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Paw Lawton on the Road

I started out quite a few years ago working out west on what we affectionately called the “Donner Dinner Theater Circuit.” The venues were in Virginia City, Carson City, and Reno, Nevada; then over the Donner Pass and into Sacramento and on to Oakland and San Francisco, California. I was doing five shows a day on a squeaky stage set-up in an old revival tent we converted into the “Dinty Moore Canvas Show Place.”

“You can call a mule a horse but it still kicks like a jackass,” my dad used to say. This was the case with the Dinty Moore Canvas Show Place. We were happy that Dinty Moore paid for the tent and repairs but it was far from a show place. Our chairs were a mismatched grouping of 400 wooden and metal folding butt-traps we’d acquired from auctions and sales along the way. But it was essentially free, had an auxiliary tent for sleeping and was mostly waterproof so we didn’t complain.

On the bill with me was a girl singing duo putatively from Ireland (or Chicago) who would dance and sing songs from the ‘Old Sod’; a comedian/orator from Denver; a juggler from San Francisco and ventriloquist. The girls would open and close the show. I was on last before the close and depending upon his sobriety, the ventriloquist would either go right after the opening or just before me.

We set down in Reno for a one week run. Our tent was set up just on the other side of the tracks from where the Flamingo Hilton is now. There was always something magical about Reno ? and there still is. A lot kinder than Vegas and yet big enough to provide new audiences for each show. We had heard that some of the hotels were sending their people to judge whether any of our acts could make it in the lounges. We were excited and sober ? except for the ventriloquist. He was driven to the bottle more in Reno than I had ever seen him. It wasn’t just the access to liquor, he’d had plenty available in the casinos of Virginia City and Carson City, there was something about Reno that caused him to move into the bottle.

When a magician drinks too much, he might slur but he can usually get his tricks to work ? assuming they’re self-working or require no sleights. But when a ventriloquist drinks, it ruins the act. This guy couldn’t pronounce one single word in his routine. The dummy sounded drunk and he sounded even…

Paw Lawton on the Road

I knew I didn’t want him on right before me, but neither did the juggler or the comedian. It was a tough spot. We didn’t have a manager per se. We all had equal input into the show. We’d share the costs and ticket haul evenly. So we didn’t have one person to fire the ventriloquist. If he was going to be gone, we’d have to all agree to boot him. But because the vent was the guy that got us the tent and the sponsorship, we couldn’t handle this too harshly.

One of the Carey sisters suggested we help him sober up by restricting his access to booze.

It turned out that was tougher than we thought. He had bottles hidden all over the place. There was even a hip flask on his dummy. Being in Reno, alcohol was available and apparently his need to drink grew dramatically. We tried to do what would now be called an “intervention.” We explained that the drinking was keeping him from the big time, affecting his timing and, said Shelia Carey, “making your dummy sound like a drunk.”

He told us he didn’t care. He had no choice. His heart was broken and there was nothing left but the bottle. Eileen Carey was much more mercenary than her lovely younger sister. “Why don’t you just switch to drugs? At least, then, you won’t slur and stink so much.”

I thought I was in the circus of the insane because the juggler agreed with Eileen. “You could do airplane glue or some solvent,” he said.

I was shaking my head in disbelief. “That can’t be the answer,” I said loudly. “We need to help him find a way to deal with his broken heart or whatever is driving him to drink or get altered.”

“Yeah,” said Eileen, “but until we get it figured out, why not have him switch to something that won’t smell offensive or make his act incoherent, like Sterno squeezings.”

Shelia joined me in the argument against substituting alcohol for inhalants or drugs. It got quite animated and the ventriloquist left. In the circus world it’s called “blowing the show.” In our case, I think he left for good reasons. I’m not saying his heart wasn’t broken, it was. I’m not saying drinking like he was drinking isn’t bad, it is. I just think he was right to get himself out of the circle of madmen and women we composed.

I heard later that he was working security at one of the hotels in Laughlin, Nevada. He had given up show business and I presumed because of his new position, he was sober and off drugs. I’m happy for him. Eileen and the juggler got married, divorced two years later, and remarried. They are still on the road and doing trade shows. Shelia and I were an item for a while but we went our separate ways.

There was one person I didn’t identify in the colloquy between the vent and the gang. The orator/comedian that remained silent during the intervention and just kept his thoughts to himself, later went on to serve a western state in the U.S. Congress. He and his new wife moved to Washington, D.C. where he is still serving today.

The Congressman met his new wife, ironically, after one of our shows in Reno and theirs was one of those fairy book romances. Their eyes met while he was on stage and it was love. She fell so hard for this guy that she forgot about the reason she was attending the show; to see her fianc? perform his ventriloquist act.