Q: Where did your interest in sideshow start?

A: I went to every state or county fair in the area as a kid, every one my daddy would take me to. When I spent more than a few minutes in a sideshow, my daddy would usually come and pull me out, they just fascinated me.  When I was a teenager I got a book called Memoirs of a Sword Swallower, a paperback version of Mannix's "Step Right Up".  I read that a couple of times and tried to get a bread knife down my throat.  I didn't hurt myself, but I didn't learn to swallow swords at the time. I was just always fascinated by the sideshow acts.  It was real magic to me.

After I finished college, I went into VISTA, it's the domestic Peace Corps.  I ended up in upstate New York with migrant workers, and, when they left for Florida I went with them.

I ended up working on my own and with a couple of other organizations, including the United Farm Workers led by Ceasar Chavez, who I was fortunate to get to know.  I was still fascinated by carnival life and I was near Orlando, so I would go buy the Amusement Business each week.  One week I saw Ward Hall's ad for sideshow help so I wrote him and told him I was really interested and by that time I could do the blockhead a little bit.

At the Orlando Fair, a guy name Ralph Smoot taught me how to do the pincushion so I had another act in my repertoire.  Ward put me on a unit with Dick Johnson.  I made the whole season and had a good time; I was twenty six.  After working for Dick, I worked for Whitey Sutton over on the James E. Strates Show.

Q: When did you get your first show? 

A: Three years after that. I got my own show in 1976. I got started in the business in 1973 and just 3 years later I became a sideshow owner went on from there.

Q:  When you finally entered the business how did it change your life?

A:  I sure became more cynical. I had been working in places where I had been helping people and now I was where people were yelling "hey you idiot".  No, I really enjoyed it! I remember a guy named Woody, I want to say Dunton, I may be wrong, I'm not sure.  He was running Lou Dufour's "Woman" show.  He walked up to me one day. He had been talking  with Dick and said to me, "You new this year, a First of May?"  I said "Yes".  He asked me, "How do you like it?"  I said, "I like it fine", and he said, "Well then you're stuck with it, then!  If you didn't like it you would leave, if you like it, then you'll be stuck doing it the rest of your life in one form or another."  He was right.

JR: Everyone tells me it's the passion that drives them.  From the time they enter their first top it keeps drawing them back no matter what they are doing.

A: You couldn't do it if it wasn't a passion.  People say I would like to do this because it looks fun.  I had people come up to me in Coney Island, of course we were in New York City; they would ask me about performing.  They would say they did some outrageous stuff.  You knew they were getting a kick out of it.  I would ask them can you do it ten times a day, five or six days a week for six months.  They would say, "I don't want to do that."

Q: You've been in the sideshow since 73 to 92?

A: Yes, I started in 73 with Dick Johnson's unit for Ward and Chris.

Q: When was the last year you worked on a sideshow?

A:  Last time I worked a sideshow, I had my acts for a month in '92. It was an ill-fated season; everything that could go wrong went wrong.  We closed early that year and that was my last full sideshow.

Q: You've been doing Pitch ever since?

A:  Ya, I still do some of the acts but I do a jam pitch as my primary source of income.  It's a mini one; it's a little bit bigger than the one written up on Sideshow World, I do a little bit more with it but it's basically that kind of operation.

Q: Now you did blockhead and pincushion when you started in the show, what other things did you do at the start of your sideshow career?

A: Yeah, I did the blockhead and pincushion, I even MC'd the show. 

Do you want to hear a funny story?  Dick was the MC of the show and he pulled me aside once a short time after I had been with the show, maybe a week or so.  He said "Do you think you can MC like I do?"  I said, "Sure boss, you give me a couple of weeks to really listen to you, then I'll be able to.  He said OK. Then that night after the second show he said, (well, he always called me "Louie" after "Screwy Louie, the Human Blockhead". He always did, and, he probably still does).  He said

Louie, I've got to go, you'll need to MC.  I said "WHAT?".   He said,  "I gotta go I got to go to the office, they called.  I gotta go and make a call, you need to MC."  I didn't know that he was standing behind the back sidewall and listening.  I stammered and stuttered, but I got through it.  I made one of the performers not very happy with me. I guess it was something I said.  Other than that it was alright.  I made amends with that; I said that if I made a mistake I'm sorry.  Dick came back and said "You can do it", so he taught me how to do the Blow-off opening and the Blade Box.  I got to be a pretty decent talker.

