See You on the Backlot Read Free Page A

that’s one less dollar
we
can take – but Big Mike likes to keep it friendly between all the concessions and shows. Guess he figures everyone’s got a stake in making sure the whole carnival does well. Anyways, those who can’t cut it tend not to show at the next location. Sometimes Pops says Big Mike is living in the past, thinking that folks these days will come out to a carnival filled with so many ways to take them for as much money as possible. He says people would ratherwatch television or movies than leave their houses. That if they want entertainment they’ll head to a theme park or spend an afternoon watching elephants in an air-conditioned arena, rather than come out to a carnival. Pops says that these days ain’t nothing compared with what it used to be like, back in what he calls the ‘salad days’.
    I don’t understand that saying. Never have. Something old people say to each other I guess. Doesn’t matter, either. All that matters is that without Big Mike we don’t have a show. And no show means no money.
    Anyways – along with renting the space, there’s always these other dings. Dings are expenses the greenies don’t count on, like extra insurance, cut-ins (that’s hooking us up to the genny – the generator on the Light Truck – so we can have electricity for our top), parking for the trucks, maybe some special IDs or other nonsense the lot has cooked up to get some extra cash from everyone. Then if they decide to do some Dollar Day or other special, we lose our shirtson top of that… Well we just have to take it, because by the time we find out about it, it’s too late to pass off on the place and find a new place to stake. A show like ours doesn’t do well barnstorming – that’s when we set up somewhere with no notice. We need a carnival on a lot to make our nut.
    Then there’s the payoffs, too. It doesn’t matter how clean our show is, some local politician or sheriff is always standing there with their hand out to help get us through an inspection or some such. Usually there’s a patch, one of the carnies, who takes care of all that by making ‘donations’… but sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes there’s a do-gooder in a town who decides that all carnivals are nothing but rip-off games, with flat joints – that’s a rigged game set-up – and the like, or immoral, with the freak or girly shows. Or even worse, cruel to animals – as if there were any animals with us that couldn’t hold their own if they needed to. And I’ve never known any animal show that was really cruel to any creature in its care. Well, if some townie just decides he wants to squeeze our teats, then that isjust what he’s going to do until he gets wet. It is easier to pay them off just to leave us alone. Shoot, most of the mooches WANT to be ripped off! They expect it – that’s part of the reason they’re here in the first place.
    All right where was I? OK, so once we’re through paying out for all that just to set up, we might find out we have to drop off banners at the end of our line because we were shorted space. Maybe, if it’s not too much space we’ve lost, we can crescent – which means we bend our banner line – just to get it all up there. It doesn’t look as good, though. And this show is all about looking good. That’s what my pops says, anyways.
    That all matters, of course, because we have to pay out to the head office – that’s Big Mike – for every ticket we sell. The office has people all over the lot, checking on numbers and making sure no one is shorting the house. What we get left after all that is our end. That and what we sell inside. See, that money they
know
we’re getting, but they don’t know how much, so we can keep some back before the first count.
    Of course, we’re not only taking the marks’ money at the door! Once the rubes are under the canvas, we got a few more ways to shake a couple bucks out of them. About halfway through we bring out our