hangover
Gold Member
- Oct 8, 2013
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- #21
Year before the wife continued....
I only worked on the boat for four weeks. The lobster season ends in March, and besides I wanted to go back up to Tampa to work on the carnival at the State Fair
During that time the owner helped me rebuild my engine in my car. We tore it down, reground the head, and put new gaskets on. New spark plugs, plug wires, and new hoses. That thing ran like a new car when we got done.
The State fair started the 1st of February, I didn’t get there till the second. So I missed out on getting a hole in the joints, which turned out to be a good thing because it rained every damn day during the fair. Nobody on the carnival made any money except the ride jocks. And they only made money because they got paid by the week.
I got on the circus, setting up the next act. Mostly it was cleaning up after the animal acts like the elephants. Those suckers would leave a whole wheel barrel of turds in the ring every time. I only made $400.00 for the two weeks, but it was more than the agents in the joints made. I got to sleep inside the big tent, so I stayed nice and dry too.
One of the girls that worked in the joints slept with me during the fair. She had a four-week-old puppy that she wasn’t good at taking care of. She wanted me to take it, but I already had Beth, and I didn’t need another dog. I could barely take care of Beth.
After the State Fair, I traveled to Orlando with the carnival and did a ten-day spot there in a joint. By the end of that spot it was the beginning of March, and I decided to head back to Texas to try to get on another seismic crew.
When I got to Houston there was another carnival in the parking lot of a strip mall. I got a hole in a shooting gallery joint. It had a .22 caliber riffle chained to the joint. And the bullets were real live ammo. The mark had to shoot out a red dot on a piece of paper the size of a dime. The dot was actually smaller than a dime, and the mark got three shots to shoot it out. It was one of those games that was really impossible to do. I was a front for a flat store. A flat store is a joint that rips people off. These guys that work those things are some real slick talkers. They will take every dime you have and then say, “Sorry, you didn’t win but here’s a conciliation prize.” and give you a five dollar stuffed animal. But they flash the store with color tv’s for prizes that nobody ever wins.
One time this mark got took for over three hundred dollars, and the agent handed him the five-dollar teddy bear. The guy went ballistic! He came over to my joint and tried to bust the .22 riffle off the chain so he could go shoot the agent. The agent jumped out of his joint, came over to mine, pulled out a .38 pistol and told the mark to leave if he wanted to live. The cops showed up a few minutes later and closed us down for the night.
The next day I had desided that that carnival was too dangerous for me. So I packed my car and split. Ironically, the girl at the circus in Tampa had ended up at this same carnival, the one with the puppy. That poor thing was being chained under one of the semi trucks on the pavement. No food, no water and I couldn’t stand to see it suffer like that. So I took it off the chain and put it in the car. So now I had two dogs, sheesh! Oh her name was Baby, it’s not what I named her, it was the name the girl gave her.
I called a half a dozen geophysical companies in Houston to get a job with no luck. So I headed out to Arizona to see my ex-inlaws. I spent a few days with them in Tombstone. While there, my ex wife showed up. She was on her third or fourth husband. She was living in Bisbee and working in Sierra Vista where Ft. Huachuca was. She needed a car and I was running low on cash again, so I sold her the Javelin for the three hundred dollars I’d paid for it up in Wyoming.
From there I hitched to Tucson where I got on another carnival. We did a ten day spot there, and then we traveled to Orange county for a two week county fair. I traveled with that carnival all the way up the coast to San Francisco. By June I was sick of the carnival life. I quit and headed back toward Gunnison Colorado to hang out with some familiar old friends for a change.
I got to Lake Tahoe and thought I’d check out a casino, I’d never been in one. I only had five dollars to my name and lost it in thirty seconds at the blackjack table.
I walked around the casino watching everybody else play the slots, wishing I’d saved my five dollars. I started watching these two cuties playing the nickel slots. One of them noticed me watching and after a few minutes she told me she was sick of it and asked me if I wanted to go have a drink. I told her the blackjack table had taken my last five. She said she was buying, so I said sure.
