It's all About ......

Gaff Nails, Two Days to Late, Raw Garlic & an Epidemic, that was the Good Old Days!

Now, if you are wondering how to gaff a nail, it's a simple process. You take a sinker (that's a thin wire nail, not a cut nail or a common nail), and you put the point end of it in between the claws of a hammer and bend the very point of it. Then start it in the log with light taps, making sure it's straight up and down. The bent point makes it almost impossible to drive.

As I walk past the entrance to the grandstand, a dude comes out with a fistful of ten dollar bills, trying to count them. As he walks by me, I say, "Pardon me sir, but could you let me have two tens for a five?"

I hand him a fin and he peels off two tens and hands them to me. I say "thanks," and he says "you're welcome" and he walks on.

By now I guess that you're wondering how I ever got started in the carny business in the first place.

In order to do that, we'll have to go back to the emergency room of the Allegheny Hospital in Cumberland, Maryland, the year 1918, the month January, the day the third, the time 12:01 p.m.

After the nurse washed me and brought me into the room to my Mom, she looked down at me and said, "You little asshole! How come you couldn't have got here two days ago and we would have got that
 
two hundred bucks and all the other goodies the merchants gave to the first baby born on New Year's Day!" Then with a little help from her, I found a tittie and started sucking, and didn't stop until I was past three. Mom said she tried every way she could to wean me, even to putting stove blacking on her tittie.

She said it was a black, nasty, dirty tittie, not fit to suck. She said I got off her lap, went to the sink, got the dishrag, came back, crawled back on her lap, got out her tittie, washed the black off and started sucking. Nothing worked until a neighbor woman told her to rub some raw garlic around the nipples. That did the trick.

But you know, even today, at over seventy five years of age, every time I see a good looking blonde with a nice set of boobs, I get hungry.

Back in the twenties, my mom and dad were in vaudeville, as were thousands of other folks. They had a song and dance routine that went over big. Between shows, mom sat in the orchestra pit and played the piano in sequence to the action in the silent movies.

Dad was a sign painter and show card writer and painted the show cards for lobby displays as the acts changed from week to week. So they always had plenty of work and lived high on the hog.

At that time, polio epidemic broke out all over the country and lucky me, I got it. But I was one of the lucky ones. All it left me with was a smaller left foot and leg, plus a slight limp.

As far as mom and dad were concerned, those were the good old days.

To be Continued