(part three)

Around that time (1972-1978), I’d taken a serious interest in Bands and music, my dad bought me a guitar, and I learned enough to end up joining and forming a neighborhood rock and disco/funk band.  Feeling it as an honor to play at the same venue as the Jackson Five, once we could play a couple of songs pretty well, we began to play at the state fair’s Teen Scene stage along with guys I grew up with who were much better than we were. This local promoter who called himself Salmar of “Salmar’s Stars of Tomorrow,” (a local talent show that was featured on WJBK channel two back in the day on some Saturday’s after Soul Train) had a talent showcase at the Teen Scene almost every year.

Salmar would feature mainly kid and teen acts at the State Fair Teen Scene Stage, whether you’ve been on his TV show or not. My band and some of my other neighborhood friends with bands played there for years. There was a swill of bands and dancers and singers from all over southeastern Michigan who played the teen scene and the Band Shell, if you were good enough. I had the honor of playing the Band Shell once. Nothing big! No gigantic crowds and big overhead speakers, and massive flood lights and such. It was a daytime show. It was just me and my little five man band and my Fender Twin Reverb amp. Just-a-singing and a Playin’!  No body was really blown away by us. It was just another gig to the guys in our band. But to me, all I knew was I was on the same stage Ray Charles once occupied. The Band Shell? That was my quiet fantasy come true!

I saw many a band, singing act, disco group, country singers, Motown acts and other entertainers over the years. My wife and I recently saw Little Richard and Chuck Berry, The Temptations (Otis Williams Temptations). The Dennis Edwards Temptation Revue, Tammy Wynette, The Jackson Five, Roberta Flack, Randy Travis, Rare Earth, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. The Isley Bros., Al Green, The Commodores, I could go on and on but I won’t. Let’s just say that I’ve seen more acts at The Michigan State Fair over the years than at venues like Cobo or even Joe Louis Arena.

Do you know, I remember seeing The Three Stooges live at the state fair in the very early 1960‘s? I was at the fair with my dad. It was cold that day, and the stooges were doing a comedy routine at the Gazebo dressed in clothing that resembled attire from the mountains of the Austrian Alps. Curly Joe was doing funny stunts and falls as Larry and  Moe played an accordion. I pegged them right away, as The Three Stooges were my favorite as a child.

1983, I visited an exhibit in a tent at the fair that featured the sounds of tomorrow. It was an electronics exhibition by Sony, introducing people to new technologies in sound. The Compact Disc and the new Compact Disc Player! I was blown away by its disc size, its clarity, its lack of hiss and machine noise! It was almost spooky that there was no Harmonic Distortion noises to make note of. What is Harmonic Distortion? Its that loud humming/hissing noise you get when you turn up your stereo volume to about 8. You get loud music of course, but you also get major hum and hiss. The new Compact Disc player and its revolutionary new Compact Disc seem to all but eliminate any noticeable harmonic distortion levels, leaving pure clean sound and/or music at unheard of volume levels.

I remember this older man at the exhibit saying, “That’s too clean. That don’t feel right!” A man of his age was so use to listening to records that crackle and tapes that hiss, and stereos with high levels of machine noise since he was a child, that it became apart of the sound for him. That day, I fell in love with sound and music all over again!

In the latter 1990‘s, me and my wife’s love for Karaoke transcended over to the State Fair. A good friend of ours would host Karaoke in the food court shelter area next to the exhibits and the field house. For many a year, it became a meeting place for friends and a base for those who came with us and wanted to go about on the rides while we sung karaoke. Sure I’d walk all over the fair and buy corn on the cob, corn dogs, fresh lemonade, and sausages; and of course my favorite… My Cherry and Apple Elephant Ears. Who doesn’t love the many games and rides,  and of course the side shows… Side shows? Hey wait a minute! Where were the Side Shows?

As I grew up with the Michigan State Fair, I’d go even if I had to go alone. It was apart of me. The sights and sounds and the smells! Sure I didn’t ride the rides like I did when I was a kid as I got older, but I surely did partake of the food, the games, and the concerts. In 1991, I hurt my back at work, and the doctor put me on pain killers, making it so I couldn’t drive to the fair that particular day. He said nothing to me about riding the bus. I wanted so badly to see Gloria Estefan and The Miami Sound Machine, and all my old friends had either moved away or just didn’t care to see Gloria Estefan. Well, shame on them!

