Word: circusing
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They came to the shore of Lake Quinsigamond to be a part of the circus--the 41st annual Eastern Sprints. Most were wealthy and preppy and sunburned. Most were excited about the races...
Near the boat house, huckster Bill Coon sold Eastern Sprints t-shirts from his own table. For only seven dollars, you could get a lasting memento of your time in the circus...
...summer of 1976, Judkins, then a 19-year-old New Hampshire boy attending Haverford College, signed on as a cook with a circus bound for broke. Cooking led to a truck-driving job, then magician, then fire-eater ("It's just basic common sense. Heat rises. Keep the heat going up. Keep your mouth wet--and your mustache trimmed"), then sideshow manager, then ringmaster. Then the show went bankrupt. Judkins' last task, in December 1977, was to return an elephant leased from D.R. Miller. Hauling a rented trailer that the elephant was systematically reducing to bits, Judkins reached Hugo penniless...
Today, to supplement his wages, Judkins sleeps with snakes. "You get a salary, which isn't much," he explained, "and then you try to do something else to earn some real money. Every circus is like that." In Judkins' case, this means driving a tractor trailer packed with anacondas, boa constrictors and pythons, as well as the odd tarantula, and sleeping in it too. At each town, he opens his establishment on the midway and charges people 75 cents to view his creatures. It is not exactly what he had in mind when he was majoring in psychology and political...
...circus colleagues. Everywhere one looks on the lot (that is circus argot, the lot; townsfolk who come to gawk before the show are called, uncharitably, lot lice) there are people doing a dozen jobs, saying nothing else beats the life. Dennis Harvey, ringmaster, welder, electrician: "I'm more settled here than anywhere, strange as it sounds. It's like joining a family." Moira Loter, bareback rider, aerialist, jackie-of-all-trades: "I've lived in a house. You always want to go back on the road." Carlos Bautista, whose family, when not being catapulted off a teeterboard, performs, according...