CHARACTER ASSASSINATION - by Johnny Meah

     Let me quickly put your minds at ease by telling you that this isn't a diatribe about false accusations. Most will agree that as the political campaigns heat up, we're already overdosed on that sort of thing. The character, (actually plural, characters), that are being assassinated here are the colorful oddballs of showbusiness past. The executioner is that venerable cartoon we know as Father Time.

     Of course the show world never had an exclusive on characters. Not too long ago every occupation was brimming over with strange, idiosyncratic souls that were as colorful as an explosion in a paint factory. Writers like Damon Runyon reveled in them and managed to bestow a whimsical dignity upon them.

     For whatever reason, true characters have become an endangered species and we are steadily creeping toward a homogenized society.

     Much like the sterilization of Times Square, (you'll note that I'm behaving myself and not using the "D" word), the carnival business has lost most of the wonderful characters that made it interesting. When carnivals started patterning themselves after corporately owned theme parks, the erosion of the characters that inhabited them began. The glib, flashy folks that operated gaming concessions were replaced by salaried MacDonaldesque youngsters. Girl shows and sideshows evaporated and those who operated them or performed in them faded into oblivion, leaving behind a sort of lobotomized version of a once exciting industry.

     So where did these people go, guys with names like Slim the Pipe, Hot Half Harry, Commadore Dick or Rumbling Red? Some years ago I saw a film called Tin Men. The story revolved around a group of aluminum siding huxters and it was almost like attending a homecoming event for me. For all practical purposes, these were the same guys who populated carnival concessions in a bygone era and whoever wrote and directed the film had nailed them right down to their last colorful quirk!

     I grew up around and pretty much wallowed in carnival characters, happily absorbing them like a sponge. Of course, in that absorption process, you guzzle everything, not just isolated parts. One of those absorbed categories was weird words and speech patterns, the result of which produced a mental vault of cryptic words and phrases and a rapidly diminishing audience who understand them. Phrases like "Oshiki Koshiki," (drunk), "Taking it on the Arkadelphia," (leaving somewhere unannounced, usually in the middle of the night and frequently with the company funds), or the granddaddy of all nonsequitous space fillers, "Strom." Strom can be a noun, verb, adjective or whatever you want it to be, I.E., "- I stashed the strom," or "I strommed Gladys last night."

     Also thrown into the mix are obscure ethnic slang words. There was a Jewish flat store agent who was called, (and answered too), Nofka Harris. "That's an unusual sir name, Nofka," I commented to a co-worker, Benny Glassberg. He smiled. "It's not a name, it means whore. Harris will do anything for money."

     Interestingly, there were a lot of people like Harris with disparaging nicknames like Lenny the Puke, Crazy Morris and Pisser Scully. Although there were some who didn't exactly snap to attention upon hearing their sobriquet, they rarely became enbattled about them.

     Nicknames that are spawned from conformity usually assure that the bearer is a little left of center and, therefore, qualifies as a true character. I freely admit to being a lifetime, card carrying member of the character club, having enjoyed or at least tolerated, several nicknames that I've earned by virtue of sheer quirkiness. Being a rather frugal soul, (cheap by standards of some), I've built or repaired many things out of scrap.

     One day, while in the process of hammering the dents out of something or other, a friend wandered up and asked why I didn't buy new material. I gave him my "high price of hardware" lecture, whereupon he shook his head and commented, "Junkyard Johnny."

     Several years later, when I was clowning on a circus in Texas, the ringmaster came to me before the season's opening performance. "I want to introduce you to the audience," he said, "What's your name?"

     "Johnny Meah." I replied.

     "No, I mean what's your clown name?"

     This fellow was fairly new to the business and evidently wasn't aware that most circus clowns of that era didn't use contrived names. He looked terribly disappointed, so I said, "O.K., how about Junkyard Johnny?"

     The name stuck for the rest of my clowning career.