FRESH YARN presents: Carney, A Love Story... by Bill Krebs

FRESH YARN presents:

Carney, A Love Story
By Bill Krebs

"Did you know the Carnival Ride Operator was the inventor of the toothbrush?" my uncle once deadpanned. "If it were invented by anyone else, it would've been called the TEETHbrush!" Everyone at my grandmother's funeral struggled with recent sips of coffee as the laughter took hold. My delayed reaction intimated a need for clarification. Did the punchline arrive with the obvious jab at toothless mutants, or did the laughs begin at the formal title, "Carnival Ride Operator," merely an implication that prerequisite training and licensing had been fulfilled? Clearly, nobody present ever bothered to listen to the fulfilled heart of our family's matriarch. Now she permanently rests within earshot, silenced, leaving me to contemplate the prospect of divine resurrection and how opportune it would be to give Grandma a final chance to defend her mustachioed veterans of amusement. "They're much more than simple ride technicians," she'd admirably gasp. In fact, if my grandmother's motionless mouth had a second life, she'd set the record straight, "They're Carnies!"

Long before mindless followers trailed the likes of The Grateful Dead, Phish, and Oprah, my grandma fashioned herself as one of the original Carney groupies. Enchanted by years of touring the countryside in search of regional fairs, Carney groupies, like my grandmother, relished the seductive lure of the transient carnival worker. The attraction went far beyond infatuation; it was a paralyzing addiction, threatening marital bliss coast-to-coast. My grandfather christened the devastating affliction "Disneyland Penis." Being a husband, my grandma claimed he could never fully understand.

Part gypsy, salesman, philosopher, pedophile, and entertainer, The Carney, I'm told, is a recessive hybrid, standing evidence that even Darwin probably fudged a few calculations. The stereotype is often misunderstood, dismissing The Carney as a walking hair-do, spitting vulgarities at town girls while rolling packs of Winstons in thrift store shirtsleeves. That profile, although technically accurate, only sugar coats the personality. "It's all show" my grandmother often lamented, stroking the tattooed outline of frolicking Carousel Horses, penned by the weathered hands of a nearly forgotten Tilt-a-Whirl operator. "Sure they'd get in your pants with the sweet talkin', but get their minds off the rides and they'd slip up, talkin' about book smarts this, book smarts that." My grandma often carried on for hours about the nebbish, cerebral alter ego sleeping slightly beneath the sun-stained skin of virtually every person capable of piecing a Ferris Wheel together.

I could almost feel her glow as she recalled the first time she indulged herself in the men of the road. "The academic side came out in fits, like a case of shingles. But, once they'd drop their guard spouting off about Algebra this, Astrology that, or here's the latest lost Mayan language, it made cheatin' on your grandpa like eatin' cotton candy." In our family tree, this branch grew from what we now know as The Birth of Grandma's Sexual Odyssey. No matter how many times she told the story, tears inevitably took hold as she whispered those first lyrical words heard decades ago. "Shit, Ma'am, your bar won't come undone; you ain't gone need it you'll be spinning so fast. Isaac fuckin' Einstein rode this here shit-trap himself some two days ago." His poetic charm deflowered her long before the two ever hit the burlap sack under the candy apple cart. Grandma was hooked.

Every Thanksgiving my grandmother led the blessing of the food in her usual alcohol-induced way, "Lord, it's hard to find a good Carney these days…" My grandfather simply buried his head in defeat, painful recognition of the man he'd never be. "Aww, Mom," my Dad would console, "there'll be other fairs." We would raise our heads collectively, "Amen." Dad was right; there was always another fair. From Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Flemingsburg, Kentucky, to DuBois, Pennsylvania, my grandma jumped from town to town like a bumper car fueled with unlimited electricity. In hindsight, Grandpa was a real trooper. As an Oxford trained Noble Laureate of astrophysics, he had to analyze everything. "I think your grandmother sleeps with despicable vagrants in an attempt to fill the void consumed by her hopeless, pathetic, insecure, vain existence." He cared for her so much, examining the situation from a rational perspective undoubtedly made him powerless. Instead, he let love rule. "Good, I'm glad that tramp left again. I hope her Herpes infects the whole Goddamn lot of 'em!"

