When the lemonade butcher apologized, and the usher told him it
was all a mistake his being seated with the niggers, the colonel wept on
their necks and invited the whole crowd to go to his distillery and help
themselves.
When we got to the next town every man in the show had a grouch and a
Katzenjammer, and their hair was so sore it was murder and suicide
combined to comb it.
The way pa escaped injury was 'cause he had to take the place of the fat
woman on the platform with the freaks, as the fat woman was overcome
with the heat and had to stay in the car.
The way they fixed pa up to resemble the fat woman was scandalous. They
have some rubber things in the wardrobe tent that you can blow up and
make a big arm, and a big leg, and a big stummick, so anybody couldn't
tell the difference, and they fixed pa up with blowed up clothes of
flesh colored rubber, and but for his chin whiskers you couldn't tell
him from the fat woman. He said he wouldn't cut off his whiskers for
anybody's circus, so they fixed a veil to cover part of his face and put
the fat woman's dress on pa, and put him up beside the skeleton, the
midget and the giant.
Pa said he didn't want to do it, 'cause it seemed too much like fraud,
but they told him the fate of the show depended on our all being willing
to take any part assigned to us, and so pa sat down and began to fan
himself, and tried to look flirty like a woman.
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