I grew up in Clermont having moved to Florida at age 12 from Ohio in 1967 when my farther accepted the position of Episcopal Minister for Saint Matthias Church – we moved to Florida to care for Grandfather whose doctors suggested this climate.
The Seitz family has always been gifted in stature, by gifted I mean that we are all around five feet tall. We are mostly strong and hairy and resemble Chimps. As a teenager I just naturally started doing standing back flips, jumping off the roof of the house, and I traded my snare drum for a unicycle.
I never dreamed about joining the Circus, in fact I was working in the first Circus that I ever saw. (Well a Circus Theme Park.) Within the last decade I discovered that my Great Uncle Earl built a Vaudeville Theater in Sandusky Ohio. It is still there – The State Theater.
I didn’t know about my show business background because my Grandfather, The Reverend Professor Doctor Seitz, was the intellectual brother and most his male descendants have become Episcopalian Ministers.
One day in 1976, I didn't show up at work mowing grass at the Mission Inn and Country Club in "Howey-in the-Hills," instead I rode my Yamaha 90 South to Circus World. They put me in the show that very day as a stage hand. Little did I know but my Mom and Dad were at that very show and at dinner Mom was all excited and told me that I should get a job at Circus World because there were people working in the show that looked just like me.
After a few years as a stage hand, I started working as an Elephant ride goof. At about the same time as Buckles Woodcock went on the road with Ringling, most of the clowns quit because they were asked to meet and greet in the park and were not offered any more money for the extra work. So I sort of Scabbed my way into becoming a clown.
I was fortunate to have learned my craft by being influenced from some of the last of the old timers. Antonio Hoyos took me under his wing and taught me to be a humble and respectful clown. As a stagehand I watched Bill Vaughn flip his massive body around to his butt, cry, and flutter his blue nose to bring the house down. Ann Stevenson,(Frank’s wife, and Swede Johnson’s daughter,)gave me a history lesson about clowning before they started Clown College, The Stevenson’s presented the best dog act in the world at Circus World but their Irish Circus heritage had always been with horses, Frank had a Chimp act and was tying to put an act together with some of Circus Worlds horses and me, but Circus World kept selling the horses that we were using for the act.
I did levitation with Barry Lubin the august clown and not Grandma, that was a management power play and all he had for a costume was his old Clown College stuff and a hideous baseball hat. He was so funny.
I once trained with Fay Alexander at “Be a Star Circus” to fly on the trapeze, but it was a little too late in my life, and I fell better than I flew.
I clowned at Circus World from about 1978 to 1986, in the early eighties we became the holding area for Clown College hopefuls that didn't make the cut for the Red or Blue show. After we deprogrammed their swelled heads that came with the college, for many years we had the best alley ever. My wife Terri was a 1979 Clown College Graduate, and we met at Circus World.
I stole most of Gail LaJoy’s chair gag and Ron let me put it in the show to teach me a lesson. Well it took off, gave me star status, and I am still ridding its wake; I did the gag a little over year ago at the International Market World, (after losing 15 lbs. from clowning in the heat, I could again the handstands at age 52, but not the one arm lever on the back rest.) Today I've have the old weight back and then some. :o)
In 1986 when Circus World was sold, I left the Circus ant went to Disney World to work in fur. It was only temporary gig until something better came along, but I am still there. This is just a thin powdered snow level on the tip of an iceberg of my Circus Stories. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reminisce, and thank you for your time,.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Gordon is no more
Gordon is no more; Tommy buried her by a tree planted in memory of Grandma. Tommy found her in the road at the end of the street when he came home for lunch, look like she’d been dragged around by the buzzards.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Gordon the Cat
My name is Gordon the Cat, and I’m no longer fat,
And that smell that you smell is my butt.
I don’t lick myself clean, and I spit and I’m mean,
I am matted and dirty; so what!
When that older cat died, I stayed mostly inside,
And my servants would jump at the call.
To keep full my food dish, give me what ever I wish,
And for that I’d hock up a fur ball.
But then came Jaxi the dog, that stupid old hog,
She’d eat from my food, Oh how gross.
Then a cat and a kitten, they both made me smitten,
I get sick ‘cause their so Grandiose.
So life is now not the same, I live out in the rain,
And I eat from the garbage, I’m cursed.
