Chapter Three

Mister, I was Made For It

Here they are, the creatures of the night, body snatchers, Draculas pets. Come in
and see the fiendish animals. Bone
gnawing, horrible creatures on the inside. Captured just four miles from Dr.
Frankensteins castle and brought here alive
and breathing. Grave robbers. The devils disciples of the animal world. Creeping,
crawling graveyard pests, a menace to
the peace of the dead. Alive on the inside in a well-lighted arena for you to see
and study. Battlefield pests, feed on dead and
dying soldiers suggested spiel for grind show exh ibition of an armadillo, Don
Boles, The Midway Showman.
After traveling with the Beatty show through California, Oregon, Washington,
Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, the
circus season ended in October, 1947, and Anton was ready to move on. Life as a
lion trainer and circus musician was lively
enough, but he suspected there were still horizons to explore, seamier ways of
making a living.
Hed head from his circus cronies about the differences between working the
carnival circuits and working in a circus.
Circus people considered what they did real art, dazzling family entertainment
compared with the cheap tricks and mitt
camp aspects of the carnival. Circus people think carnies are sociopaths,
drifters, marginals trying to run away from the law
or some nefarious activity or other trying to get lost. Carnies think circus
people are wage slaves and prima donnas, that
they only need skills not street smarts, that theyre just performers, and have no
need for real mental acuity.
This was enough to encourage Anton to get off-season work with various west coast
amusement facilities such as The
Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California, where he played the steam calliope
across from Professor Theobalds flea
circus. Professor Theobald was a rather eccentric German gentleman who enjoyed
rolling up his sleeves and letting his fleas
feast on his arms for their dinner. He blustered against LaVeys noisy calliope,
complaining that the music upset his tiny
performers: Please! It disturbing my fleas; they will not performing right. Hed
plead with me to play more softly. You
cant play a calliope softly; its either loud or not at all. I could never get
through to him, much as I sympathized.
There were plenty of interesting characters for LaVey to meet on the carny circuit:
Francisco Lentini made something
positive out of having three legs, using his third leg for a stool when he went
fishing and always dancing with the prettiest
girls on any dance floor, inventing a unique waltz that made the center of
attention. He was the only person I ever saw who
danced in 5/4 time Tchaikovsky couldve written some great stuff for him. Though
Lentini didnt mind being born with
three legs, he was rather self-conscious about a little finger-like appendage that
grew out of his third leg and always wore
extra long socks to cover it. Anton also like the Human Ostrich, Jacob Heilberger,
who had mastered his stomach reflexes so
well that he could regurgitate objects at will. He was a highly cultured Jewish
engineer, educated at Berlin University, who
had fled Germany when the Nazis came to power. Disguising his brains and education,
Heilberger horrified audiences by
swallowing live mice, golf balls, and eggs that hatched into live chicks, jumping
out of his mouth.
Of course, there was the sex show which was presented in the guise of an
educational hygiene lecture to avoid getting
harassed by the local clergy or shut down by the cops. Dr. Hart played the sex
doctor (later to become Dr. Elliot Forbes),
assisted by pulchritudinous girls in scanty nurses uniforms who pointed out
various parts of the anatomy on oversized charts.
Usually there were Kroger Babb films or Army training films on the dangers of V.D.
shown, complete with decaying noses
of men in the advanced stages of syphilis, which Anton delighted in accompanying by
playing Claire de Lune and other
classical pieces. By the time the film was over, many of the men who had been
suckered into buying a ticket had already
slunk out the side of the tent, leaving their snow cones and popcorn uneaten
beneath the seats and swearing off sex forever.
Anton went on to work the biggest traveling shows on the Pacific Coast, carnivals
like Crafts 20 Big Shows, West Coast
Shows and Foley & Burke. Theyd set up next to circuses in big cities like L.A. (in
smaller cities, some carnies would show
up to be part of the midway independently), at county fairs, on rodeo lots, dirt
lots, football fields they mostly brought
sparkle and excitement to thriving farm communities like Modesto, Turlock, and
Redding, and rustic backwater towns with
names like Crows Landing, Ceres, Atwater.
LaVey played either a calliope, Wurlitzer band organ or Hammond along every midway,
providing music to keep people
moving among the various attractions; his beloved shit-kicker, aircraft plant,
shipyard music Roly Poly, Detour,
Sunflower, No Vacancy, Dear Okiein addition to more mainstream standards.
