“If life isn’t seeking for the grail it may be a damned amusing game.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’m currently homeless and had to edit this video in a packed carny bar, so please forgive the flaws.

This is my video of this week at the national carny gathering in Carnytown USA, narrated by the World’s Most Famous Carny and King of the Sideshows Ward Hall. The eighty-four-year-old talks about the freaks and oddities he employed and their search for meaning in their lives.

Hall says they often turn to works of charity and to religion, thus the presence of “carny priests” and “carny preachers.”

The video shows how homes, rides, games, trucks all share the same yards in Gibsonton, Fla.. The “Super” Trade Show “Extravaganza” is appropriately overhyped. The headline for this article is also written in that click fishing style.

This is nearly the end of my year in carnivals for EyesLikeCarnivals.com. Hall says he’ll hire me tomorrow for his World of Wonders freak show at the Florida State Fair, Tampa, Fla. I think I’ll be paid in snacks but I’ll be adding another state fair to my year’s total and a freak show.

I now will have worked in California, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Alaska, Minneapolis, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia and Florida. I will have worked five state fairs with nine carnival companies.

I am the #1 hitchhiker in America in 2014, with nearly 15,000 miles and 26 states and Canada under my belt. In total, I traveled well in excess of 20,000 miles through 36 states.

I wrote www.EyesLikeCarnivals.com all the way. I wrote almost weekly for The Huffington Post’s blog section.

The Chicago Tribune Magazine wrote a full-page essay on me. Northwestern Magazine and the Northwestern University main Web site carried an essay by me on the year. Marquette University’ magazine has contracted for an upcoming 2,000 word essay.

Now the hard work begins, writing and publishing. I’m thinking of going to New York next month to visit with publishers.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that in the real dark soul of man it is always 3 a.m. It is also closing time at the carny bar, night folks!