As the bare coloured bulbs flickered and then cast their multi-hued effulgence onto the man straining to tighten
the last joint of 'The Carlson Brothers Death-Defying Rollercoaster', the profanity branded "shit!" caused whatever
poetic concept to fade away.
The rumble of the diesel engines at the rear of the Fairground told George Pinner that he'd better get his ass in
gear and lose the overalls, he was first-man on the Waltzers tonight as Vinny Manders was dating his new girl until
nine.
A faint whiff of axel-grease and salty air caught George's nostalgia for a moment and ignoring the far-off sound of
someone testing a speaker-system, he looked out past the Carousel and Switchback and soaked in the evening
of Galveston's coastline.
"Hot-damn, Ah'm lucky" George whispered and immediately regretted it. There was no-need to to just keep using bad
language like that. He wasn't a wrangler out on the wind-swept prairie or a sleeve-frilled cardsharp in a smoky saloon,
he was a Mechanical Engineer who oversaw the construction of a medium-sized Carnival and checked equipment in
the interests of safety.
The twinkling lights from the fishing boats out of Corpus Christie did little to quell the feeling of shame George felt and
wiping his hands on a oil-stained rag, he once more vowed that he would do better next time.
George didn't like cussing, his mother had always warned him that these foul words only led to to inviting the Devil into
your heart and from there, the bad place. The spanner that had slipped during his final check of the tall, metal skeleton
now lay in the damp grass at his feet and picking it up, George resisted the need to curse again.
His back was playing up again.
But it was work and after reading in The Tribune about how the Depression in the north was still leaving families without
a nickel to their name or even a home, he always comforted himself that at least he was earning a living.
"Work is work" George said to the scarred spanner and pocketing the tool, set off for his next task.
Fifteen years... fifteen years of travelling from town-to-town, living out of a trailer and working the carnival.
Taking the shortest route across the Midway and slipping through the gap between the candy-striped tents promising
your future revealed and tattoos-on-the-cheap respectively, George made his way to the caravan marked 'Engineer'
on it's grease-smeared door. Clambering up the two steps, he unconsciously touched the hip-flask in the chest pocket
of his dungarees.
'Just a nip' he told himself as he entered the trailer's darkness, the singing-muscles above his butt were standing in the
border-town called 'Dull Ache' again and George was sure the Sheriff was gonna tell them to move on and find the
northern hamlet of 'Screaming Agony'
Thankfully, the burning sensation of the renowned-gunslinger 'Jim Beam' quietened any exodus...for now.
Imbibing alcohol was another unfavourable pastime that his mother frowned on, but just as the small shelf of Cowboy
paperbacks on the trailer wall could attest, whisky had been deemed a medicine back then and anyway, his Ma never
complained when she watched John Wayne enter a saloon in his movies.
Standing in the shadows of his home, George thought back to those days when inhabiting a room didn't mean it had to
have wheels under it. Quickly splashing some cold water from a porcelain bowl onto his face and holding a colour-faded
towel to his eyes, the lonely man that travelled the highways and byways making women squeal with paid-for fear and
men grit their teeth to quash any signs that bravery are fled, evoked images of his long-ago childhood.
...............................................................
The house that George and his mother had lived in was situated in an area not-too dissimilar from where the Fairground
stood right now. St. Bede's Cove was a solitary community that stemmed from old money and the shipping of exports
to Europe. The ornate mouldings and stone columns of the fine buildings were witness that with hard work and a noble
commitment, a comfortable lifestyle could be achieved.
Of course, that sort of manual work operated farther down the coast where the brusque stevedores loaded the bales
of flax onto splinter-tearing pallets and tugged at their grimy caps if they even caught a glimpse of the affluent folk who
provided such employment.
Or so his mother told him.
George didn't care for visiting the North-east quayside, it smelled of old sweat, sun-dried seaweed and fish-oiled
seagull droppings. One could suppose a young boy would find such a busy place filled with exciting exploits and any
fustian attributes that may have been handed down by a parent would have been left at the dock's main gates in favour
of roaming the shadowy warehouses and snooping among the tide-quenched rock-pools further along the estuary.
'Boys-will-be-boys' it is said, but for George, The coastal holdings of Babbacombe & Pinner Merchant Shipping was
a place he preferred to avoid due to the females who also wandered the dark-rich wooden jetties.
Usually when the sun lowered.
