Her eyes were amazing, like a cat, small vertical slits that would get wide like an oval in the dark. We were in a dark room, drinking wine coolers together and smoking menthol cigarettes, along with a few other people that had met while working at the Tulsa State Fair, after hours. We talked about where we were from, how long we had been working at fairs, and other things about our lives. The talk got deeper. I told her I had recently decided to become a Christian, after growing up mildly catholic, rejecting it favor of atheism, but had been exposed to the bible in the past year and was amazed at its relevance and message for humanity. She shared that it wasn’t as difficult as it looked to do her job at the fair, she got tons of breaks, and she could even read a little while working. I liked her, and I could tell she liked me. She was a couple of years older than me, but I was old for my age. I asked her if she had a boyfriend, and she said that she had just broken up with someone a few days before. She kissed me, and I noticed her tongue was also different, split in the middle, like a serpent. I was seventeen years old and traveling through the country selling food at fairs and festivals. She was the snake lady at the freak show at the fair.
Two cities in the State of Oklahoma, Tulsa and Oklahoma City, both have an event they call the State Fair. I don't know the history of the events or their apparent rivalry, but they are still held a couple of weeks apart every fall. At the ripe old age of 17, I found myself working at the Tulsa version, probably the smaller of the two events, and the one with “event envy”. Tulsa was a nice middle-class, good-sized town in Middle America; it reminded me a bit of my hometown in Ohio, except the preppies wore cowboy boots instead of top-siders. Nice town, nice people, some might say. For me, it was just another stop on the fair express, three more weeks in the next city with an event big enough to fit our pit barbeque restaurant, home of the “whole hog”.
Our setup for the fair was a nightmare. We had a smaller space than I was used to, so instead of a large, pre-assembled tent from a third-party company waiting for us when we arrived, we put together this puzzle-like thing that was buried in one of the trucks, an ancient wood temporary restaurant-like structure with room for tables along the edge of each side, which was probably built and designed by some church group in the nineteen-fifties. It was like a giant puzzle from hell—no clue as to what part went where, and took us three days to put together.
Jimmy, who had spent the last fair in New Mexico living in a side-storage bin of one of the trucks, was like a bipolar big brother to me. When he was "up", he was a great guy to work with, was always there when you needed him, and was a lot of fun to be around. When he was “down”, he was dark, depressed, and would frequently disappear in the middle of the day, making my job quite a bit harder. This was not a down day.
It was very cloudy and humid, in the middle of the week. The fair was about half over, and I hadn’t talked to the snake lady for several days. I assumed she had reconciled with her boyfriend or, perhaps she was just protecting me from him, she said he was not a nice man. It rained like monsoon in the afternoon and we had at least a foot of water on the ground in the barbeque pit. We had limited freezer space and so we used an ice freezer, the kind you find at a grocery store when you need a bag of ice. We used it to store meat, laying metal trays on top of ice bags, or pieces of wood pallets. In the free-standing water I was transferring a metal tray of meat between a metal table and the ice freezer when I was shocked—literally. It felt like a cartoon character looks when his flesh disappears and his skeleton is visible to everyone in black and white, like someone had hit me with a hammer in the head. I sat a table in the back of our tent afterwards and chain-smoked, my hands shaking and my body trembling for more than an hour. Jimmy was there to cover for me in the cook shack, and was nursing me back to health by handing me cigarettes and wine coolers whenever I needed another.
The weather cleared, so did my head, and the snake-lady came to visit me. "Are you coming to the Jamboree tonight?” she asked. Having no idea what this was, she explained to me that it was a party for all of the carnival workers. "Where have you been the past few days?", was my only emotionally hurt response. "My boyfriend told me he heard I was seeing someone else and he was going to find out who he was and kill him, so I decided to start seeing him again. But, don't worry, he doesn't know who you are." I didn't know anything about this guy except that he was "mean", but I had seen them together from a distance, and I could tell he was slightly taller than me, with lots of tattoos, and he had at least a hundred pounds on me. I was six-foot-two, but I was one hundred and fifty pounds dripping wet. "What if I taught him a lesson?” I asked, comically. "I hope you make it tonight", was her smiling reply.