We went to the bar and had a few drinks and made small take for about twenty minutes before she said she had better go check on her friend. We didn’t find her at the nickel slots when we got there, we found her at the dollar slots. The one I’d been at the bar with told her friend she had better quit. She said she couldn’t afford to quit because she was down three hundred. The one I had been drinking with said, “You can’t afford to keep playing, you aren’t going to win it back.” So we drug her over to the bar where she spent her last twenty drowning her sorrows. She had just blown her paycheck in less than an hour. That’s the life of living in a casino town.
I had told the other one my sad story, being broke and hitching to Colorado. She invited me to spend the night at her place. We dropped the gambler off and went to her chalet up by the ski area. Her next door neighbor sold her an eight ball that we spent the rest of the night doing. I spent a week with her balling and eight balling. She was a house cleaner. She would leave the house about 10 am and get home about three in the afternoon. Then we'd screw and toot till midnight. I don’t think I left the house the whole week.
After that week I was fried, so I packed my stuff and headed for Colorado. She gave me a twenty for food. Hitching across Nevada was the worst trip I ever made. It took me five days to get to Utah on highway 50. It took three days to hitch the last fifty miles crossing Nevada! I was literally down on my knees begging people to stop by the third day. I even put big rocks across the road at one point. The next car that came by stopped, got out of his car, removed the rocks, got back in his car and drove off. The whole time I was pleading with him, saying that I was sorry for putting the rocks on the road, but that I’d been there three days and was desperate. He acted like I was invisible and wouldn’t even acknowledge me. To this day, I still pray for forgiveness for cursing God that day.
I finally caught a ride from an old guy in a pick up. After I got in, I noticed the fifth of vodka between his legs. I’m sure I’m only still alive because of my guardian angel. That fool was driving a hundred miles an hour over the mountain pass that dropped into Utah! As soon as we hit the state line the road split, and lucky for me, he was taking the other road.
It took me another two days to get across Utah. On the eighth day I finally got to Gunnison. I think God was trying to tell me not to do coke any more. I took the hint, for the most part.
I stayed at Dixies’ for a couple of days in her garage. Dixie and Teresa each had a dog, and I had two. And their dogs resented mine being in their yard. So a few days later I headed out for Missouri to the Rainbow gathering.
I made it across Colorado, Kansas and Missouri in two days. Most of it was with a trucker. The gathering was south of St. Louis, down in the Ozarks.
It was a nice gathering for the most part, except for the chiggers. The best part about the Rainbow gathering is that you don’t need money, it’s free. And you don’t even need food because there are hundreds of kitchens that feed anyone and everyone. They have a main meal at the main circle in the evening. All the Kitchens at the gathering made a pot of something and brought it to the main circle. After everyone gathered and had an ohm prayer, everybody sat down and the pots of food were brought by and dished out.
To not be a mooch, you just plug in to one of the kitchens and help out by doing dishes, cook or help haul the food in from the parking lot. Usually it’s a two or three mile hike in from the parking lot. There is also shitters to dig, trenches a foot wide and four feet deep. I’ve been to gatherings that had 30,000 people, that’s a lot of shit. And you don’t just want everybody shitting all over the camp. And please clean up after your dogs.
Missouri was the first year that Moondancer had his talent show. He built a stage and rides for the kids. He had all kinds of costumes and face painting. The talent show had anyone that wanted to do anything, from playing music to magic to stand-up comedy to doing skits. One of the rides was four swings connected together in a row, one behind the other. And they were all on a cable that went from one tree at the top of a slight hill, and another tree at the bottom of the hill. The swings rode the cable down the hill till just before it got to the tree at the bottom, there was a stopper on the cable that kept the swings from slamming into the tree. Moondancer also had a giant spider web made out of rope attached to a group of trees for the kids to climb on.
There is a camp at every gathering called kiddie village, for all the folks with children to camp together. And everybody helps each other out baby-sitting. There’s always games and fun stuff going on for the kids.
On the 4th of July everybody at the gathering gets together at the main circle at noon in a huge circle and has an ohm prayer for peace. And then the kids from kid village parade into the circle. I swear, I’ve seen rainbows circle the sun without a cloud in the sky at this event. Like I said before, BIG MAGIC!
