Rotary Park - Wentzville, MO~

We made it to St. Louis in one piece, more or less.

Our water pump is in need of some therapy. It rained nearly the entire way here and our front window leaks. The floor is sagging. These are just a few of the joys of being on the road in a trailer over 40 years old. All of it is repairable, of course. It will just take some time and attention.

Some familiar faces from the pirate festival last year will not be here for the Renaissance Faire, much to our disappointment. We’re confused about this since two of the acts in particular are huge draws and very popular with the hometown crowd. We can only hope it was a mutual parting and not a drawn out confrontational split. We hope for visits from them but realize we’re idealists in this way.

I suppose the best way to update this very neglected blog is to share a little of our trip and the roadside attractions and experiences contained therein. They are what makes life on the road worth every mile.

As we left our home state of Virginia I recalled a place we’d seen featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives located in West Virginia and did a search to find out how far off our route they were. Answer: 7 miles. The decision to stop was unanimous.

The original location of Hillbilly Hot Dogs is located 7 miles north of Interstate 64 from exit 18 in Lesage, West Virginia. You can’t miss it. It looks for all the world like some child experts in the blanket-fort construction business got hold of some school buses and built a grab joint. It is colorful, wildly cheerful and fantastically welcoming. There are affectionate cats roaming the grounds and the front door is actually a little challenging to locate amongst the collected antiques and objects-d’art. Inside the décor is supplemented with signatures of patrons absolutely cramming the walls, tables, chairs and any other readily available surface outside the kitchen. There is an 8-track player next to the VCR. The first thing you hear after the music is the staff bidding you a warm welcome from the kitchen, and owners Sonny (The Weenie Man) and Sharie (The Weenie Wife) are right there with them.

The menu contains hot dogs and hamburgers served with everything you can imagine. Some of them are actually larger than your head. All the traditional sides are offered and for dessert, along with traditional root beer floats and ice cream sundaes, there is homemade cake courtesy of Sharie’s sister.

I ordered the Taco Dog. Alex ordered the ½ pound Big Bubba Burger, to much fanfare in the kitchen. A side of fries and some drinks rounded out our meal nicely. While we feasted we talked with Sonny and Sharie, telling them a bit about what we did and where we were headed. In return they gave us a real education on hot dogs, their newer franchises and business practices, and the best example of customer service I’ve experienced in years. Sonny also introduced us to the foundation ingredient in one of their signature offerings, the Homewrecker. I had never seen a 15-inch long 1 pound all-beef hot dog up close …

I’ll pause while you compose yourselves …

… but it was impressive to say the very least. When fully dressed, the Homewrecker weighs in at approximately 3 ½ pounds and anyone finishing it in under 12 minutes wins a prize. I think they said they’d had one winner in recent memory.

We wanted to stay longer but needed to keep moving to reach St. Louis in time to find a good camping spot. Sonny and Sharie, if you’re reading this, we sincerely thank you for a fabulously great time. We’ll be back to see you on our trip home in June and I’ll be trying that Junkyard Dog on for size. Maybe we’ll have The Weenie Song ready to perform too. Who knows? You’re great folks and we’re really glad to know you! See you down the road!

2 Acts Onstage »
Filed under: Food & Drink, On The Road

Out the door to a gig downtown, but had to share this with those who may not have seen it.

February 28th has been named International Sword Swallower’s Awareness Day and Alex and I were fortunate to have been given a bit of soapbox time in the Washington City Paper.

Point Taken: Sword swallowers show their scars

Back to FL tomorrow, then home just after St. Pat’s. More to come. I owe you some serious text, dear readers!

3 Acts Onstage »
Filed under: Comrades in Arms, The Swordswallowers

I’m home for a scant few days to work two gigs while Alex remains in Florida readying our lovely ‘66 Airstream Safari for the 2008 Tin Can Tourists Winter Convention.

In the absence of posting I have been nonetheless very busily involved with the website and those of a few others. Lots of work to be done in the weeks and months ahead, as I’ve taken on the redesign and organization of www.showhistory.com to make it a more easily navigable and usable interface for contributors and researchers alike. I hope to have the initial CSS work done by mid-month. The new look will be unveiled when the site owner approves. Here, I’ve added links under Kindred Spirits and Trailer Travel and we’re discussing updates to our Recommendations listing since nearly all the current ones are linked in the second sidebar.

There have been ups and downs aplenty on this tour, some quite elating and others quite upsetting, but we remain steadfast traveling carny folk in the midst of it all, doing the very best that we can wherever we are, whatever we happen to be doing.