During the summer of my 11th birthday, our family decided to host a reunion for my overseas relatives. My grandmother raised her glass to toast all of the guests in attendance, informing anyone within range of her microphone that my grandfather enjoyed the bedtime companionship of his male, Italian mechanic, "Aldo." Coming from a staunch line of Irish decent, the crowd stood shell-shocked. To us, Italians survived solely in the kitchen as inventors of terrific cuisine. Now mechanics, too? Where would it end? My dad obviously couldn't believe his ears, either. He drank a case of Guinness, took off all his clothes, and spent the better part of the August day laid out in a hammock moaning, "What's this world coming to?" My grandfather withdrew into a selfish shell, unsympathetic to the cultural concerns our family had for utilizing skilled workers absent of red hair. All he had to say for himself was, "I'm no homo."

On that same August day, I met Jorge. Jorge, a Carney touring with the Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio One Ring Show, who specialized in the Milk Bottle Toss and a modified version of Guess Your Weight, staggered his way into our family get-together to subdue any notions that Grandma's love for Grandpa extended beyond the financial. My family welcomed all strangers with open arms. We later discovered Grandma and Jorge had secretly been an item for days. After my grandmother dropped the bomb, exposing Grandpa's illicit choice for auto repair, Jorge took me aside to explain the complex dynamics of relationships. He referenced psychologists with fancy names like Piaget, Skinner, and Donahue; but his visual aid stands clearest in my mind as the best evidence of his superior intellect. He took a pebble from the ground, displaying it in front of my face. "See this here rock? It's your grandma." He then proceeded to scoop up a handful of dirt. "See this here pile of mud? It's your grandpappy." Placing both hands together, he rubbed his palms vigorously -- as if starting an imaginary fire -- until both hands scraped dry. "That there's how you make Love." Jorge furthered his demonstration by hiding a silver dollar in the front pocket of his denim cover-alls, a symbol of lost love, which, if I found, I could keep as long as I didn't tell my parents. I searched him for hours, but Jorge didn't seem to mind. He loved kids. Although our encounter was brief, Jorge made a powerful impression on me that would later be characterized by my therapist as "disturbing."

With the help of Jorge, everything made perfect sense. Like the silver dollar I never found, Carnies, to my grandmother, represented the unattainable adulation she could never express to my grandfather. Some years later, my grandfather passed away. His closest friends claimed he died of a wounded heart. My grandma described in his obituary a violent murder, naming Aldo as the killer with vivid details of weaponry and sodomy. I knew better. Flipping through photo albums and seeing pictures of Grandma and Grandpa holding hands, my grandfather's mirthful eyes, his resolute devotion, it was apparent: Too many pills ingested in a single sitting can, indeed, find someone happiness.

Today, my grandma ends her life in her 77th year. The gentlemen of the Lafayette, Tennessee fair stand as Pallbearers. Throughout her eulogy, all six men of Lafayette spoke of a woman who refused to get off the ride, both on the fair grounds, and in the trailers. She never gave up. Before the gentlemen of Lafayette concluded, a wiry framed elderly man appeared in the rear of the chapel. With a gimp leg and a penchant for booze, Jorge hadn't changed a bit since we last parted ways on that warm, erotic summer day. If our limited friendship taught me anything, it was definitely how to love my grandma.

As he approached the podium, he opened a copy of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and began reciting from it. The prose went far beyond the limits of my capacity; but somewhere between his comparison of the infinite depths of black holes and Grandma, my smile emerged. Scanning her silent body propped upon pillows and cushions, I felt at ease. There'll be other fairs, Grandma. There'll be other fairs...