I only worked on the boat for four weeks. The lobster season ends in March, and besides I wanted to go back up to Tampa to work on the carnival at the State Fair
During that time the owner helped me rebuild my engine in my car. We tore it down, reground the head, and put new gaskets on. New spark plugs, plug wires, and new hoses. That thing ran like a new car when we got done.
The State fair started the 1st of February, I didn’t get there till the second. So I missed out on getting a hole in the joints, which turned out to be a good thing because it rained every damn day during the fair. Nobody on the carnival made any money except the ride jocks. And they only made money because they got paid by the week.
I got on the circus, setting up the next act. Mostly it was cleaning up after the animal acts like the elephants. Those suckers would leave a whole wheel barrel of turds in the ring every time. I only made $400.00 for the two weeks, but it was more than the agents in the joints made. I got to sleep inside the big tent, so I stayed nice and dry too.
One of the girls that worked in the joints slept with me during the fair. She had a four-week-old puppy that she wasn’t good at taking care of. She wanted me to take it, but I already had Beth, and I didn’t need another dog. I could barely take care of Beth.
After the State Fair, I traveled to Orlando with the carnival and did a ten-day spot there in a joint. By the end of that spot it was the beginning of March, and I decided to head back to Texas to try to get on another seismic crew.
When I got to Houston there was another carnival in the parking lot of a strip mall. I got a hole in a shooting gallery joint. It had a .22 caliber riffle chained to the joint. And the bullets were real live ammo. The mark had to shoot out a red dot on a piece of paper the size of a dime. The dot was actually smaller than a dime, and the mark got three shots to shoot it out. It was one of those games that was really impossible to do. I was a front for a flat store. A flat store is a joint that rips people off. These guys that work those things are some real slick talkers. They will take every dime you have and then say, “Sorry, you didn’t win but here’s a conciliation prize.” and give you a five dollar stuffed animal. But they flash the store with color tv’s for prizes that nobody ever wins.
One time this mark got took for over three hundred dollars, and the agent handed him the five-dollar teddy bear. The guy went ballistic! He came over to my joint and tried to bust the .22 riffle off the chain so he could go shoot the agent. The agent jumped out of his joint, came over to mine, pulled out a .38 pistol and told the mark to leave if he wanted to live. The cops showed up a few minutes later and closed us down for the night.
The next day I had desided that that carnival was too dangerous for me. So I packed my car and split. Ironically, the girl at the circus in Tampa had ended up at this same carnival, the one with the puppy. That poor thing was being chained under one of the semi trucks on the pavement. No food, no water and I couldn’t stand to see it suffer like that. So I took it off the chain and put it in the car. So now I had two dogs, sheesh! Oh her name was Baby, it’s not what I named her, it was the name the girl gave her.
I called a half a dozen geophysical companies in Houston to get a job with no luck. So I headed out to Arizona to see my ex-inlaws. I spent a few days with them in Tombstone. While there, my ex wife showed up. She was on her third or fourth husband. She was living in Bisbee and working in Sierra Vista where Ft. Huachuca was. She needed a car and I was running low on cash again, so I sold her the Javelin for the three hundred dollars I’d paid for it up in Wyoming.
From there I hitched to Tucson where I got on another carnival. We did a ten day spot there, and then we traveled to Orange county for a two week county fair. I traveled with that carnival all the way up the coast to San Francisco. By June I was sick of the carnival life. I quit and headed back toward Gunnison Colorado to hang out with some familiar old friends for a change.
I got to Lake Tahoe and thought I’d check out a casino, I’d never been in one. I only had five dollars to my name and lost it in thirty seconds at the blackjack table.
I walked around the casino watching everybody else play the slots, wishing I’d saved my five dollars. I started watching these two cuties playing the nickel slots. One of them noticed me watching and after a few minutes she told me she was sick of it and asked me if I wanted to go have a drink. I told her the blackjack table had taken my last five. She said she was buying, so I said sure.