Q:  In talking with many of the folks in the business they have told me you're one of the best talkers in the business.  How does that make you feel?

A: I appreciate them saying that!  I have made a living at it but I don't know about being one of the best.  That's all I can really say.

Q:  What were the challenges of being a talker? Did it come naturally or did you have to really work at it? 

A: It didn't come naturally... it was scary as hell!  You know my knees knocked, I stammered and stuttered, but I got through it because I wanted to do it.  You know it has to be a calling to want to be in this business.  It was a long time until I realized I was any good at it.  I was just doing it and hoping I didn't sound too stupid. I remember being in a spot, I think it was Hamburg New York, and someone had written an article in the paper.  A pretty young lady wrote the article calling me "the Silver Tongued Orator of the Sideshow".   I said, "Gee's I must be better than I thought!"  It was always a thing I took pride in, but I never got a big head about it or anything else I did.  I just wanted to do the best I could for the show and make a few bucks for myself.

Q:  Are there any tricks in doing a good spiel or pitch?

A:  There's a lot of tricks to doing it.  I learn more every day. As the weeks go by, I figure out another angle.  Yeah, there's a lot of things to do;  it's your inflection, your body language, the pauses you make, the eye contact you make, there's a lot of tricks to it. 

Q: What do you enjoy most about being a talker or pitchman?

A:  I enjoy taking a bunch of people who have stopped to see a free magic trick or are curious to see a little sample of a show.  With a jam, it's getting a free gift, I enjoy the satisfaction of getting them to spend their money.  It's like I did something; here's a whole bunch of people who didn't think they were going to buy what I'm selling, all of sudden lots of them have. 

Q:  What are the differences between giving a spiel and turning a tip or doing a jam pitch and getting the crowd to by your product?  How do they differ and how are they the same?

A: Doing a jam auction is a lot harder, for me there's no doubt about it.  I used to, in Coney Island, train a lot of my performers to do an opening.  I would say, "Look, it's real easy!  You point to the first picture and say something about that, then you point to the next picture and say something about that and when you get down to the end for our feature, you spend a little more time on that.  Then you tell them that everyone goes in on a kid's ticket.  It's not as easy as that makes it sound, but a jam auction is much more difficult.  It's thirty five minutes on my mini jam, but on a full blown jam, it can be two hours, talking people into spending quite a bit of money. 

On a sideshow, you ask for a buck or two or three, whatever it is.  Back when I started, it was fifty cents.  It's not easy; no pitch is easy!  You have to talk to the people, you can't talk at them.  You just can't stand up there and run your mouth, you have to make them a part of it!  You have to get them in close.

I'll never forget being up on the bally one time working for Whitey Sutton.  Normally he didn't have a bally.  I brought mine after my first season with my own show, and, I finished the season with him.  Francis Doran was doing the sword swallowing and during the bally with me he would say "Get 'em in close John, get 'em in close!"   I said "I know Francis, I know!"  You know, it's all a part of it.  You have to get them involved emotionally, even physically, by getting them in close. 

Get them involved in what you're doing so they don't want to let go of being a part of it!  They want to continue it.  For the little money you're charging them, they feel comfortable with it at that point.

Q: Where do you do most of your jam auctions?

A: In the summertime I work fairs and festivals, during the cold times of the year I work in inside flea markets.

Q: How has that worked for you?

A: I make a living.  I'm not getting rich and I never did, I make a living, have a good time, and don't have to work very hard. 

Q: Let's take a step back and visit about the talker and their role in the sideshow.  I find the talker to be one of the most fascinating parts of the sideshow.  What has been your experience as a talker?

A:  For me it's about the best part of the show. On the bally you can display about every emotion there is.  You can make people laugh, you can make them almost cry, you can give them a sense of revulsion, a sense of pity, a sense of fear.   Just about any emotion you have in a performance, you can get while you're on the bally.

