One recent Friday afternoon, a small carnival with 12 rides powered by a big electrical generator was set up in the parking lot of the Cermak Plaza Shopping Center in west suburban Berwyn. A visitor stopped to talk to the people running it, the carnies, to learn something of their world.
”Don`t use our name,” said Greg Maturo, manager of the carnival. The request seemed odd since all the workers had on T-shirts with the carnival`s name. Also, if you want to remain incognito, do you set up a ferris wheel at Harlem Avenue and Cermak Road?
Maturo finally was persuaded. ”There`s been a lot of yellow journalism about carnivals where they say derogatory things,” he explained. ”We`re just worried about our reputation. I`m so image conscious you wouldn`t believe it,” he said of his Greater American Carnivals Inc.
He stockpiles white painters caps, for instance, for workers who show up with dirty baseball caps. ”I want us to be seen as a business, not a carnival,” he said.
With that, and since the crowd was light, he pointed out some carnies who might give a feel for the life there.
”Here`s a guy who`s perfect for you,” he said, bringing over a solidly built young man who had been working the concession stand.
”I`m Todd Knight. My real name is Boyd. Knight`s my stage name,” the carnie said. ”I`m a sword swallower, fire eater, knife thrower and human pin cushion. I`m also Screwy Louie, the human blockhead. I drive ice picks or straight nails through the center of my head without hurting myself. I`ve got the scars to prove it.”
He showed his scars and then his tattoos-a sword on one arm and a very good likeness of a marijuana plant on the other.
Boyd, 30 years old and from Tampa, went on to claim descent from 23 generations of sword swallowers, said that he`d been swallowing swords since age 8, and that he`d appeared on ”That`s Incredible,” ”Real People” and the old David Frost show, among other TV shows.
Did he have a show at the carnival someone could catch?
”This spot is too small, so they don`t have a sideshow. That`s why I`m working the food stand. But if you come to the car, I`ll swallow some swords for you,” he said.
He walked across the small midway to where the car was parked, behind the funhouse. From out of the old Chevy, Boyd pulled his ”swords,” actually clothes hangers bent to resemble 20-inch knife blades. He tilted his head back, opened wide and slid a hanger down his throat, left it in for about five seconds, then pulled it out with a flourish.
He then placed two together and swallowed the two. Then three. Then four. ”That doesn`t do anything for me either,” Maturo, the manager, later said. ”I find it rather nauseating.” As it turned out, Maturo hired Boyd to work at the carnival not because of his talents as a deep throat. ”He came three weeks ago saying he was hungry and needed a job and that he had experience with big fairs and sideshows. So I gave him work.
”He`s the typical carnival person that you would see five to 10 years ago,” Maturo said. ”And in 20 years you won`t see them anymore.”
Maturo said that carnivals have long been associated with people you`ve got to watch your wallet around, the hustlers and low-lifes who often fix the action at game booths to squeeze the most money out of a hapless customer, he said.
”Today, we`re trying to take the carnival into the 21st Century,” said Maturo, who runs the company with his father and represents his family`s fourth generation in the carnival business.
”We`re trying to make it first-class entertainment for working people. Because the people with a lot of money go to the (theme) parks” like Great America or Disney World, Maturo said. This demographic truth seemed borne out by the patrons` cars in the parking lot, a lot of American-made gas guzzlers: Buicks, Chevrolets and Oldsmobiles, some at least 10 years old. There wasn`t a BMW in sight.
”If you treat people fairly, they`ll come back. But the old-style carnival types, they hurt me, the customers and they`re no good for the business in general.”
Calling for cotton candy
Greater American doesn`t have sideshows for similar reasons. ”I remember one carnival that had a guy in front of a tent saying: `Come in and see a man- eating chicken,”` Maturo said. ”You`d pay your money, go inside and there was a guy eating a bucket of chicken. How`d you like to pay a buck for that?” Most of his 25 carnies at the Berwyn site were from the Chicago area.
”We have a clique of Puerto Ricans, some hillbillies from the South Side and some people from Bucktown,” Maturo said. ”They`re just regular Chicago people,” so normal that some brown-bag their lunches from home.