It was that time when his mother had asked him to deliver one of her many letters to a man in the main offices who wore...
...............................................................
George buttoned his shirt and glancing around the trailer for the bandana given to him by Lady ThunderCloud, 'Last
Fortune-Telling Shaman of The Cherokee Tribe' -or something like that, his reminiscing winked out like the Trawler
lamps way-off in the gulf.
The blue and scarlet cloth hung over a battered metal stool and running his hands through his hair, George went out
to waltz the girls into oblivion and listen to tinny rock-and-roll music for the next two hours.
He was a now a Roustabout.
As the same bulbs that found the cussing-man called George -became dull and cooled in the Texas evening air,
the eighty-or-so throng of customers left the Fairground with their hoop-acquired prizes and tongues tasting of toffee
apple.
The Midway became a boulevard of shadows with weathered marquees positioned as a gauntlet of brooding sentinels
for the odd dawdling youngster who never wants the magic to end.
The Ferris wheel watched from the heavens, with it's casted-metal bones dripping with flickering neon and holding the
cradles where lovers kissed at the top. The Ghost Train became a haunted house of empty and the neck-snapping
Dodgem cars no longer clashed like electric-driven Minotaurs.
The aromas of cotton-candy, spun-taffy and diesel fumes drifted off to make way for the smell of fresh coffee, the frying
of sausages and the the odd waft of bourbon. It was supper-time in the homes of the employees at the Carlson Brothers
Carnival.
Lady ThunderCloud placed her feathered headdress on it's hook and striking a kitchen match with the use of her black
nylons that confined her plump thighs, she purred in the exhaled tobacco smoke that slowly rolled towards the curtained
window of her creaking trailer.
George Pinner passed by the abode of 'The Seer Of The Plains' and smiled in the darkness. He didn't need a crystal
ball or illustrated Tarot-cards to know Miss T-Cloud was actually Moira Monroe from Cleveland, a gal who didn't like to
pay her bills.
Access to information via steam from a kettle was a trick George had learned long ago, from a time when he delivered
letters to a bushy-moustached, well-dressed gent who ran his father's business after he'd passed on.
A man with the same coloured eyes has George.
Ignoring his spine calling out to ride the posse out to hunt down the black Stetson-wearing 'Screamin' Agony', the man
carrying the young woman over his shoulder, mused on his earlier interrupted recollections as he made his way towards
The Ghost Train.
Pushing open the garish-painted door where the carriages would take it's passengers into realm of frightening ghouls
and cackling apparitions, George adjusted the dead woman on his shoulder and steeled himself not to reach for his
flask. She wouldn't approve.
A mouth-gaping witch met him as he stepped out of the night and into tunnel. With the power off and only the glow from
phosphorescent-eldritch daubs along the walls and the hellion signs saying 'EXIT' George passed the emaciated ogre
bound in chains of paper-mache without a second glance. His mind was elsewhere.
...............................................................
The man in the flawless tweed-suit had thanked the young George Pinner for the crumpled envelope in his usual manner
by opening a drawer of the desk he always sat behind and handing him a fist-sized cloth bag tightly knotted at its top.
Making sure he observed the lad's ritual of stuffing the jangling sack into his blazer pocket, the soft-spoken, whiskered
man would slip George a single silver coin for his travail.
The nervous boy would politely answer the question of his mother's health and after enduring his hair being ruffled, he
would leave the dock-yard and set-out for his late-afternoon return home.
That was when the whore had appeared and asked what he had in his hand.
...............................................................
"She took my money..." George growled as he dropped the limp body of the slut from the Waltzers onto the floor beside
the tracks. "..She took my money, just like he took my birth-right" he hissed and stared at the guilt-ridden effigy hanging
from the wall painted in putrid green.
The Ghost Train was known for it's wails and moaning, but tonight... the only sound was from a boy scolding his mother
and a secret he would never forgive. Slowly tugging his whisky from his shirt-pocket, George smiled at the remains of
his wax-covered parent and raised the flask as a toast.
"Go to the bad place, bitch" he hissed and grunting from straightening his spine, the smiling man in the colourful bandana
wondered where to engineer this next exhibit in the Hall of Phantoms. Maybe next to the knee-bent begging fiend with the
remains of a moustache next to his mother's remains...?
