Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 119: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CAVE booze off the lot; get the kale; don't leave any boob sore. The bird that busted any one of the three got the hook. The Columbia Carnival Company car- ried all the old fronts, glass blowers, rope- waik, hoola, anaconda, freaks, minstrels, the whole layout: scads of free shows, high dive, parachute drop, and all that—and a mob of pitch artists with picked ballvhoo boys, houpla, ring-pitch, ball-pitch, crack- louie, wheel of fortune, Jap lottery, dolls, rifles, baby rack, and some new stunt every season on top of that. Once it was Borneo Fire Dancers from Sixth Avenue—vaude- ville stuff worked over. Pete was the first to take a bunch of diving girls on the road. One season we carried an eight-girl tab show, took an hour to run. Some thought Pete was feeble when he started with that. Pete figured different. Let the simps set for an hour was the way he doped it out. Let them get rested up. They got time to get rid of all they got with us doing a week’s stand. They'll think they’re saving coin holding down a bench with their janes —spend twice as easy when they come out again. That shows what kind of a bean Pete had. He used it. Always worked out stuff like that in advance. With such a big push we had to hit all big time, dumps of fifteen or twenty thou- sand where the picking was good. But Pete could pick them: conventions, fairs, Elk and Eagle shows, anything to bring the alfalfa rooters in. He could smell a frost across: three States and walk around it where the hoofing was good. Wherever we set we found a mitt full of grands. Yes, them was the days. I get to riffling when I start to think about Pete. He was king of the grafters, and I can’t go stronger than that. But this ain’t his story. I started to tell about a mutt we had with the show, one ofethe freaks. strong man, strong all over except above the ears. There he stopped. He was a shade more Jow brow than a big trained baboon. His muscles stuck out in lumps, and he had a beezer on him to make you cry for the human race. He lifted weights and done stunts. They used to drive a loaded auto or a wagon up on a couple of planks laid MAN STUFF. 901 across his legs and chest, him flat on his back. It never hurt him none. There is a little trick in it, but with that it ain’t no pastime for a.guy that’s got weak lungs. Greek, he was. Back name was Niko- papadopolous; front name was worse’n that. We called him Sam, account of Samson of Judea, show name, painted up on the front where he worked. It was a swell painting of a man wrestling a lion, but that hadn’t nothing to do with the show. This Sam took in good money, but his strength, hike I said, petered out when it come to brains. 1 mentioned his face? He carried a map like a cartoonist’s idea of the gink they label war. You couldn’t believe it to see it, and then you’d want to go away and try to for- get it was true. There was something human about it, but it took more’n three guesses to say just what it was. Jaw like the front of a truck, and his mush sloped back from that till the top of his head was all gone away. Quiet enough, though; harmless, like a sleeping gorilla. Sometimes you find them that way. That thing fell in love. skirt anyway. Imagine it! Becuty and— no, I'll not spring that old one. Mina wasn’t no real beauty; just a fair to mid- dling looker, beefy blonde with two fist, heavy-weight, about like a load of hay. She was married too; attached to a piece of cheese name of Simpson, little skate han- dling a peanut and pop corn lay. They was a@ scream as a.couple. She hounded him awful and it seemed like he was scared stiff to talk up to her. It was her Sam fell for; she took him like a disease. But that wasn’t all what happened. Bunt Simpson, Mina, and Sam—them three crabbed the show. This here love thing worked on Sam like a barrel of moonshine at a colored camp meeting. He got mean, and when I say mean I mean mean. He had it all in him; it Just started leaking out. We had been a happy family, and all of a sudden— blooey! Count ten—and it’s all over till the papers come out with the loser’s alibi. Bing! Like that. and the sky falls. That was Sam falling in love. He hell hard. Then it was good night after a glorious day. He fell for a COMmMiclooe S CO im