I was there! I arrived at the fair just after 6pm, walked around, tracked down some serious french fries and malted vinegar and hand shaken (not stirred) Lemonade. Hey, I even won me a lil’ ole teddy red bear from playing a pool game with a badly bowed pool cue.  Before I’d kill time talking to folks at the Band Shell who were also waiting to see The Sound Machine around 7:30pm! I figured, just before the concert, I’d make my way over to the rear side of the fair where the haunted houses and creep show rides were. Just on the other side of those rides is where the Side Shows use to be. Notice I said, “use to be!” Much to my surprise, they were gone… All of them! No more Fat Lady, no Alligator Woman, No more Skeleton Woman, Sword Swallowers, The Strongman, the Miniature Horse! All of it gone! Hurt and dejected, I wandered about the fair in shock that these longtime entertainment features I loved so well were now gone.

I asked the gentleman operating the Ferris Wheel what happened to the side show acts and he said the side shows mainly stay in the southern circuit, as the northern audiences are just too sophisticated and no longer see the humor and the novelty of what side shows were all about. With corn dog and teddy bear in hand, I sat through the concert feeling kind of numb, yet I was somehow resigned to the fact that this part of the State Fair is no more.

 

The concert was amazing! For almost two hours, I drowned my sorrows in music from the Miami Sound Machine. My pain killer was starting to wear off and it was just about 10:20pm. The fair would soon be closing, and I beat. I took my last pain pill as I walked towards the fairgrounds DOT bus area on the Woodward side of the fair. Tired and in pain, I boarded my bus and sat on the bench seat across from the driver who happened to be someone I’d ride with while he drove the Woodward line for many a year, only this time, he was driving the Conant-Jefferson line. The very bus I was taking home! As I sat there, we talked of old times and I mentioned how there were no more side shows at the Michigan State Fair. He was amazed to hear such a thing! Waiting for more passengers from other bus lines, we talked about how a lot of things have changed, not only at the fair but in Detroit in general. The subject changed and we switched over to current events and sports as other passengers climbed aboard. Only 6 people got on. The last of these was a very beautiful woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform. She was gorgeous! This woman sported a full Jeri Curl afro and bore a great pair of legs which shone through her traditional white nurses attired stockings.  As she sat down on the bench seat behind the bus driver, She was now facing me! I mentioned again to the bus driver how things had changed at the State Fair; all the while sneaking a peek at this beautiful woman.

Then out of nowhere, as if she had been apart of our conversation all along, out of the blue, she blurted out: “I use to work at the fair, years ago!” Thinking she was talking about concessions or volunteer work, I asked her had she noticed how much different the fair had become over the years. “Not really, I haven’t been to the fair in years!” she said. Then I asked her.  What was it she did when she worked at the State Fair;  and what she said almost knocked me over on my bottom padding! Proudly she blurted that she was apart of the side show circuit, and that she was once billed as The Horrifying Ape Woman! I almost fainted! “No way!” I thought to myself!  I asked her to repeat herself. She laughed and said once more that she was the Horrifying Ape Woman!  Now the entire time I was talking to the bus driver, I never mentioned anything about any specific side show in particular, only that the entire crop of side shows had now become non-existence. She wasn’t even in the general vicinity when I was discussing my disheartened carnival issue with him.

The bus took off, and like old friends we began talking. I was so totally all in with this woman at this point after a while, I hadn’t noticed that I’d long missed my stop! I sat next to her and talked with her, and boy did I get an ear full! It seems that this woman had been playing the role of the ape lady since she was a young teenager. The little old man in the cornbread hat and too-tight tee-shirt and vest was her uncle. They toured around the south and up north come fall fair time in Michigan and Ohio in the early 1970’s (1972). And yes, she said that northern audiences had outgrown the old fashion side show stick, so they mainly stayed down south. Freely giving me the complete lowdown on the Side Show dilemma, this woman, said she quit being the horrifying ape woman as she started to grow up heading into her early twenties.

And by it being the early 1970‘s, this was a time when women were also heading onto bigger things than just being Suzy Homemaker/June Cleaver and Donna Reed! The equal rights amendment, and the ERA was in full swing. Women were burning their bras and even had their own cigarette fashioned just for them. Why subject oneself to being a mere side show act when a world of opportunities lay at your feet?  This entertainingly refreshing woman went on to say that she that she could not see herself being a 40 year old Horrifying Ape Woman in a bad Cheetah bikini (of which she said she made herself).  So she followed  her secret ambition to be a nurse and went to nursing school!