I find that I miss school, more specifically the structuring of my time that school provided. I’m determined to find a way to get back for the MFA in Arts Management sooner rather than later. I’ve proven I can work well remotely and I have instructors who will no doubt back me up on that if need be. The Masters Program is all about finding and coordinating funding for the arts, the very thing I want to know about in order to feel my educational toolkit is complete. I’m not the only degreed performer out here doing this sort of work. In point of fact another performer I know completed a very similar Individualized Studies degree program to my own and took her Masters in Folklore the same day I took my BIS in Multimedia Storytelling. We worked the same Renaissance Faire for two years running without knowing who each other were. The world is small in very cool ways a lot of the time.

I’ll be experimenting with a work schedule for myself that includes not more than two hours at a time sitting at the computer or the sewing machine and mandatory moving about in between those periods. Yoga, long walks on the beach, anything to get me up and romping that gets my blood moving about will do nicely. This should net me about 6 hours worth of work between the Mac and the Singer on any given day when implemented.

Got into the gym for a great workout and got my house in order for West Coast company arriving this evening. Off to fetch them from the airport presently. Then perhaps it’ll be time for a spot of dinner.

1 Act Onstage »
Filed under: Comrades in Arms, Swordswallowers In General

Ft. Myers, FL~

***Edit: After a number of concerned phone calls and a couple of e-mails I find it necessary to include the following disclaimer: The photos in the gallery below were taken with a powerful zoom lens from an observation deck at least a story above the subjects being photographed. The photographer (read: me) was never in any danger. We now return you to your regularly scheduled entry.***

I lived in Florida very briefly back in 1998, in the Sarasota area, and had such a negative experience that I actually met with a fairly high level of anxiety the first time I traveled back through on our first tour together a few years ago. My experiences these last few years have thankfully been completely the opposite, given the acquaintances of fabulous people and excursions into very different parts of the state. One thing that hasn’t changed at all in my working memory, and of which I am growing more and more fond, is the distinctly different wildlife here.

I can look up and see ibis on the telephone lines and parakeets grazing in the grass. There are Great Herons, blue and white, standing at roadside as if waiting for the bus and flying overhead close enough for me to distinguish their different flight feathers. Anoles are absolutely everywhere, alternately green or brown, swift to dart into a safe crevice if a shadow looms. I even watched an ornate box turtle wander directly through our campground one afternoon, just like she owned the place. I took her out to the woods in back and set her down, well away from the pickup trucks that typically raced through the campground. But it simply wouldn’t be Florida without the one quintessential reptilian citizen I wished to see more than anything else, out in its natural habitat.

I of course speak of the alligator.
(more…)

5 Acts Onstage »
Filed under: On The Road

BIG PINE KEY, FLORIDA-

We are traveling in the rain. We have been traveling in the rain for 6 days. It has rained on us for 6 nights and we are settling in for more. It is wet.

Incredibly, Atlanta has made headlines for its continued drought. We have brought rain here. It started to rain on us in Kentucky, and now in Central Florida– also newsworthy for desert-like conditions– it rains on us still. It has followed us here for the relief of the local flora and fauna. On us, it sincerely sucks. Our Airstream leaks.

It is a wonderful trailer, and indeed, many other 21st Century carnies such as ourselves are beginning to buy vintage coaches, trick them out and hit the road. It really is the best way to travel if you’re show folk. Ours has a leak, possibly two, and more, certainly four or five, when being pulled headlong into showers and sweeping curtains of thunderstorms at 60 MPH. And so it leaks.

Everything is inside is damp, or outright soaked. Nothing dries, since there has been at most an intermission of only a few hours. It’s really crazy making.

I wash the truck– instantly Rain. After three dry days, I set up to test for leaks on the Airstream– Instantly Rain.

20 years ago in Indiana we experienced such a terrible drought and heat wave that full grown trees died due to lack of moisture in the soil. Plans for excavations were canceled as the soil was too dust-like to safely dig; the sides simply caved in. Miles upon miles of interstate roadsides were charred by grass fires started by tossed cigarettes. The foliage was bone dry and dead.

The attendant heat wave was so profound that sound was muffled dead in the air. I would sign off the radio station I was working at announcing 103º temperatures at midnight.

After such a climatic calamity I swore I would never begrudge the rain. Hard to remember after 6 days and nights of RAIN.

The folks here are suffering from lack of rain. We crossed over the Suwannee River, as in the famous Stephen Foster song, and saw it to be a dry sandy river bed. We stopped in High Springs, and saw signs asking to Vote “no” for permits to bottled water developers whose efforts drop the local water table and disrupt the famous caves and springs here — long a Scuba diving mecca. Even in Florida, known for flooding, storms and beaches, water has become serious business.

But the rain received here with such gratitude has fallen on us for hundreds of miles. Makes you feel rather out of touch. How like the unreal world of touring as sideshow performers. Our real-est reality is otherworldly. Are we shaman or merely migrant workers? I decide to figure it all out when the sun shines in my face once more.

2 Acts Onstage »
Filed under: On The Road