Strange Jane, and Odd Bob, are living high on the hog,
And they’re warm in my bed. That’s the worst.
Green Tomatoes with hope
I wake to find Strange Jane warming Terri’s toes,
And even Gordon sending warm breath into her ear.
Jaxi is board but content on her scent on the carpet;
And out of window Tommy’s car tells me he is OK.
When did Mary last live in her room?
And how did all the dust cover the pictures that were taken only yesterday?
I am so glad that I never painted that wall in the garage.
Terri buys green tomatoes with hope.
Discarded calendar pages in piles on the floor;
Boxes of crap lay waiting,
The silence of the telephone,
And longing for a new old place to go
But this is only January and that is something.
Our backyard
Our backyard is the place where Jaxi goes to be a dog.
It is also a garden of love.
An orange tree planted on the day Tommy was born shades the old dog house that Tommy and I built.
There is a bird feeder, a bird bath, a deck framed with stones from a church, and a sidewalk from Lowes.
Tiki torches and a fire bucket bring it all to glow at night.
Two Barbeque grills, a hansom close line, graves of cats, birds, hamsters, gerbils, and fish.
Pots upon pots of things that are trying to grow spill around Aaron and Mary’s porch table and chairs.
The sky is large in our backyard.
There is an Owl, and elves, and angels, and saints, and a Buddha, and shells, and vines around fishing poles, and driftwood, and river rocks, a very well dressed duck, and a scarecrow.
Our backyard is home to gathering sparrows chirping, song birds in flight, brightly colored panicky birds, and rude fat pigeons.
A family that moves away and leaves their backyard before the children are in high school will return to find that the backyard has shrunk. Not so with our backyard; we are still here, our roots are firm, and our backyard is large enough to host generations of softball games but small enough to hold in our hearts.
Clermont
The Picket Fence
Word Count: 1497 Words
The tangerines ripened just before Christmas at the legendary Picket Fence in the charming town of Clermont Florida in 1969. Some of the fruit on these large trees were eaten before they were ripe; the anticipation of the rewarding explosion of juice, the chewy pulp, and the seed spitting was just too great to wait for the fruit to be in season. Even though weeks before Christmas the tangerines were green and tasted bitter, they satisfied cottonmouth, and the munchies, and eating them was worth the risk of a stomachache. Often an abandoned pile of green tangerine peels were left in the middle of the stony black road. This was evidence of where two cars had parked side by side, driver to driver, and while the drivers made plans for the evening activities, they pealed and devoured the green fruit. The driver of the car that pointed west down the hill toward Lake Minnehaha could absorb the outstanding sunsets, while the other driver in the car pointed up the hill might relish in the color frenzy of the twilight.
A stony black asphalt road that ascended above Lake Shore Drive was the Picket Fence; today this road is called Anderson Hill. The Anderson’s owned the fence at the bottom of the hill that gave the Picket Fence its name. It is funny that the fence was never really a picket fence at all, it didn’t have the pointy planks that beg to be tapped with a stick; the fence was a white wooden fence that you would expect to find on a horse ranch. I imagine that some child called the fence a picket fence one day while their Dad sped past the fence on a Sunday drive in their family’s station wagon and that name stuck. My sister says that it was probably a coded name so that the parents of teenagers wouldn’t know where their kids were partying on star filled weekend nights. But whatever the reason it was named the Picket Fence, the days of The Picket Fence are long gone, and the fat tangerine trees are now replaced by spectacular homes that are bold enough to try to compete with the sunsets.
Forty years ago at the Picket Fence, atop the spectacular tangerine grove, the entire panoramic view of Lake Minnehaha could be experienced. At sunset our eyes were drawn to a path that stretched across the lake with shimmering color that lead to the sinking sun. The distant shoreline was hidden by moss draped Cypress trees wading out into lake and guarding the water’s edge by the thousands. From the Picket Fence we were part of the sunset. There was an exciting brightness of color on the shiny green trees that were spotted with splashes of orange after our cherished tangerines became ripe. This brief moment of brightness reflected on our faces, and our faces were set a glow by the explosion of energy that was being experienced by everything around us. As we became absorbed in the event and captured in the celebration of beauty, the enhanced color changing before our eyes was like the sweeping arms of time, accelerating the anticipation of a memorable little town’s party night.
