after reading the following article, i of course thought of geek love. it's a book i devoured years ago. a wonderous odd read. not your grrrl and boy next door read. i think it's time for a re-read
Step Right Up, Ladies and Gents, to See the End of an Oddity
American Album
Step Right Up, Ladies and Gents, to See the End of an Oddity
By CHARLIE LeDUFF
YORK, Pa. — Ward Hall, the King of the Midway, has perpetrated perhaps his greatest illusion. He has risen from the dead. He has collected up his big top, rustled up the midget, dusted off the rubber fetuses and beat it back out on the road. Once again, he is the geriatric front man of the last traveling freak show in America.
Retirement just didn’t sit right.
“I live in Florida but I never summered in Florida, and I discovered it’s too damn hot,” says Mr. Hall, standing inside his trailer in a back lot of the York Fair in Pennsylvania. He is in a white suit, stained on the elbows and rump. Some sequins have fallen off the lapel.
His freak show, the World of Wonders, has been shoved by the organizers to the back corner of the fairgrounds, next to the horse stables.
“I missed the road life anyway,” he goes on, his elegant vaudevillian verbiage nearly drowned out by the sound system of the whirling Himalaya thrill ride. “I missed my friends. I missed the money. This is what I am.”
And, returning to the nation’s state fair circuit after a full season off, Mr. Hall has discovered something he already knew. When he goes, it will be the end of an old-time American art form.........
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