"Let's saddle-up" George chuckled in the darkness and taking another slug of red-eye, he reached for the woman who'd
winked at him on Vinny's ride,
After all, work-was-work and yer' have to earn a living.
the last joint of 'The Carlson Brothers Death-Defying Rollercoaster', the profanity branded "shit!" caused whatever
poetic concept to fade away.
The rumble of the diesel engines at the rear of the Fairground told George Pinner that he'd better get his ass in
gear and lose the overalls, he was first-man on the Waltzers tonight as Vinny Manders was dating his new girl until
nine.
A faint whiff of axel-grease and salty air caught George's nostalgia for a moment and ignoring the far-off sound of
someone testing a speaker-system, he looked out past the Carousel and Switchback and soaked in the evening
of Galveston's coastline.
"Hot-damn, Ah'm lucky" George whispered and immediately regretted it. There was no-need to to just keep using bad
language like that. He wasn't a wrangler out on the wind-swept prairie or a sleeve-frilled cardsharp in a smoky saloon,
he was a Mechanical Engineer who oversaw the construction of a medium-sized Carnival and checked equipment in
the interests of safety.
The twinkling lights from the fishing boats out of Corpus Christie did little to quell the feeling of shame George felt and
wiping his hands on a oil-stained rag, he once more vowed that he would do better next time.
George didn't like cussing, his mother had always warned him that these foul words only led to to inviting the Devil into
your heart and from there, the bad place. The spanner that had slipped during his final check of the tall, metal skeleton
now lay in the damp grass at his feet and picking it up, George resisted the need to curse again.
His back was playing up again.
But it was work and after reading in The Tribune about how the Depression in the north was still leaving families without
a nickel to their name or even a home, he always comforted himself that at least he was earning a living.
"Work is work" George said to the scarred spanner and pocketing the tool, set off for his next task.
Fifteen years... fifteen years of travelling from town-to-town, living out of a trailer and working the carnival.
Taking the shortest route across the Midway and slipping through the gap between the candy-striped tents promising
your future revealed and tattoos-on-the-cheap respectively, George made his way to the caravan marked 'Engineer'
on it's grease-smeared door. Clambering up the two steps, he unconsciously touched the hip-flask in the chest pocket
of his dungarees.
'Just a nip' he told himself as he entered the trailer's darkness, the singing-muscles above his butt were standing in the
border-town called 'Dull Ache' again and George was sure the Sheriff was gonna tell them to move on and find the
northern hamlet of 'Screaming Agony'
Thankfully, the burning sensation of the renowned-gunslinger 'Jim Beam' quietened any exodus...for now.
Imbibing alcohol was another unfavourable pastime that his mother frowned on, but just as the small shelf of Cowboy
paperbacks on the trailer wall could attest, whisky had been deemed a medicine back then and anyway, his Ma never
complained when she watched John Wayne enter a saloon in his movies.
Standing in the shadows of his home, George thought back to those days when inhabiting a room didn't mean it had to
have wheels under it. Quickly splashing some cold water from a porcelain bowl onto his face and holding a colour-faded
towel to his eyes, the lonely man that travelled the highways and byways making women squeal with paid-for fear and
men grit their teeth to quash any signs that bravery are fled, evoked images of his long-ago childhood.
...............................................................
The house that George and his mother had lived in was situated in an area not-too dissimilar from where the Fairground
stood right now. St. Bede's Cove was a solitary community that stemmed from old money and the shipping of exports
to Europe. The ornate mouldings and stone columns of the fine buildings were witness that with hard work and a noble
commitment, a comfortable lifestyle could be achieved.
Of course, that sort of manual work operated farther down the coast where the brusque stevedores loaded the bales
of flax onto splinter-tearing pallets and tugged at their grimy caps if they even caught a glimpse of the affluent folk who
provided such employment.
Or so his mother told him.
George didn't care for visiting the North-east quayside, it smelled of old sweat, sun-dried seaweed and fish-oiled
seagull droppings. One could suppose a young boy would find such a busy place filled with exciting exploits and any
fustian attributes that may have been handed down by a parent would have been left at the dock's main gates in favour
of roaming the shadowy warehouses and snooping among the tide-quenched rock-pools further along the estuary.
'Boys-will-be-boys' it is said, but for George, The coastal holdings of Babbacombe & Pinner Merchant Shipping was
a place he preferred to avoid due to the females who also wandered the dark-rich wooden jetties.
Usually when the sun lowered.
It was that time when his mother had asked him to deliver one of her many letters to a man in the main offices who wore...