Spanish moss blanketed most of Clermont in 1969, left untouched the Redbug infested drapery would hang from the telephone wires clear to the ground. Osceola Street seemed to attract more than its fare share of Spanish moss. Like an itchy beard it gave haunting faces to the ancient Oak trees that shaded the root-slanted sidewalks of one of the town’s first neighborhoods. Many of the houses hidden behind the moss-gloved branches watched as these trees grew from saplings - trees that were perhaps offspring of their own timbers.
Heat - summer heat so hot you could see it. The three o’clock shower sometimes only sizzled on the smooth black asphalt roads that curved around small lakes on their hopeless effort to straighten and grid the growing town.
The children wore only Levi cutoffs, callused feet, and suntans. We were barefoot not because we didn’t have shoes, but to grow up in Clermont meant most of the time our feet were bare because half of the time was spent cooling off in the clear waters of the 17 lakes in our small town. Callused feet were like badge of honor, especially being twelve years old and freshly transplanted from Ohio. It was necessary to condition our feet like leather to be able to dash from shady spot to shady spot on the melting blacktop roads, and our foot skin had to be tuff enough to stop a sandspur’s needle before it had a chance to penetrate a soft spot, snap off, and remain festering in your foot for years. The lake water was warm and by no means refreshing but it was cooler when you were wet; and when we wore any type of shirt in the summer – even in the shade – it was soon sure to be soaked with sweat. Air Conditioning was few and far between and sometimes we would go to the grocery store just to cool off.
We could escape from the heat, we could hide from the thunderstorms, and we knew where the alligators and poisonous snakes were, but the things that everyone was prey to in Clermont were the fruit flies – gnats we called them.
Yankees tourist drawn to our town by the Citrus Tower thought that the folks down here were genuinely friendly because they thought that we were always waving at each other, but we were only trying to keep the gnats from buzzing in our ears. Over everybody’s head was a funnel of swarming gnats. You couldn’t swat them because they were too small and too tuff, you couldn’t outrun them, the funnel only followed you like a scarf in the breeze, and no spray would fend off these devilish bugs. Horses had been known to go crazy from these gnats as they swarm, covering their eyes in a buzzing horde and blocking out their vision. At picnics when you looked down at your food the pepper was crawling, and in school pink eye was passed around from child to child like bad grammar.
Being the 12 year old son of a new minister and moving to Clermont Florida in 1968 where a shotgun was as common as a flyswatter and the entire town could fit in the high school football stadium was an amazing adventure. Finding out that I was popular being the new Yankee minister’s kid in a small town of mostly southern Baptists was interesting. Coming to a town where the girls came of age at thirteen, and their boyfriends all came to my house to beat me up was the best test of my lifetime. Thank God I was smart or lucky enough to know what was coming so I was able to passed that test and meet them rather than to hide from them. I changed my life at twelve years old that one afternoon, and made some lifelong companions.
Today the time is ripe; and like the tangerines after Christmas, my bitterness has sweetened. I have seasoned past the bitterness of seeing the playground of my youth die and wither away to become divided into 1/4 acre lots with homes that I’ll never be able to afford. I can almost stand it when the dwellers of these eloquent but cookie cutter like neighborhoods call the place that they live Clermont.
Today as I walked past the place were the railroad tracks once were, the rails that as a child I walked on for over a mile without falling off were, in the lingering spirit of the forgotten trains I have had a change of heart. This portion of the railroad track has become a bike path, and as I walked I saw adult men clad in silly bright skintight riding costumes pumping their expensive racing bikes along these new bike paths. As I gave room to the pack of peddle on the path I felt annoyed, cheated, as if something had been taken away from me and now I was now the outsider. Soon I was walking past JC Beach, the place that once was the opening scene to almost all of our wild weekend adventures. As I soaked in the lake’s everlasting appeal I recognized that the charm of Clermont had not faded but only dimmed under the brilliance of my fond memories. I supposed that the silly looking men in there bright shiny bike suits are not unlike the wealthy fox hunters that founded this town centuries ago. And I bet that there once was someone like me who thought that paving over the clay roadways and hilly paths was as disrespectful as the new indoor toilets.