Usually the bally is a format thing, you do this, you do that, you change a little bit to fit the audience.  You speed it up for certain crowds and slow it down for others.  But I've had times when nothing has worked, nothing I was used to using would work!  They just wouldn't turn.  You've got to do something!  You can't say,  "I'll just call it a night and close up and we'll miss supper tonight because we don't have any money to eat off of.  I remember one time in Coney Island I couldn't get people to turn for anything!  I'd get twenty five or thirty people in front of me; I'd build a tip of twenty five or thirty people and only turn four.  It was on a Saturday and they just weren't coming in.  So, I saw a big hank of rope lying by the ticket box.  I told the ticket taker to grab the end of the rope keep pulling, every time I pull, you pull back then when I let go pull it in.  He said "What are you doing?"  I said "I don't know but we gotta do something."   I was out there sweating and muttering and occasionally saying "damn it" and pulling this stupid rope.  People were gathering and I said let me tell you about the show; I would say hold it a minute we started turning people.  Someone came out and said "Who taught you that; how'd you learn it?".  I said "I don't know I just made it up." 

When nothing else works, you just have to try something else completely different that makes it fresher.  If I had my performers talking on the front of the show, (I had the tattooed man talk a few times, like once a show), if they got stale I would say instead of saying this time, "The fire eater, the man who can drink burning gasoline like it was iced tea!", say, "The human volcano, the man who eats fire and breathes flames!"  They'd say, "Why do I have to say that?"  I would say "Just say it, I want to see how that works."  Not that it made it any stronger either way but it made them more tense and gave a little tension to the bally which made it a little fresher.

Q: Now you worked on Coney Island and also had a show on the road.  What was the difference between the two shows?

A: Obviously you didn't have to tear down and set up.  If a storm came you'd close the grid on the front of the building and go home. You were through, that was the nice part of it.  But then again you were in the same location and you saw some of the same people everyday.  Some of them were nice to see and I enjoyed them and there were the others I wished would go on to somewhere else.  You'd like to avoid those people.  Then there were the kids who made the snide remarks and things like that. 

New York is a show town and it wasn't hard to work in New York.  I thought it was going to be a horrible!  The first time I worked there was over a Labor Day weekend... just me and they hired a girl. I said "This will never work but I'll go up and try it for a weekend.  But the people there were all right and I didn't have any more trouble with the people there than I did any place else.  The same type things and the same sense of curiosity and wonder brings people in and are the same things that everybody responds to.  You know, I did have to change a few of my Southern expressions and a joke or two.  I couldn't say "dawg", I had to say "dog". I used to do a line with the snakes: When the girls would get ready to put the snake back in its cage, I would say, "Girls, be sure to lock that cage up tight! That poor old snake lives in a cage; he's so poor he doesn't even have a pit to hiss in!".  People in New York didn't think that was funny.  I don't know if they didn't get it or just didn't think it was funny--probably both.  So I changed the line and said, "Girls, put the snake back and be sure to lock the cage this time!  Ladies and gentleman, the other day we were doing the next act (we had a sixteen foot python) and that big snake came slithering across the floor, right into the audience!  There was panic and people almost trampled each other!  So we have a new rule here.  If you see the snake come out, raise your hand and let me know.  I'll go out first,,,,,,and hold the door open for all of you!"  They thought that was funny.

Q:  Coney Island being a store front show, did you draw the same kind of crowds as you do at the fairs?

A: Yeah, they were a whole lot alike; the only difference is they can come next weekend just as easily as this weekend.  Basically people come into the sideshow for mostly the same reasons.  Not everybody has the same reason but overall they come in for the same reasons.

Q: What was the year you start your show in Coney Island?

A:  Like I said I went up on a Labor Day weekend and that was in '85, then we did the next season in '86 and I was there until '91.  It was in Dick Zigun's building but I hired the acts and paid the performers myself and I was paying him a percentage of what I took in.  Dick supplied the building, the lighting, the stage, the sound, the ticket seller and the ticket taker.  I supplied the banners, the performers and the props.

Q: When did Melvin Burkhart come to work for you?

A:  That was the first full year I was at Coney Island,  He was on the Toby Tyler Circus and Ward Hall had the sideshow.  The circus folded and he was without a job, so he came to work for me.  I worked with him on Strates and I said "Melvin, if I ever had a show of my own I would love to have you come to work for me.  He said maybe one day, son."  It ended up that he finished his career with me.

Q: You met Mark Frierson through Melvin, is that right?

A: I've never gotten to meet Mark in person.  I've talked to him on the phone and have done business with him for years.  Yeah,  that's how I got to know him and he was my number one banner painter for a long time. 

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