Well I was flabbergasted to say the least. How uncanny! To run into this woman almost twenty years later to the day. The odds of running into this woman twenty years after the disappointment and dejection I’d experienced at finding out my precious side shows were no more was pretty much supernatural to say the least! But oh the secrets she told me! The One True Michigan State Fair Side Show Secret that really shocked me was that the Bearded Fat Lady was really a 500 pound fat man in drag! She told me that the Alligator woman’s costume was made from shiny silk cloth materials that she and this alligator woman hand picked and bought themselves at Minnesota Fabrics. She knew who I was taking about when I mentioned the beautiful skeleton woman. All she told about her was that she just didn’t come back after a couple of seasons, and that she was indeed hypnotically beautiful!

The funniest thing she told me that night is that some of the Side Show People really knew how to party and whoop it up; and that after some shows, they’d go out on the town in full costume! Could you imagine walking into a Big Boy at 1am and seeing a table full of side show folk, in full side show regalia, partying like its 1999? She said they’d go all dressed in their costumes and order food and plenty wine. When she mentioned they had drinking parties in their trailers after the fairs would close down for the night, I shuttered to think about the possible goings on behind those curtains and trailers way late at night. Actually, the thought brought back memories of that very odd yet quite scary 1932 movie, “Freaks” by Tod Browning.

{If you ever get a chance to see this movie, it will chill you to the bone because of its real inside look, and honest depiction of Side Show People, played by real-life side show performers. A drama, yet played brilliantly by the so-called Freaks themselves. A movie such as this could never be made today because it would break all the rules of political correctness, and codes of conduct; let alone the whole issue of FCC and various censorship laws. To say that “Freaks” is a one of a kind movie experience is mildly stating the matter.} 

As I said moments ago, I had long missed my bus stop, sitting and chatting with this lovely lady, whose name by the way I never got. In all actuality, I intentionally didn’t want to know her name. Somehow, I felt knowing it seemed as if it would destroy the mystic for me. It was funny to know that she remembered Kenny and I making fun of the act itself, and that she too almost laughed as we would fall out on the sawdusted floor of the tent, belly laughing and mocking her uncle’s dialog on the microphone. That night, she did a little teasing herself. The woman not only remembered us, but made fun of my unusually large goofy afro, and how skinny my friend Kenny was back in 1972. What a time I was having! It was late, and by this time, there was no other passengers left on that bus but her and me; and of course the driver. We talked and talked and seemed to get to a place where there was not much else to talk about, unless of course it was about things personal. Things intimate! Although she was beautiful, I knew deep inside this wasn’t the way this meeting was supposed to turn. Somehow knowing anything more personal than what we had just talked about, seemed sacrilegious, out of bounds and an intrusion on both our childhood memories of a day and time untainted by the reality of growing up. It was just at that point, her bus stop was coming up. As she rang the bell for her stop, I thanked her for taking the time with me, and making my night, and settling in my mind a mystery and true fact that even though things change, life goes on!

We hugged each other as if we were old friends, and she looked longingly at me and smiled a most gentle smile. As she departed the rear of the coach, she waved and disappeared into the night, just as quickly as she come on board close to an hour before. I sat there in my seat frozen, yet satisfied. My friend the bus driver kept looking at me through his rear view mirror as if to say, “are you alright?” The Conant Bus turns around at the foot of Jefferson, by the Belle Isle Bridge and makes its way north after a few minutes. All I could say to the driver after this strange impromptu meeting was, “Wow!” Me and my bus driver friend didn’t talk much on the way back up to my stop. This was his last trip for the night, so I rode north with him on Conant, and got off at my regular stop. Once off the bus, as I walked the two blocks home, I thought to myself. Maybe we don’t need the side shows anymore. At that day and time we had a new breed of side show among us. Geraldo, Sally Jesse Raphael, Phil Donahue, Morton Downy Jr., Oprah, and Jerry Springer, and whoever else could land a talk show contract at that time. 

Then it occurred to me, this generation didn’t need side shows at the State Fair any longer.  The side shows were right where everybody could get to them, 5 days a week, on television. Talk shows were in fact the new side shows. I laughed the rest of the way home, and I slept the sleep of a man fulfilled that night; me and my lil’ red Teddy Bear. For God gave me something most people don’t get out of life; and that was restitution, and closure for my mourning of a time and era I loved so well that had quietly gone away.