Word Count: 1497 Words
The tangerines ripened just before Christmas at the legendary Picket Fence in the charming town of Clermont Florida in 1969. Some of the fruit on these large trees were eaten before they were ripe; the anticipation of the rewarding explosion of juice, the chewy pulp, and the seed spitting was just too great to wait for the fruit to be in season. Even though weeks before Christmas the tangerines were green and tasted bitter, they satisfied cottonmouth, and the munchies, and eating them was worth the risk of a stomachache. Often an abandoned pile of green tangerine peels were left in the middle of the stony black road. This was evidence of where two cars had parked side by side, driver to driver, and while the drivers made plans for the evening activities, they pealed and devoured the green fruit. The driver of the car that pointed west down the hill toward Lake Minnehaha could absorb the outstanding sunsets, while the other driver in the car pointed up the hill might relish in the color frenzy of the twilight.
A stony black asphalt road that ascended above Lake Shore Drive was the Picket Fence; today this road is called Anderson Hill. The Anderson’s owned the fence at the bottom of the hill that gave the Picket Fence its name. It is funny that the fence was never really a picket fence at all, it didn’t have the pointy planks that beg to be tapped with a stick; the fence was a white wooden fence that you would expect to find on a horse ranch. I imagine that some child called the fence a picket fence one day while their Dad sped past the fence on a Sunday drive in their family’s station wagon and that name stuck. My sister says that it was probably a coded name so that the parents of teenagers wouldn’t know where their kids were partying on star filled weekend nights. But whatever the reason it was named the Picket Fence, the days of The Picket Fence are long gone, and the fat tangerine trees are now replaced by spectacular homes that are bold enough to try to compete with the sunsets.
Forty years ago at the Picket Fence, atop the spectacular tangerine grove, the entire panoramic view of Lake Minnehaha could be experienced. At sunset our eyes were drawn to a path that stretched across the lake with shimmering color that lead to the sinking sun. The distant shoreline was hidden by moss draped Cypress trees wading out into lake and guarding the water’s edge by the thousands. From the Picket Fence we were part of the sunset. There was an exciting brightness of color on the shiny green trees that were spotted with splashes of orange after our cherished tangerines became ripe. This brief moment of brightness reflected on our faces, and our faces were set a glow by the explosion of energy that was being experienced by everything around us. As we became absorbed in the event and captured in the celebration of beauty, the enhanced color changing before our eyes was like the sweeping arms of time, accelerating the anticipation of a memorable little town’s party night.
Spanish moss blanketed most of Clermont in 1969, left untouched the Redbug infested drapery would hang from the telephone wires clear to the ground. Osceola Street seemed to attract more than its fare share of Spanish moss. Like an itchy beard it gave haunting faces to the ancient Oak trees that shaded the root-slanted sidewalks of one of the town’s first neighborhoods. Many of the houses hidden behind the moss-gloved branches watched as these trees grew from saplings - trees that were perhaps offspring of their own timbers.
Heat - summer heat so hot you could see it. The three o’clock shower sometimes only sizzled on the smooth black asphalt roads that curved around small lakes on their hopeless effort to straighten and grid the growing town.
The children wore only Levi cutoffs, callused feet, and suntans. We were barefoot not because we didn’t have shoes, but to grow up in Clermont meant most of the time our feet were bare because half of the time was spent cooling off in the clear waters of the 17 lakes in our small town. Callused feet were like badge of honor, especially being twelve years old and freshly transplanted from Ohio. It was necessary to condition our feet like leather to be able to dash from shady spot to shady spot on the melting blacktop roads, and our foot skin had to be tuff enough to stop a sandspur’s needle before it had a chance to penetrate a soft spot, snap off, and remain festering in your foot for years. The lake water was warm and by no means refreshing but it was cooler when you were wet; and when we wore any type of shirt in the summer – even in the shade – it was soon sure to be soaked with sweat. Air Conditioning was few and far between and sometimes we would go to the grocery store just to cool off.
We could escape from the heat, we could hide from the thunderstorms, and we knew where the alligators and poisonous snakes were, but the things that everyone was prey to in Clermont were the fruit flies – gnats we called them.