We went to the bar and had a few drinks and made small take for about twenty minutes before she said she had better go check on her friend. We didn’t find her at the nickel slots when we got there, we found her at the dollar slots. The one I’d been at the bar with told her friend she had better quit. She said she couldn’t afford to quit because she was down three hundred. The one I had been drinking with said, “You can’t afford to keep playing, you aren’t going to win it back.” So we drug her over to the bar where she spent her last twenty drowning her sorrows. She had just blown her paycheck in less than an hour. That’s the life of living in a casino town.
I had told the other one my sad story, being broke and hitching to Colorado. She invited me to spend the night at her place. We dropped the gambler off and went to her chalet up by the ski area. Her next door neighbor sold her an eight ball that we spent the rest of the night doing. I spent a week with her balling and eight balling. She was a house cleaner. She would leave the house about 10 am and get home about three in the afternoon. Then we'd screw and toot till midnight. I don’t think I left the house the whole week.
After that week I was fried, so I packed my stuff and headed for Colorado. She gave me a twenty for food. Hitching across Nevada was the worst trip I ever made. It took me five days to get to Utah on highway 50. It took three days to hitch the last fifty miles crossing Nevada! I was literally down on my knees begging people to stop by the third day. I even put big rocks across the road at one point. The next car that came by stopped, got out of his car, removed the rocks, got back in his car and drove off. The whole time I was pleading with him, saying that I was sorry for putting the rocks on the road, but that I’d been there three days and was desperate. He acted like I was invisible and wouldn’t even acknowledge me. To this day, I still pray for forgiveness for cursing God that day.
I finally caught a ride from an old guy in a pick up. After I got in, I noticed the fifth of vodka between his legs. I’m sure I’m only still alive because of my guardian angel. That fool was driving a hundred miles an hour over the mountain pass that dropped into Utah! As soon as we hit the state line the road split, and lucky for me, he was taking the other road.
It took me another two days to get across Utah. On the eighth day I finally got to Gunnison. I think God was trying to tell me not to do coke any more. I took the hint, for the most part.
I stayed at Dixies’ for a couple of days in her garage. Dixie and Teresa each had a dog, and I had two. And their dogs resented mine being in their yard. So a few days later I headed out for Missouri to the Rainbow gathering.
I made it across Colorado, Kansas and Missouri in two days. Most of it was with a trucker. The gathering was south of St. Louis, down in the Ozarks.
It was a nice gathering for the most part, except for the chiggers. The best part about the Rainbow gathering is that you don’t need money, it’s free. And you don’t even need food because there are hundreds of kitchens that feed anyone and everyone. They have a main meal at the main circle in the evening. All the Kitchens at the gathering made a pot of something and brought it to the main circle. After everyone gathered and had an ohm prayer, everybody sat down and the pots of food were brought by and dished out.
To not be a mooch, you just plug in to one of the kitchens and help out by doing dishes, cook or help haul the food in from the parking lot. Usually it’s a two or three mile hike in from the parking lot. There is also shitters to dig, trenches a foot wide and four feet deep. I’ve been to gatherings that had 30,000 people, that’s a lot of shit. And you don’t just want everybody shitting all over the camp. And please clean up after your dogs.
Missouri was the first year that Moondancer had his talent show. He built a stage and rides for the kids. He had all kinds of costumes and face painting. The talent show had anyone that wanted to do anything, from playing music to magic to stand-up comedy to doing skits. One of the rides was four swings connected together in a row, one behind the other. And they were all on a cable that went from one tree at the top of a slight hill, and another tree at the bottom of the hill. The swings rode the cable down the hill till just before it got to the tree at the bottom, there was a stopper on the cable that kept the swings from slamming into the tree. Moondancer also had a giant spider web made out of rope attached to a group of trees for the kids to climb on.
There is a camp at every gathering called kiddie village, for all the folks with children to camp together. And everybody helps each other out baby-sitting. There’s always games and fun stuff going on for the kids.
On the 4th of July everybody at the gathering gets together at the main circle at noon in a huge circle and has an ohm prayer for peace. And then the kids from kid village parade into the circle. I swear, I’ve seen rainbows circle the sun without a cloud in the sky at this event. Like I said before, BIG MAGIC!
