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Lives of the Carnies

On the road with the Cleanest Show in the West

Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 12:00 am

Photos by Virigina Lee Hunter

It’s been raining for three days in Indio, a hard spring rain that’s turned the beige concrete houses on one side of Arabia Street the color of a pork chop left too long on the counter. On the other side is the Arabian-themed Riverside County Fairgrounds — a series of Quonset huts and faux mosques, livestock pens and the Shalimar Off-Site Betting Center — home of the annual National Date Festival. Date palms 80 feet tall line both sides of the street, and when the wind blows, they bend, giving an unimpeded view of the Ferris wheel, a hundred-foot-high ring of pulsating light that tells the surrounding community the carnival is in town.

Though the Datefest does not open until tomorrow, the carnival starts tonight: Valentine’s Day. It’s the first of the year for Butler Amusements, the biggest operator of carnivals on the West Coast; by midsummer, Butler will have four separate units simultaneously on the road, a combined work force of 1,500 carnies — not counting temporary help — putting on shows from Southern California to Central Washington. The company, which bills itself as the “Cleanest Show in the West,” runs 60 shows a season and owns more than twice as many rides (128) as its close competitor Ray Cammack Shows, whose clients include the L.A. County Fair and the California State Fair. For the past two weeks, hundreds of Butler-affiliated vehicles have pulled off Highway 111 to build the midway, on and around which carnival workers eat, sleep, defecate, socialize and eventually entertain visitors.

While the era of the superhighway would seem to have made obsolete the fantasy of running away with the carnival, the reality is, that’s how most of these carnies got here. Take Brenda, who has been with the carnival only 10 days. The rain has finally stopped, and she stands in the center of the midway, combing the hair of a guy in a ROCK 107.5 T-shirt. This is not a savory job, as his hair is as matted and greasy as something pulled out of a clogged drain.

Darting for dollars

“Hold still,” says Brenda, whose own, bleached hair is striated brass, gold and platinum. “Shit,” she says, giving ROCK a shove. “You got bugs.”

“Do not,” he mumbles, and reluctantly lumbers off.

“You do, too,” she calls after him. “And that was a new comb!”

This is Brenda’s first carnival. She’s in her 40s, bony, with sun-leathered skin and twitchy eyes behind tinted plastic sunglasses. She’d been living at a mission when the carnival pulled into town.

“I went to [the unit manager] and tell him my situation and tell him I was wanting to work, and so he helped me,” she says. She’ll be in a Candy Land concession, selling hot dogs, soda and popcorn. “I’m gonna clean and serve the people and smile.”

She lights one cigarette off another, and simultaneously gnaws at the inside of her mouth. “I’m going through a divorce, and I just saw the carnival and decided to get with them, as family,” she says. “It gives you hope. You don’t have to live under bridges. They try to give everybody a job, and everybody tries to treat everybody right. No cussing, no messing up in or outside, or you’re immediately fired. Everybody gets drug-tested; they don’t pass, they gotta go. It’s helped me.”

The Great Zucchini

Though Brenda says she’d like to travel with the carnival all season, her hope is to get back to San Bernardino. “That’s where my husband’s at. Right now he’s getting Social Security; he’s got emphysema, he’s sick.” She takes a deep last puff of her cigarette, and nods at the small, gray-faced woman beckoning from Candy Land.

“I was a dental assistant, and I had a good life, good life,” she says, heading off for her first shift. “I hope to get back some day. I just slipped a little bit, now I’m coming back on track.”

Hang around the midway during the day while the carnival is readied, and you’ll understand the literal meaning of “stayed too long at the fair.” The rides and games show the stress of the road — and so do the carnies: Most of the workers washing down booths or bagging cotton candy look as though they haven’t showered for a few days. Sweatpants are stained, sweatshirts splotched with circles of motor oil, and there’s evident truth behind the fairground joke What do you get with a roomful of carnies? A full set of teeth. In short, everyone looks poor. Which they are: Ride jocks earn between $150 and $250 a week; and renting a bunkhouse — the sort of portable dressing rooms actors use on location — will eat through $200 of that a month. During the nine-month season, if a carny does not splurge on a motel, there is zero solitude; there are always people on the other side of the bunkhouse wall, or waiting their turn in the john. While one can save a little money buying food from local markets and cooking on a hibachi, most take their meals from the cookhouse, which dishes out diner fare at bargain prices: pancakes for $2, stew for $3. Carnies without funds can run a tab.

What is lost in money and privacy is made up for by a seemingly contradictory combination of freedom and job security. If a carny keeps his ride in good repair and his nose clean, there’s no way he’s getting fired, as the carnival is always shorthanded. In fact, it needs to hire in every town it pulls into; a few hours before the Indio opening, a dozen local teens, wearing Anthrax T-shirts and sporting mullets, pile out of two Butler pickup trucks. They have been brought in to restock game booths and touch up paint, but when no one immediately tells them what to do, they head for the mounted rifles at the Shoot Out the Star booth and start squeezing the triggers.

Over in Kiddie Land, another set of new Butler employees — four Latino men with neck tattoos, an old white guy with a liver-colored nose, and two woman of indeterminate age, one with shoes clearly too big, the other with a wool cap over her eyebrows — are being shown how to seat children on the rides.