While Maturo and his concessions manager live in two trailers at the carnival sites, his workers commute from home. Between mid-April and late October, Greater American will hit about 36 sites in Illinois and Indiana, places like Melrose Park, East Chicago and Crown Point. About 90 percent of their carnivals are erected for Catholic churches. ”Then you get Taste of Elmwood Park and things like that,” he said. ”It seems like every little town with a festival wants to have a carnival,” with the requisite blue cotton candy and kiddie merry-go-round.
Who becomes a carnie? ”We get all types,” Maturo said. ”Mostly it`s kids who couldn`t get a job out of high school. We get would-be lawyers and truck mechanics. A lot of people who couldn`t make it come here.”
The cleanup duty
Wesley Reynolds, 26, of Chicago, is typical of the ”ride jockeys” at the carnival. He left a job in heat-treating metals for a career in entertainment; that is, working at a carnival. He`s been with Great American for nine years and just this summer has taken over a new ride called the Tempest, which some carnies affectionately call ”the puker.”
The ride`s cars spin around as they rise and fall. In fact, a few riders lived up to the nickname just before the visitor arrived. ”See those wet spots over there?” Reynolds said. ”We had two girls on who couldn`t handle it. But girls aren`t as bad as boys. Boys are the worst.”
Who cleans up that stuff?
”The ride jockey does. That`s the part of the job I hate,” he said. Still, it beats heat-treating metals, he said.
”It`s fun. It`s outside. You get to meet interesting people. And then there are the girls.”
”Yeah, the best part would definitely have to be the girls,” chuckled Robert Grant, a 20-year-old from Cicero who has operated the Gravitron, a flying saucer ride, for three years.
”But I know a guy who let a bunch of girls on for free and when the boss found out he made him pay for all of them. You could also get fired.
”The money`s not bad either.” Maturo says his carnies make anywhere from $220 to $350 a week, after taxes. They can work 12 hours a day or more during the summer season.
A ride jockey`s work doesn`t necessarily end when summer does. Some return to factory jobs and day labor. Others go to the Kentucky farm where Great American winters to do maintenance on its rides. Maturo depends on the summer`s profits to take him through the winter.
The game booths
Grant`s ride, a giant flying saucer that holds 45 passengers, is rare in that the operator actually gets aboard and spins around with the paying customers. ”I used to get dizzy in the beginning, but now I`m used to it,”
he said.
Four TV monitors aboard flash music videos while music blares. ”If we`re in a spot where people listen to headbanging music, we`ll play Iron Maiden, Skid Row, Guns `N Roses,” said Grant, who resembles a heavy-metal roadie.
”If they listen to disco mixes we`ll play that, anything to get them on the ride.” He, too, dreads the sick passengers. ”My partner and I have a rule. Whoever`s at the controls when someone gets sick has to clean it up.”
Some ride jockeys aspire to the easier life in the game booths. ”This is my first year in the tents, and, let me tell you, it`s easier work,” said Harold Whatley, a 31-year-old carnival lifer from Birmingham, Ala. Whatley didn`t work for Maturo but for a rambling outfit that was providing some game booths to Greater American. It would end its tour in Panama City, Fla.
He was operating a dart game when last seen: $2 for three darts to throw at rows of small Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. With three darts in a turtle`s breastplate he`d ”put you on to something good,” drawled Whatley, meaning either a giant, stuffed Bart Simpson doll or a huge ”I Love You” pillow. Of course, neither the visitor nor two others who tried got anything but a cheap Ninja Turtle mirror.
Although less physical work than erecting, tearing down and operating rides, running a game has its downside. ”At the last spot (in Mt. Prospect) I had a guy who got nowhere near an animal. It was clear he was intoxicated. He came back and jerked my chain (with all the stuffed animals) down. I just let that go and hoped he didn`t come back until closing. If he had, that was my time then and I would`ve had somethin` for him.”
Is the carnival life a good one?
”It`s a rough job,” said a carnie who identified himself alternately as Frank Ryba and Walter Scott Mitchell III and operated a basketball free-throw game. ”It`s survival. Having to eat and sleep in strange places and travel all the time. It`s a sad life.”
”Maybe he`s just worked for the wrong people,” responded Whatley. ”I love this job. I wouldn`t trade it for nothin` in the world.”
