[J. Tithonus Pednaud]

Ha, thanks, but I'm just living life.

Another carnival related story.

Usually, at the end of the season, we would be in Toronto at the CNE. The odditorium owner lived in Toronto and so he would host an ‘end of the season’ party. He would invite a select group of carnival folks to attend the festivities and we usually ended up with a rather unique group. A few years back it was no different. I was still on payroll so I’m counting this as a work story. I was more or less working security and making sure no one exited the residence with any valuables as my boss had a pretty impressive collection of the macabre.

Anyway.

I remember Fingers was there. He was an old time carnie. He was stick skinny, had a lazy eye, no teeth and he missing a bunch of fingers. I think he had five fingers in total spread across two hands. Way back in he used to work spook houses as an inside runner - before the carnival banned that sort of thing. I used to invite the guy over to the odditorium when I was working to shake hands with the folks waiting in line. Believe it or not, despite the looks of the guy he had a lady friend in just about every city we stopped in. Of course, I use the word lady loosely. The women were troglodytes but he was no George Clooney and wasn’t picky. I can remember that the woman he brought to this party was a whole new sort of gross. I could not, for the life of me, stare directly at her.

This coming from the guy who worked the freak show.

This was a small group and there were a few hot ladies as well. I was pretty much the center of attention as this was pretty much the first time I was out of character in the history of the carnival. So, while a lot of the ladies knew of me, few knew anything at all about me. I had the mysterious enigma factor working for me and I was working it.

About halfway through the night a fellow by the name of Levi showed up. Now Levi was a friend and was a professional strongman. He was the splitting image of a 1920’s strongman. He was bald-headed, sported a fine handlebar moustache and a portly gut. He was a salt of the earth type character and an easy going guy full of humour. He actually has a mistletoe sprig tattooed just below his navel.

Now, Levi brought along a friend of his and, for the life of me, I can’t remember his name. I knew him by reputation though. He was the epitome of every bad carnie stereotype. He was loud, rude, obnoxious, and constantly intoxicated. During the course of the night, he got worse and worse.

I eventually pulled Levi aside and asked him to watch his friend. He was a little embarrassed and promised to rein him in. Unfortunately, I eventually had to pull the bastard himself aside to warn him about his voice and antics. He responded by going into a tirade about how I was ‘hogging all the sluts’ and that I was nothing but a goon. Fingers stepped up and defended me, which just angered him further. He then threw a beer bottle at my head. Which connected with a thud, then bounced and shattered on the floor.

Now, believe it or not, I was still pretty calm. I’ve had worse happen to me in my years as a bouncer. So, I simply asked him to leave. As I was doing this he swung at me. I dodged, punched him and knocked him on his ass. I started to wrestle with him for a bit. My main concern was that there were a lot of breakables in the place and there was a room filled with even more breakables to navigate before the front door. I eventually just worked my away around to his back. Got him in a bear hug, hoisted him off the ground and walked him, kicking and screaming to the front door. At that point I let him go and he immediately swung on me again. He connected and I lost it. I took him down and choked him out with a forearm.

So, I was on the front stoop, the majority of the party goers were watching me choke this guy out, listening to him gurgle, and a couple of people actually applauded. But the funniest bit of the evening was yet to come.

So we left Levi to console his buddy on the front porch. A few minutes later, the guy had come to and he started yelling. Calling me out and trashing my boss’s name (which he actually turned out to be right on). But this was about 2 am and his antics were really getting out of hand. He picked up a brick and was about to toss it when Levi finally grabbed him and tossed him like a bear slapping a salmon.

‘I can’t take you anywhere!” Levi screamed in anger. ‘You embarrass me!’

And with that Levi stretched his arms forward and began to slowly lumber towards his buddy. He had tears in his eyes as he clomped forward like Frankenstein’s Monster. He was going to choke the guy. He was going to choke the guy very slowly.

His buddy just looked at him, puzzled. Not really sure what was going on. Levi was about a foot away when the guy realized what was up but he got this look on his face and it was like he was frozen in fear.

Then, the world’s slowest strangling commenced.

To this day, I have never again seen a man be choked out in such a way. I was like something out of Ed Wood. Here was Tor Johnson neck wringing a drunk and barely flailing carnie while big tears streamed down his face. It was Of Mice and Men, it was epic and it was the funniest thing I have ever witnessed due to its sheer absurdity. As the drunkard's face turned more and more purple, his ineffective flailing ceased and he went limp.

Levi released the body of his best friend into a curb-side heap. He then just sat of the front step and listened to the gurgling of his unconscious chum.…and then the gentle giant sobbed uncontrollably.