Yankees tourist drawn to our town by the Citrus Tower thought that the folks down here were genuinely friendly because they thought that we were always waving at each other, but we were only trying to keep the gnats from buzzing in our ears. Over everybody’s head was a funnel of swarming gnats. You couldn’t swat them because they were too small and too tuff, you couldn’t outrun them, the funnel only followed you like a scarf in the breeze, and no spray would fend off these devilish bugs. Horses had been known to go crazy from these gnats as they swarm, covering their eyes in a buzzing horde and blocking out their vision. At picnics when you looked down at your food the pepper was crawling, and in school pink eye was passed around from child to child like bad grammar.
Being the 12 year old son of a new minister and moving to Clermont Florida in 1968 where a shotgun was as common as a flyswatter and the entire town could fit in the high school football stadium was an amazing adventure. Finding out that I was popular being the new Yankee minister’s kid in a small town of mostly southern Baptists was interesting. Coming to a town where the girls came of age at thirteen, and their boyfriends all came to my house to beat me up was the best test of my lifetime. Thank God I was smart or lucky enough to know what was coming so I was able to passed that test and meet them rather than to hide from them. I changed my life at twelve years old that one afternoon, and made some lifelong companions.
Today the time is ripe; and like the tangerines after Christmas, my bitterness has sweetened. I have seasoned past the bitterness of seeing the playground of my youth die and wither away to become divided into 1/4 acre lots with homes that I’ll never be able to afford. I can almost stand it when the dwellers of these eloquent but cookie cutter like neighborhoods call the place that they live Clermont.
Today as I walked past the place were the railroad tracks once were, the rails that as a child I walked on for over a mile without falling off were, in the lingering spirit of the forgotten trains I have had a change of heart. This portion of the railroad track has become a bike path, and as I walked I saw adult men clad in silly bright skintight riding costumes pumping their expensive racing bikes along these new bike paths. As I gave room to the pack of peddle on the path I felt annoyed, cheated, as if something had been taken away from me and now I was now the outsider. Soon I was walking past JC Beach, the place that once was the opening scene to almost all of our wild weekend adventures. As I soaked in the lake’s everlasting appeal I recognized that the charm of Clermont had not faded but only dimmed under the brilliance of my fond memories. I supposed that the silly looking men in there bright shiny bike suits are not unlike the wealthy fox hunters that founded this town centuries ago. And I bet that there once was someone like me who thought that paving over the clay roadways and hilly paths was as disrespectful as the new indoor toilets.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Haines City
There is nothing quite like cat piss to describe my life in Haines City:
It’s a sting in the eyes that won’t go away,
And like that stink on my finger that I can’t wash off.
It is not unlike all the noise in my world:
Mexican music coming in from three directions
The cop siren going back and forth
A truck backing up with a beep beep beep
The never ending sound of rubber on the road
Somebody’s building a house with twelve angry hammers
The dog with the two foot chain that barks with ever breath of his unfortunate life
The stuck up plane that sends down its
Nanny Nanny Boo Boo wail
Gun Shots
Drunken laughter
Loud TV’s in empty rooms
The buzz of the lights
Ignored car alarms
Leaf blowers
Lawn mowers
Loud snorers
The clock ticking
Jaxi’s licking
Finger nail clipping
The deafening sound that an ant makes when dragging a leaf across the windowsill
A bag of marshmallows spilled on the rug
The thundering sound of an eye winking
And the crash of the sunset.
It’s a sting in the eyes that won’t go away,
And like that stink on my finger that I can’t wash off.
It is not unlike all the noise in my world:
Mexican music coming in from three directions
The cop siren going back and forth
A truck backing up with a beep beep beep
The never ending sound of rubber on the road
Somebody’s building a house with twelve angry hammers
The dog with the two foot chain that barks with ever breath of his unfortunate life
The stuck up plane that sends down its
Nanny Nanny Boo Boo wail
Gun Shots
Drunken laughter
Loud TV’s in empty rooms
The buzz of the lights
Ignored car alarms
Leaf blowers
Lawn mowers
Loud snorers
The clock ticking
Jaxi’s licking
Finger nail clipping
The deafening sound that an ant makes when dragging a leaf across the windowsill
A bag of marshmallows spilled on the rug
The thundering sound of an eye winking
And the crash of the sunset.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)