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Otis remained in Barnesville for the next fifteen years, taking mail order courses on a variety of subjects and selling newspapers in town square. He helped his father repair neighborhood cars and pickup trucks, his contribution being instructional. Through his correspondence school training and armed with a repair manual for the vehicle being worked on, he'd be hoisted up in sight of the problem area, then orally guide his father or brother through the actual repair operation.

He also learned to repair small electronic appliances and motors. This he'd do mostly by himself using his mouth and two functioning digits.

Otis bought a car, a DeSoto I seem to recall, and orchestrated the outfitting of it so he could drive it. He got his driver's license, amazing a rather skeptical Department Of Motor Vehicles examiner with his driving abilities. He had come full circle from the question regarding his destination with the goat wagon. Yes, he could get to Macon, but then what? Could he make even a semblance of a living anywhere other than Barnesville, Georgia? Could he make enough money to help ease the financial burden at home?

It was September and the County Fair opened its annual run in Barnesville. Most fairs in the south were now integrated; however, Otis had only been to the "colored fair" a few years before. It had been fun for Otis. A friend had pulled him around in his wagon. Even with the promise of his friend holding him, the ride operators wouldn't allow him to board the whirling amusement devices. Still, he enjoyed the fair from his own vantage point.

His neighbors would shout and wave to him. His friend bought him cotton candy and someone boosted him up on a game counter to throw (or, in Otis' case, blow) darts at balloons. Otis was very proficient at darts. He could place one in his mouth sideways and blow it very accurately at any given target. That day he won the game's limit of three stuffed toys.

Of course, the "colored fair" was played by a lesser carnival company than the "white fair" usually a week apart, the first (naturally) being the white version.

But now the fair was integrated and slowly regaining it's attendance which dropped to less than half when they "started leaving them niggers in."

Otis could hold his own in the face of bigotry but, like most sensible people, tried to avoid unnecessary confrontations. He had mixed emotions when asked by a group of his friends if he'd like to go to the fair. After much nagging, he did, however agree to go.

There was no way he could have known that the canvas-colored version of Macon was out there waiting for him.

Since arriving earlier in the evening, Otis had decided that this fair wasn't going to be much fun. Small groups of blacks clustered together and moved apprehensively through the mostly white attendees. One of Otis' friends confided that a group of white school toughs were circulating through the fairgrounds trying to provoke a fight with any blacks they encountered. No, this wasn't going to be much fun at all.

They had stopped to buy sodas when Otis jerked his head toward an area of the midway beyond them and asked, "What's down there?"

"Don't think we should go down there," one of his friends commented with a frown.

"Why's that?" Otis inquired.

"That's where those hootchie-cootchie shows are."

"Yeah?" Otis beamed.

"They don't like us looking at them white ladies."

"Oh," Otis said dejectedly, then regaining enthusiasm, "maybe we could just kinda peek."

Otis persuaded his cohorts to at least venture a short way down the forbidden path, and they were passing an array of huge canvas paintings in front of one of the shows. Suddenly a man standing on a platform in front of the paintings began beating on a bass drum and hollering over a microphone.

"This where the hootchie-cootchie ladies are?" Otis grinned.

"No," his friend said uneasily. "We should go back," and began to turn Otis' wagon around.

"Wait. Wait." Otis said irritably "I want to see. What is this place?"

As Otis related the story to me, he recalled his friend looking down at him strangely sad look and mumbling a reply. He asked his friend to repeat what he said.

"It's-freak people."

At this point in the story I think it would be improper to speculate on Otis' reaction to his friends' obvious discomfort. I know that Otis was always very insightful concerning people's inner emotions-as he would be at this moment regarding my efforts in trying to relate this portion of the story to you.

They remained well in the back of the small tip that was gathering near the platform where the man was shouting and beating on the drum.

"Gonna bring 'em all out now-those strange odd and unusual people," the drum beater said. A few pretty average looking people in costumes were now joining him on the platform.

Otis looked up at the paintings that were flapping in the night breeze. There was a picture of a man swallowing a sword, another of a person who was supposed to be half man, half woman. At home Otis had a book called Medical Anomalies that showed a picture of a person with breasts and a penis and he wondered if this could be the same person. In the same book was a photo of a white man whose body looked something like his own. He bought the book at a smelling little store called Trash and Treasures and had it hidden away in his room. From time to time he'd feel an inexplicable urge to dig it out and look through it. Now he seemed to be confronted with a tent full of curious people from the book which, like the book itself, made him feel "creepy".

The talker, actually the owner of the sideshow, ceased his drum thumping and advanced to the front of the bally platform to begin the third opening of the night. This was the last fair of the season for him. The year had not been good, and he was relieved that this was the season's closing engagement.

Throughout the "opening" of his eyes kept returning to a small group of blacks hovering toward the rear of the "tip". In their midst was a studious looking black man seated, or so it appeared, in a wagon. The man's face was so serenely expressionless that at first he thought that they were hauling the bust of George Washington Carver around. This all changed when a young black girl holding a snake joined him on the platform. The statue now broke into an ear-to-ear grin.

When he finished the opening, turning a disappointingly small group of customers into the tent, his interest in the man in the wagon greatly intensified. Now, unblocked by the crowd that had stood in front of him, it became clear that the man's head was supported by something that looked like the body of a poorly crafted ventriloquist's dummy.

He climbed down from the platform and made his way toward the man in the wagon and his entourage, them eyeing him more gravely with each step.

That was the night Otis met Dick Burnett or "Commodore Dick" as he was referred to in sideshow circles. The beginning of a profitable, if sometimes rocky, three years' association that would forever change the life of the young black man from Barnesville, Georgia.

Burnett, an affable actor-turned-midway-showman, enjoyed a reputation of being the premier promoter of freaks in the industry. He possessed the uncanny ability to approach even the most unlikely candidates and somehow convince them that sitting on a sideshow platform was second only to a career in Hollywood. If you or I ever attempted what he seemed to accomplish with ease, we'd have nursed many a black eye. ("Hi there, Hate to interrupt your dinner, but I just wanted to offer your wife a job as a sideshow fat lady!" As I said, many a black eye.)

To his credit, Dick did not ply his promotional talents on the mentally handicapped. His star attractions were usually people that were socially and/or economically disadvantaged and looking for any ray of sunshine that could find. As a result, at a time where most sideshow operators were lucky to have one bona fide "feature freak," Commodore Dick usually had three or four.

Strangely enough, Burnett never had a good route, despite a show literally bulging at the seams with acts and oddities. When other operators were playing major fairs and cranking out big grosses with less of a show. Burnett would be playing spots like, well-Barnesville. As a result, his equipment usually looked a little scruffy and paydays were sometimes missed. Despite Commodore Dick's shortcomings, most of his help remained loyal to him, even upon discovering that the other operators paid appreciably more.

Otis joined Burnett's show the following spring. Although it was yet another mediocre tour for the show, he faired far better then he had in Barnesville and returned home at the end of the season with money in his pocket and new outlook on life.