The Jamboree could only be described as the closest thing I have experienced to hell on earth. First, a ten-dollar cover charge--how could the low-paid the fair workers afford this? Second, you had to buy tickets to purchase alcohol and food, which was all overpriced. What is it about tickets at festivals? Are people selling food and alcohol never trustworthy to handle cash? Third, a rock band playing bad Southern Rock covers (think "Freebird" over and over and over again). Fourth, next to the rock band, a large blue sheet hanging like a curtain, with large lights behind it, and a man and woman behind the curtain literally "getting it on". Probably naked, their pornographic silhouettes merging for all to see. Fifth, various food and alcohol stands, tattoo artists, and other people selling their wares. Sixth, it was pretty crowded. Seventh, the rock band and shadow-porn took a break and an auction started, selling all kinds of stuff from leather jackets to saber swords.
I had already consumed a couple of beers, and I hit the restroom. It was crowded, and the "card guy" was holding court in the men's room, selling his gambling squares. For five dollars, you had the chance to make a couple of hundred, which for the hand-to-mouth fair worker was a decent sum. I passed on buying a square, but as I was walking out of the restroom someone turned off the light switch. The card guy started screaming about getting robbed, and I flipped the light switch back on as I was walking out. About five steps outside the restroom the card guy accosted me. "You punk, I never liked you, and you turned off the light switch so someone could try to rob me". I started to plead my case, "No, I turned it ON, someone el....” POW! He hit me in the jaw with all of his might, and I went down like I was dancing the limbo. I shot back up; ready to defend myself, but Jimmy magically appeared and stepped in between us. Jimmy was a huge man, a real boxer, there were rumors he was a Golden Gloves champion in his younger days, and he had the largest hands of any man I've ever seen. I knew I was protected. "This kid is an honest kid, and if he said he didn't turn off the light, he didn't turn off the light," Jimmy said in his Boone County, Indiana drawl. You said someone tried to rob you?" "Yes...well no, but I could have been robbed, and I never liked that kid", said the card guy. "So, you just took a cheap shot at my friend, who didn't do anything to you, who says he actually turned on the light to help you? Walk away right now. Walk away. And don't ever mess with my friend again." It was amazing watching Jimmy, who was twice as big as this guy, reason with him, when he could have taken him out with one punch. The card guy walked away.
I used my last tickets to buy Jimmy and myself another beer, and I soon realized that Jimmy was already drunk. I held the cold beer can on my quickly swelling lip. The auction was still going on, and the saber swords were up for bid. The bidding was over three hundred and fifty-dollars and then Jimmy yelled, "FOUR-HUNDRED!" He was now the proud owner of two large saber swords. "What the hell are you going to do with two saber swords?” I asked. He just looked at me with a sinister smirk.
When we walked outside, Jimmy said we needed to "go and steal some camels" from the kids area of the fair. Next to the petting zoo and the pony rides, they had camel rides, and--like the other fair animals--the camels were kept in a barn at night. I decided I wasn't up for stealing camels, which I was sure would bring some kind of eye-for-an-eye justice if we were caught. I still have the picture in my head of Jimmy, riding down the main street of Tulsa on a camel, saber swords in hand. I never saw Jimmy again. For all I know, he is still riding his camel in Tulsa.
During tear down after the last night of the fair, I saw the snake lady for the last time. She asked where we were headed, which was Mississippi, on our way to Florida. She (and the entire amusement company that owned the rides and the freak show) was headed to Texas. We hugged, and said that we hoped that we would see each other again, which was not unrealistic given our current career choices. But three months later, I would be working at a Kroger in Columbus, Ohio, bagging groceries, my days working at fairs would be complete.
I've never paid to get in a freak show at a fair since, but a few times it's been included in the entrance fee at the Ohio State Fair. I've always walked cautiously up to the optical-illusion cases where the snake-ladies typically reside, wondering if I might bump into her again, and if I would even remember her face.
My brainy daughter, let's call her Moesha, is a High School Senior and has expressed an interest in attending a few different universities. The short list: THE Ohio State University, University of Illinois, Northwestern, and University of Chicago. As a parent, there are three economic magic words you begin to learn when your kid is this age: "in-state tuition". It's exciting to look at schools all over God's green earth, but at the end of the day, it's all about the money, honey.