LaVey experimented with the various
sound effects built in to the band organ, for use on the midway or merry-go-round:
drums, gong, trolley bell, tambourines,
bird whistles, horses hooves, horns all add that jangling, off-rhythmic quality
to the music associated most with the
combined midway smells of popcorn, sawdust and cotton candy. The bally platform,
sporting exaggerated paintings of what
could be seen and experienced inside the tent naps, provided an excellent viewing
place from which Anton could witness yet
another side of human nature. Though the carnivals were small, the gaudy canvases,
impelling music, and grotesque exhibits
combined to draw hundreds of curious folks from the surrounding countryside. They
all came, dressed up in their Sunday
best, hoping to see something spicy, hoping to win something special, hoping to see
something they would never forget.
LaVey was also recruited to play for the traveling tent show revival meetings on
Sunday, "Circuses and carnivals used to
be considered the work of the Devil in the 19th century, when shows traveled in
wagons and disapproving clergymen had
real power. Then evangelists wised up that they could take advantage of carnival
organists and crowds gathered by the
entertainments, they began to tolerate us in true Christian modification." Burton
Molfe's introduction to The Satanic Bible
quotes LaVey on his telling observations of these one-day-a-week Christians: "On
Saturday night I would see men lusting
after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on I Sunday morning when I was
playing the organ for tent-show
evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men
sitting in the pews with their wives and children,
asking God to forgive them and purge them of their carnal desires. And the next
Saturday night they'd be back at the carnival
or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian Church thrives on
hypocrisy, and that mans carnal nature
will out!
The midway runs in an oval all around the carnival, with rides, games, concessions
and food stands on either side and the
shows way at the other end of the oval, opposite the gate. The carnival backlot
is where the real action is the Mitt Camp,
the girl show, the 10-in-1 freaks), the crime show, the pickled punks exhibit
(ordered direct from Tates Curiosity Shop
Devil babies, $75; mummified bodies, $50). Inside the show tents, Anton played
Hammond organ for the hootchy-kootchy
girls and hula-hula dancers.
There were always plenty of girls around the carnival, both working and coming to
see the show. Several carny acts used
girls for flash. The girlie shows and sex shows, though, were for different
purposes. The girlie shows were like traveling strip
joints. The girls would come out on the bally platform to flaunt their stuff then
the talkers got the gentlemen inside for the
strip. It was usually a 50 blow-off. Then, once inside, they would give either a
soft or hard core show, depending on how
solid the canvasmen had been able to fix it with the law.
The sex show was another thing altogether. It was a doctor and naughty nurse set-
up, where the blow-off would most
likely be a Secrets of Hygiene demonstration, following a Miracle of Life grind
show. Thats where they left swearing
theyd never look at a sexy woman again. LaVey explains that none of the carnies
had affairs with the female carny
performersthat it would be regarded as something akin to incest. With discretion,
it was expected that relationships would
occur with the girls who came for the glitter and excitement of the carnival.
Blatant chasters, however were poison to
carnival operators, classified with drunks and agitators, with most job offers
posted in The Billboard (the weekly
newspaper covering the outdoor amusement industry) instructing such types to stay
where you are. Anton had liaisons with
girl towners who paraded around the midway, all dressed up to see the closest thing
theyd ever get to glamour, or local girls
who got a bug in them to be movie stars and their first step was joining the
carnival as a dancer. They usually would only
get as far as the next small town then give up.
If the show played a town where a Midnight Spook Show happened to be playing at
the local theater, LaVey
endeavored to assist the likes of Dr. Zomb, Dr. Doom, and Dr. Tomb by
throwing spaghetti and grapes with shouts
of Worms! and Eyeballs! from the balconies of pitch dark small-town theaters
into the laps of the audience below.
Sometimes Anton worked the rides or, when the funhouse blow-hole operator needed to
be relieved, LaVey was
enthusiastic stand-in. There was also the Ten-in-One, where all the freaks and
sideshow performers were featured: the Sword
Swallower, the Pinhead, the India Rubber Man, the Glass Eater, the Alligator Boy;
Grace McDaniels, the mule-faced woman,
and Johnny Eck, the incredible half-man. As always, LaVey found friends among those
which society in general would
consider outcasts. Freaks were the royalty of the carnival world they got
validation they never would have gotten on the
outside. The human oddities, natural freaks, were in a much more esteemed position
than sword-walkers or fire-eaters, or
even tattooed people, who all had to learn their freakish talents or, in the case
of tattoos, modify their bodies to make
themselves distinguished. The natural freaks literally had a special birthright.
