Red's brush with passion at the Carnival

One of my growing convictions is that we were meant for life... many of us will look for life in the wrong places, but we are nonetheless looking for life. This portion of the story is about Red looking for life.

Twenty-five years ago Jack Reynolds, sat down at the corner booth, his booth at The Caboose, and started talking with Red Wilson. Red at eighteen had snuck into the Carnival on the first day and had been smitten by a beautiful Chinese girl. The girl was also eighteen, and was at the freak-fest because she and her family were acrobats.

Red’s passions overwhelmed him. He snuck into the carnival for the rest of the week, and managed to offend the girl’s father with his persistent interest in his daughter. In so doing he made himself attractive to the girl, who had showed no interest in him prior to that.

The girl resented her whole family and the life of traveling around as an acrobat. So anybody who angered her father and had her father’s disapproval was someone she found irresistible. On the last day of the Carnival Red had once again managed to sneak in.

Wondermaker was always well aware of the kids from town sneaking into his Carney-Festival, but he didn’t care it boosted concession sales. It especially boosted sales at the beer tent.

Red and the Chinese acrobat managed a clandestine rendezvous in the straw pile of the horse-tent. They were just in the beginning stages of the throes of passion, and Red’s trembling hands were making their first fumbling gropes at regions of femininity they had never known previously. The acrobat was responding with willing passion as she dreamed of this Michigan farm boy rescuing her from life with her family of acrobats.
In these opening moments of passion Red and the girl had been discovered by her younger brother who had been sent by their father to look for her. He immediately reported what was happening to his father.

The father came running and would have thoroughly beaten, and possibly killed Red had the commotion not drawn a crowd that restrained the very angry little acrobat, before he could skewer Red with the pitchfork he had picked up as he entered the horse tent.

The incident had attracted enough attention that Wondermaker himself had been called in. Wondermaker did not mind the local kids sneaking in to boost sales, but he couldn’t have this commotion known in the town or there would be an uproar. So he very deftly arranged for Red to be dropped off in town, after he had talked with him and said that he understood the passions of a young man, but that the father just did not understand.  Let him talk to him and see what he could work out. To this day Red still referred to Wondermaker as the greatest man he had ever met. Wondermaker soothed the angry acrobat, by having him and his family as his personal guests for dinner, which was the greatest honor that could be bestowed on those who attended the carnival.

This may have been the end of the incident if Red had not told his best buddy that he was in love with an acrobat and that Arnie Wondermaker was going to arrange it so that they could be together. His best friend told his girlfriend. His best friend’s girl friend told her mother, who was best friends with Red’s mother. She of course had told Red’s mom who told Red’s dad.

Red’s dad was a hot-tempered, frustrated farmer who was about to lose the family farm, he screamed and yelled at Red for about an hour. He was furious not that Red had been caught with a girl, (he was actually quite relieved to know that Red was not a homosexual, which had always been his deepest fear), but he was furious that the girl Red had been caught with was a “freak” and that she was a foreign “freak” no less. After yelling at his son, but being secretly relieved he went to go see Wondermaker who tried to pacify him, but had no success.

Red’s dad had started a petition to outlaw the Carnival for the Carnies, for corrupting the morals of the youth of Appendix, by that of course he meant introducing them to foreigners. A petition to end the Carnival was something that happened nearly every fifth year. Wondermaker had become accustomed to the petitions and he always managed to diffuse the situation, because the reality was that the carnival was a once a year economic boon for the merchants of the town.

Red had never seen the girl again, but his heart and his groin still ached when he thought of her; which he still frequently did. The carnival ended and all the freaks left town, and Red sank into a deep depression. The next year when the carnival returned the acrobats also returned, and Red’s spirits revived, but soon fell again when he found out that the beautiful daughter had not. Red learned what had happened by asking around, and finally by asking Wondermaker what had happened. Wondermaker told him that the father had arranged a marriage for his beautiful daughter to a Chinese merchant in California who was nearly twice the girls age, but was quite wealthy, and he had paid the father a very nice dowry.  Red was devastated and furious.

He released his anger by vigorously pursuing his best friend’s girl friend who had  told her mom about what had happened. He succeeded in stealing the girl from his friend and eventually married her. She nagged him for the forty years of their marriage to be romantic like he was when they were courting. He never was, but he did frequently think longingly and passionately about the Chinese Acrobat and his time of passion in the straw.

Red did show enough interest in the marriage to eventually after seven years produce one child, a daughter.  His daughter, Linda, married a local boy, Buzz Holsten. They had one son, Quin.

The only times Red Wilson had been passionate in his life, outside of his encounter with the Chinese Acrobat was when his grandson Quin had led the Appendix Carneys to the state title in baseball, and when the Appendix Historical Preservation Society met.