Pete with you that is a similar situation. It was in the winter of 1964 and 65 here is Gibsonton. We don't know for sure what caused the fire but it was an electrical short of some kind. It was about six thirty or seven o’clock in the morning, Chris came into my bed room and woke me up, he said “get out of here right now the trailer is on fire.” I grabbed some clothes and started to get dressed and he said “just get out of here.” Chris was running around in just his underwear, no shoes. The fire was probably caused by one of those electric heaters we were using it probably over-heated a line. Well anyway, it was one of those nights we get every once in awhile where it gets very cold here in Florida, you know where there is frost on the ground. The first thing that Chris did was, (Pete wasn't staying in our trailer he had another one where he was living) he got on the phone and called the fire department. He grabbed a fire extinguisher, at that time the fire was mostly on the outside of the trailer, but it was just about to break through the wall into a closet. Chris was running around with the fire extinguisher trying to get the fire under control which he was able to. While we were waiting for the fire department to arrive, Pete saw all of the excitement so he got up and came out of his trailer to see what was going on. It was right before Christmas and Chris had promised Pete that for a Christmas gift he was going to take him up to the Adult bookstore and buy him a video tape. I am going to say this is three days before Christmas at seven o’clock in the morning, Chris is out there with no clothes on, running around with no shoes trying to put this fire out on the frosty grass. Pete came up to Chris and pulled on him, Chris said “yes Pete what do you need?” Pete said “can you take me to the store and get me my tape right now?” (SMILES AND LAUGHS)