{"id":403,"date":"2013-05-21T17:09:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T17:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=403"},"modified":"2013-05-23T02:41:31","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T02:41:31","slug":"leaving-hudson-valley-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=403","title":{"rendered":"A dirty, smelly, messy gift for a little girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_4417\"<\/a>
\n\u201cOf all nature\u2019s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children.\u201d<\/em><\/strong>
\nCicero<\/strong><\/p>\n

My daughter turns eight-years-old this weekend and I want to be home for the celebration so I began making plans to leave my New York carnival a couple days ago.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been gone most of this year on my year following traveling carnivals, calling her daily on my cell phone.<\/p>\n

However, I got an e-mail from my ex-wife\u2019s family saying my daughter tells them she deeply misses me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been making phone calls to Chicago area carnivals listed on the state\u2019s licensing site and this morning got hired over the phone.<\/p>\n

My boss in New Jersey said he\u2019ll send my cash to my sister\u2019s house. I\u2019m going to a carnival with bunkhouses on the Southside of Chicago but no fixed address.<\/p>\n

No tears were shed saying goodbye this morning to a crew of about 10 people in Westchester County. I\u2019ve been here two weeks and several people have left since I signed on.<\/p>\n

One carny collapsed and was taken to the hospital a few days ago.<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes \u2013 before and after show time \u2013 carnivals are harsh places. In his 60s, that collapsed carny was then fired.<\/p>\n

Missing them madly<\/strong><\/p>\n

This morning, the crew wasn\u2019t very surprised by my announcement.<\/p>\n

A Newberry, New York kid, 18 years old, said I should buy the crew a round of beer. Because we don\u2019t get this week\u2019s pay until tomorrow, a Jamaican said I should have given him and his brother my week\u2019s pay. They would make sure it was sent, he said, winking that they might also be tempted to keep it. <\/p>\n

One of the brothers who own my New Jersey-based carnival said, \u201cSay hello if you\u2019re ever in this part of the country again.\u201d<\/p>\n

A woman some of the carnies call ‘mom,’ in front of the whole crew, took a smoke of her cigarette, looked into the sun and asked me, “Why.”<\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughter\u2019s eighth birthday is this weekend,\u201d I said. <\/p>\n

This crew all has families they miss. It is obvious that some miss them madly.<\/p>\n

The majority male crew \u2013 most of them fathers themselves \u2013 all nodded their heads in approval.<\/p>\n

Going to Chicago<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Tuesday and the second day of set-up for a carnival in a mall parking lot.<\/p>\n

The crew was sweating in the heat and working on rides as they waved goodbye. I was sweating too as I went to the mall to file this blog and get water in an empty Gatorade bottle for the road.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 2 p.m., I have no idea where I\u2019ll sleep tonight. It will be tough hitchhiking to Chicago.<\/p>\n

Walking the area this morning about 6 a.m., I saw I\u2019m near the Taconic State Highway (not far from Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s home<\/em>). From here I can hitch to I-85 to I-80, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit more than 800 miles. It completes a loop for me that started on the storied Zephyr from Chicago through the American West to San Francisco. From there I hitched through the Southwest and up to New Jersey, a bit more than 3,000 miles.<\/p>\n

My year following traveling carnivals had to be coast-to-coast and I have to travel the way they travel. <\/p>\n

This leg of the trip, I\u2019m heading into harsh weather. And the murder arrest of Kai the \u201cHatchet Hitchhiker\u201d can\u2019t be good for hitchhikers anywhere.<\/p>\n

I have real concerns about Northern Indiana and the Southside of Chicago. I\u2019ve hitched it before and it was always epic.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019ll be lucky this time.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be a dirty, smelly mess when I get there but I am the dirty, smelly, messy gift for an eight-year-old angel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOf all nature\u2019s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children.\u201d Cicero My daughter turns eight-years-old this weekend and I want to be home for the celebration so I began making plans to leave my New York carnival a couple days ago. I\u2019ve been gone most of this year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qqmC-6v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}