More than any of the other shows, LaVey enjoyed working the Mitt Camp where all the
mystics, fortune-tellers, Gypsy
palm readers, hypnotists, and magicians were gathered. There, Anton learned all the
secrets of the Romany Trade he could
glean. Joe Calgary taught LaVey the magic of billet-reading describing, while
blindfolded, what is written on a paper
concealed inside a sealed envelope. Johnny Starr, a flashy carny pitchman, taught
Anton how to play swami by sitting behind
a table in a turban while a pretty girl collected folded messages from audience
members, brought them onto the platform and
dropped them into a clouded crystal bowl. When the messages would fall directly
through the bowl, down a chute to the
eager hands of LaVey under the stage, Anton would open the papers up, shine a
flashlight on them and display them through
a magnifying lens for the swami Starr to see onstage. The turbaned showman would
miraculously recite exactly what the
audience members had written, to their stupefied delight and wild applause. Johnny
wore the turban (or some other kind of
hat) not originally as an affectation, but to cover a tantalum plate in his head,
the result of a war injury.
LaVey watched and listened attentively, learning everything he could: phrenology,
palmistry, astrology, and magic tricks.
He worked up an impressive act for himself as a hypnotist in the Ten-in-One, with
the high point coming when he made a girl
as stiff as a board, stretching her across two chairs and letting someone sit on
her. By this time LaVeys image had become
stereotypical carny: flashy sports coats, hand-painted ties, pencil-thin moustache.
He was getting more than a college
education could ever teach hima confidence mans education in hustling, exploiting
mans carnal natureand enjoyed
looking the part. The scar on his cheek hed received in a knife fight with a
friend only added a sinister, jaded quality to his
features.
Through his carny experiences, he learned how much people would demand, and pay, to
be fooledhow ghouls looked
for always ghastlier thrills; how voyeurs wanted newer, more prurient treats; how
the lonely and the sick wanted miracles
and how they only hate you when theyre not fooled enough. The carny magician knows
there arent any miraclesthere is
only what you make happen in life yourself. Yet people will always be willing to
throw away their money for just a chance to
win flashrhinestone bracelets, cheap wristwatches, giant plush animals, or
slumworthless token prizes.
Monster Midway and Step Right Up!, two of the few bread-and-butter books on
carnivals, were written by a couple of
LaVeys cronies, William Lindsay Gresham and Daniel P. Mannix. Though Greshams
association was cut short by his tragic
death, LaVey, as of this writing, still maintains friendly correspondence with Dan
Mannix. LaVey memorialized his
friendship with Gresham in the names of his daughter and grandsonZeena and
Stanonnamed after characters in
Greshams other famous carnival novel, Nightmare Alley. The Midway Showman is
another fine book covering the subject, in
which author Don Boles writes, The ability to treat ordinary subjects in a grand
manner, to invent tinseled lies about them,
and the gall to sell tickets to their exhibition qualify a man for the showmans
trade Here, humbuggery is comparable to
magic: carnival showmen feel it is permissible to fool people so long as you give
them their moneys worth in
entertainment.
LaVey has been put down on many occasions for being from a circus and carnival
background, as if it were proof that
hes really a charlatan. But as LaVey himself explains, the subculture of the
carnival has its own standards, its own
principles. In the carny, we knew who was a fake and who was the genuine article.
Traveling tent-show evangelists hung
around carnivals like lot lice. No one like them. Theyd always come around where
there was a good tip worked up. All of
them admitted they were in the Jesus racket and just took advantage of the tip
that the carnival gathered. At least, in those
days, not many of them pretended to really believe any of the bullshit they were
selling. They just figured they were taking
advantage of the rubes, like any of the other traveling shows. Like undertakers,
they would joke and crack wise about what
they were doing when they were out of Aunt Minnies earshot. More than a few of
them eventually ended up in Folsom or
San Quentin if they happened to fleece the wrong person. But if they were at least
honest, you could have some respect for
them. Thats carny law.
Laura the Pitiful, come in and see the devils child. See her alive on the inside.
Better shorten her chain, boys, shes
getting restless. Listen to her scream! Whats she doing now? Throw her another
chicken, she might be hungry. Watcher her
jump. Listen to her howl. Abandoned as a child to be reared among wild animals.
Grunts, growls, screams, and howls. But
poor Laura cant speak a word. See her now. See how low a human being can go. Once
seen, never forgotten