...............................................................
George buttoned his shirt and glancing around the trailer for the bandana given to him by Lady ThunderCloud, 'Last
Fortune-Telling Shaman of The Cherokee Tribe' -or something like that, his reminiscing winked out like the Trawler
lamps way-off in the gulf.
The blue and scarlet cloth hung over a battered metal stool and running his hands through his hair, George went out
to waltz the girls into oblivion and listen to tinny rock-and-roll music for the next two hours.
He was a now a Roustabout.
As the same bulbs that found the cussing-man called George -became dull and cooled in the Texas evening air,
the eighty-or-so throng of customers left the Fairground with their hoop-acquired prizes and tongues tasting of toffee
apple.
The Midway became a boulevard of shadows with weathered marquees positioned as a gauntlet of brooding sentinels
for the odd dawdling youngster who never wants the magic to end.
The Ferris wheel watched from the heavens, with it's casted-metal bones dripping with flickering neon and holding the
cradles where lovers kissed at the top. The Ghost Train became a haunted house of empty and the neck-snapping
Dodgem cars no longer clashed like electric-driven Minotaurs.
The aromas of cotton-candy, spun-taffy and diesel fumes drifted off to make way for the smell of fresh coffee, the frying
of sausages and the the odd waft of bourbon. It was supper-time in the homes of the employees at the Carlson Brothers
Carnival.
Lady ThunderCloud placed her feathered headdress on it's hook and striking a kitchen match with the use of her black
nylons that confined her plump thighs, she purred in the exhaled tobacco smoke that slowly rolled towards the curtained
window of her creaking trailer.
George Pinner passed by the abode of 'The Seer Of The Plains' and smiled in the darkness. He didn't need a crystal
ball or illustrated Tarot-cards to know Miss T-Cloud was actually Moira Monroe from Cleveland, a gal who didn't like to
pay her bills.
Access to information via steam from a kettle was a trick George had learned long ago, from a time when he delivered
letters to a bushy-moustached, well-dressed gent who ran his father's business after he'd passed on.
A man with the same coloured eyes has George.
Ignoring his spine calling out to ride the posse out to hunt down the black Stetson-wearing 'Screamin' Agony', the man
carrying the young woman over his shoulder, mused on his earlier interrupted recollections as he made his way towards
The Ghost Train.
Pushing open the garish-painted door where the carriages would take it's passengers into realm of frightening ghouls
and cackling apparitions, George adjusted the dead woman on his shoulder and steeled himself not to reach for his
flask. She wouldn't approve.
A mouth-gaping witch met him as he stepped out of the night and into tunnel. With the power off and only the glow from
phosphorescent-eldritch daubs along the walls and the hellion signs saying 'EXIT' George passed the emaciated ogre
bound in chains of paper-mache without a second glance. His mind was elsewhere.
...............................................................
The man in the flawless tweed-suit had thanked the young George Pinner for the crumpled envelope in his usual manner
by opening a drawer of the desk he always sat behind and handing him a fist-sized cloth bag tightly knotted at its top.
Making sure he observed the lad's ritual of stuffing the jangling sack into his blazer pocket, the soft-spoken, whiskered
man would slip George a single silver coin for his travail.
The nervous boy would politely answer the question of his mother's health and after enduring his hair being ruffled, he
would leave the dock-yard and set-out for his late-afternoon return home.
That was when the whore had appeared and asked what he had in his hand.
...............................................................
"She took my money..." George growled as he dropped the limp body of the slut from the Waltzers onto the floor beside
the tracks. "..She took my money, just like he took my birth-right" he hissed and stared at the guilt-ridden effigy hanging
from the wall painted in putrid green.
The Ghost Train was known for it's wails and moaning, but tonight... the only sound was from a boy scolding his mother
and a secret he would never forgive. Slowly tugging his whisky from his shirt-pocket, George smiled at the remains of
his wax-covered parent and raised the flask as a toast.
"Go to the bad place, bitch" he hissed and grunting from straightening his spine, the smiling man in the colourful bandana
wondered where to engineer this next exhibit in the Hall of Phantoms. Maybe next to the knee-bent begging fiend with the
remains of a moustache next to his mother's remains...?
"Let's saddle-up" George chuckled in the darkness and taking another slug of red-eye, he reached for the woman who'd
winked at him on Vinny's ride,
After all, work-was-work and yer' have to earn a living.
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.