August 29th 2009, A very good friend of mine who is apart of the Dennis Edwards Temptations Review played the Band Shell at Michigan State Fair that evening. I video taped it sitting right down front, and me and the wife kicked it with the guys before the show and had a wonderful time. But that time was bittersweet because this in fact would be the last concert I would see at my beloved Michigan State Fair. During the show, Dennis Edwards pleaded to the crowd to write your congressmen, State Representative and whoever it took to get the decision to close the fair overturned. As we entered the gates to the fair that evening, it was cold, and not just from the night air. It was an eerie cold. I felt deep in my heart that my State Fair wouldn’t be long for this world. All through the park there were folks getting petitions signed and shouting “Save the fair!” Patronage was down that night, and looks were somber all about. Still, a great lot of us had hope. As I talked with my friend, Paul Williams Jr., and the other Temps, They were up, they were ready to sing to Detroiters and whomever else was out there at the Band Shell that night.

As we hung out with Paul before the show, Darlene and I shared a giant apple Elephant Ear. This was in fact, the biggest elephant I’d ever seen. It was loaded with chunks of apples and sprinkles of powered sugar and cinnamon. Truly it was as big as a pizza pie! It was almost as if God were saying, “Ok Glenn, this is the last one, I’ll make it a Good One!” As I video taped our Paul and the Temp’s. Dennis Edwards was still at the hotel. So we kidded around as I filmed, and held my elephant ear at the same time. They (The Temptations) teased me about my steroid elephant ear. All the while, the opening act, “The Rock and Roll All Stars” played the hits from their rock history as individual hit makers, now as a band. They combined to form a power rock band with members like:  group leader, Jerry Corbette from the band Sugarloaf (Green Eyed Lady), Mike Pinera from Iron Buttery (Inna Gadda Da Vida), Dennis Noda from various studio session work throughout the rock era.  And finally, my drum and rock hero, Peter Rivera from Rare Earth (Hey Big Brother, Get Ready, I just wanna Celebrate). They sounded so good!  They were playing music from back in the day when I was kid, enjoying the Fair as if it would never go away! It was almost as if I had been catapulted back in time; back to 1972.

When the Temptations took the stage just after 8pm, they looked great. They danced, they sung, and I felt proud to know them and even sung with Paul on many occasions (of course not as a Temptation). My wife and I DJ’ed Paul’s wedding, and years ago, he sung at our wedding, now look at him, on stage before thousands, taking his dad’s place as Paul Williams Jr. Then Dennis Edward did it. Toward the end of the show, he mentioned how on that very stage (the Band Shell) 40 some odd years ago, August 29th, Paul Williams Sr. wife went into labor, while they were singing. They had to leave the stage and rush Paul over to the hospital where his son, Paul Williams Jr. came kicking and Temptation Walking into this world. And it happened on that very same night, August 29th!

There wasn’t a dry eye in the place! As Dennis Edwards said to the crowd, “Paul’s daddy brought me into the group, It was only fitting that his son should be right here, where his father stood, as a Temptation!” I could barely keep the video camera still. This was and is history! Then it struck me. This indeed was another one of those uncanny events intertwined together in life’s mysterious karma. I truly do believe that there are no coincidences! There is a grand design involved in our lives. Most times we’re just to stuck on ourselves, or too busy to notice it!

The rest of the concert was beautiful, and sure there’s a boatload of stories I (or you) could tell about our experiences at The Michigan State Fair; but the last two stories had a special meaning to me. Its proof that things always come full-circle! It is my hope that the closing of The Michigan State Fair isn’t just some ploy to move the fair out and away from the city of Detroit. Many folks from Traverse City to Akron, Ohio have called the fair the gateway to Detroit and the Suburbs. As tears come to my eyes, I will continue to hold dear my lifetime of memories and fun, and life experience. I’ll value the simple things, such as God’s gentle touch through the Miracle of Birth Exhibitions. The romping sounds of horses and Big Time Wrestling in the State Coliseum. The look of wonderment on children’s faces as they see a side to life that urbanites rarely see. All of this will be gone, and according to a historical plaque that once stood on the grounds of the state fair, our Michigan State Fair was suppose to have a permanent home located at Woodward and 8 Mile. Honor history, and things historic? I find this taking place less and less here of late. Until then, I’ll be standing in front of my Microwave, waiting for my Corn Dogs to cook. I miss my Michigan State Fair. Thank God for memories!