NOSTALGIA STEP RIGHT UP!

I CAME TO the duck pond in a sort of natural progression. I had parked cars during the Texas State Fair since I was 10, as my grandparents lived a scant five doors from one entrance. And although parking cars was a fun enough job at age 10, it was rather limited in economic potential. My grandparents’ yard would only hold eight vehicles. I topped out the night that I induced a motorcycle club to use my facilities. I collected a buck apiece from six bikers and still had room for six cars.

So when O.T. Crawley of O.T. Crawley Enterprises stopped me as I was nailing up my signs one year and asked if I would like to work for him, I didn’t even ask what I would be doing. O.T. Crawley was one of the giants of the fairgrounds. He owned at least a half-dozen popcorn stands and three duck ponds.

Since I was new, Mr. Crawley explained, I would start out selling popcorn at the zoo. The zoo stand wasn’t a big moneymaker, he said, but he was sure that I could make some money if I worked it right, pointing out to potential customers that they could feed popcorn and peanuts to the zoo’s inhabitants. I was on commission, with a minimum of $10 a day guaranteed-to be paid, in cash, at the end of the day.

Well, it was slow at the zoo. I used every business wile that my 14-year-old brain could conjure up. I popped fresh popcorn every 30 minutes, figuring that the smell would attract customers. It did. I sold a bag to everyone in the zoo every time. (Two or three a day.)

Finally, the stand wouldn’t hold any more popped corn, and my entrepreneurial enthusiasm began to wane. So I settled down and watched Romeo, the zoo’s lion. Romeo’s cage was a mere 20 yards from mine, and he was at least as bored as I was. He paced back and forth, back and forth. And I watched.

Romeo was zoo-born and reared. He knew nothing of the Serengeti plains and chasing down swift gnu. But, as it turned out, Romeo knew something about humans. In midafternoon, just as the heat was making me think of equatorial Africa, a kid about 16 or so and his girlfriend came to the zoo. I suppose they were trying to find a quiet place to be alone. The girl took an immediate liking to Romeo. The kid, of swaggering age, didn’t like any competition, even if it was just a caged lion.

So he bought a bag of peanuts and proceeded to torment Romeo by bouncing them off the lion’s haunches as he paced. His girlfriend’s entreaties did no good. But Romeo knew how to handle such tormentors. He stopped his parading, turned his back on the kid and let loose a yellow stream that was right on target. Apparently Romeo had been storing up all day-and lions have considerable range. The kid’s first reaction was to run backward, but he had to run 30 feet or so before he was beyond the stream, and by then he was soaked.

Romeo then sauntered over to the far corner of his cage and lay down. The kid’s girlfriend was almost hysterical with laughter (I was practically rolling myself). The appearance of a zoo guard ruled out any counteraction on the kid’s part, and he and his girl soon departed, with lots of “Shut up”s from him.

About dusk, Mr. Crawley made an appearance and asked how I was doing. After I told him, he decided that I could help out in one the duck ponds, as there probably wouldn’t be much action in the zoo after dark.

The duck pond, a State Fair staple of the early Sixties, was a game of chance (a fat chance for the customer, but nevertheless a game of chance). The contestant would pay the proprietor a dime and would be handed a small “fishing pole” with which to hook a wooden duck from the “pond.” A number on the bottom of the duck corresponded to one of the prizes along the back wall. The lucky fisherman catching a 2, for example, would walk away as the owner of a Chinese finger puzzle. An 8 was good for a plastic bird on a stick.

Theoretically, an 11 would win O.T. Craw-ley’s grand prize, a 10-inch-tall basic brown teddy bear. There was a row of teddy bears-the top row, of course-across the back of the booth. They were all wrapped in cellophane. During the two weeks of the fair, not a single lucky fisherman took home a bear. The same bears were clinging to the top shelf in the fair’s last hour as had been placed there at the beginning. In fact, I was told by Frookie, O.T. Crawley’s main man, the same bears had been there when he started with the firm four State Fairs back.

