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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…
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