I knew Frookie from school, where he had the distinction of being the only ninth-grader who was ever sent home at 8:45 a.m. for being drunk. (Frookie held many distinctions by the time he was finally graduated-at age 21. He is the only person I know who was deferred from the military draft because he was still in the ninth grade.) Frookie didn’t exactly apply himself, but he was a very wise kid. His father owned a bar, and he had four older brothers and two older sisters. He had worked in the bar and had been educated by his siblings. And he had been around.

When Mr. Crawley turned me over to Frookie, I was told to yell out, “Hey, hey, hey. Come in, you win. One for a dime, three for a quarter. Prize every time. Hey, hey, hey.” I guess I did all right, because then Frookie taught me his tricks.

The first was designed to appeal to the manly pride of the basic rube. Frookie would watch for a young teen couple who were hopelessly in love. “Hey,” he would yell at the boy. “Bring your sister over here and win her a teddy bear.” Sometimes this elicited a shy smile and a giggle. It almost always elicited several dimes spent trying to win the elusive bear. But occasionally the conversation would continue.

“She ain’t my sister.”

“Well, she’s awfully young to be your mother.”

“She’s my girl.”

“Oh, I see. Well, bring your girl on over here and win her a teddy bear.”

Sometimes, when business was slow, Frookie would yell out, “Free, free, free.” Naturally, this would turn heads. Then Frookie would follow with, “One for a dime, free for a quarter.” Sometimes the wit would impress the witless and we would net a few dimes or quarters.



THE MAIN DUCK pond, where I helped Frookie every night and sometimes all day when things were particularly slow at the zoo, was across the walkway from a Guess-Your-Weight enterprise. Until I heard Frookie’s explanation, its operator, a silver-haired man of about 50, was a real puzzle. He would pull the canvas off his shelves of plaster dogs and cats, plug in his microphone and go into his routine when the grounds opened at 10. Then, about 11, he would close everything up, laboriously hanging the heavy canvas back up over his shelves and covering his scales. Then he would disappear through the nearest gate. After about 10 minutes, he would return and reopen. About 30 minutes later, he would repeat the ritual. The 30-minutes-open, 10-minutes-closed schedule would continue until the 11 p.m. closing time.

His name was Headache, Frookie said, and he was a drunk. As soon as he had enough money for two beers, he would close, cross the street, down two quick brews and then return to repeat the ritual. He was certainly a drunk of habit. His routine never varied, no matter how big the crowd or how great the potential for more bucks. More than once I saw him close with customers begging to have their weight guessed and their money taken.

Frookie also taught me to talk like a Yankee. He said a Yankee accent impressed the potential customers. He said it made them think we were exotic, and he added that it worked wonders with the girls. It seemed to. At least once every night, Frookie would talk some girl into meeting him behind the booth, and I would have to hold the pond by myself for a while.

Once, Frookie talked his big brother Zafer into helping us out. Then the two of us convinced two girls that they should meet us in back of the tent. We spent 20 minutes trying to get friendly while they spent 20 minutes trying to talk us out of a teddy bear. An offer of a bird on a stick got us nowhere. Finally Zafer yanked us both back into the booth.

Toward the end of the run-the big Friday-night, everybody-in-a-Future-Farmers-jacket-gets-in-for-half-price special- Frookie’s Yankee accent got him in trouble. Or almost got him in trouble.

A rather cute young lady, an innocent in her FFA jacket, fell for his man-of-the-world ways and let him talk her into joining him around back. Unbeknownst to us, the young lady’s boyfriend, a cross between a mule and a shorthorn bull, was next door trying to win a pack of cigarettes. Soon, sporting a new pack of Luckies, he came over looking for his Delma.

“I haven’t seen anyone like that,” I lied.

Then Delma giggled, loud enough to be heard by me. And Bull. He tore around the booth and discovered his girlfriend and Frookie, their index digits stuck in the same Chinese finger puzzle.

Frookie, man of the world that he was, demonstrated amazing speed in disentangling his finger and his feet and disappearing.

I let Delma keep the puzzle. “On the house,” I said, in my best Yankee accent.