{"id":1302,"date":"2014-03-16T17:01:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T17:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2014-12-30T23:55:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T23:55:17","slug":"carny-philosopher-king-with-buffalo-bill-beard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=1302","title":{"rendered":"Carny Philosopher King with Buffalo Bill Beard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1291\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?attachment_id=1291\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"4608,3456\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;3.1&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;COOLPIX S6500&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1391377244&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;4.5&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;800&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.076923076923077&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Kelly Best\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best-300x225.jpg\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best-1024x768.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1291\" alt=\"Kelly Best\" src=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best.jpg\" width=\"4608\" height=\"3456\" srcset=\"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best.jpg 4608w, https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Kelly-Best-624x467.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 4608px) 100vw, 4608px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Idfq4JHfxVw?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>&#8220;Someday I&#8217;ll wish upon a star<br \/>\nWake up where the clouds are far behind me<br \/>\nWhere trouble melts like lemon drops<br \/>\nHigh above the chimney tops<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s where you&#8217;ll find me&#8221;<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Somewhere Over the Rainbow, music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The 30-ish bartender sports a shiny bald head, purple triangle earrings and a Buffalo Bill Cody goatee.<\/p>\n<p>I decide to take a seat where the bartender gets ice, so he can pause to talk once in a while.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m on the hunt for carnival stories. My duck blind is the main bar in Showtown USA, during its annual traveling carnival trade show in February.<\/p>\n<p>Not many people were there yet. It&#8217;s a long rectangular bar with flat screen TVs. Brightly lit, real Italian- painted carousel scenery panels above the bar made it carnival chic.<\/p>\n<p>I remembered an encounter the night before, when I walked in with a carny who knew I was looking for stories.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are going to be hundreds of people here tonight,\u201d he said, \u201cand each of them will have thousands of stories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We chuckled and looked around the room, not at the each other.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd half of them will be related to each other,\u201d I said. \u201cA lot of them will be slaughtering someone else&#8217;s story.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bartender&#8217;s name is Kelly Wilson and he was born into the carnival business. His parents were in the business, he grew up in games and food wagons.<\/p>\n<p>His eyes are clear and he sports an easy, full smile. Buffalo Bill Cody was the greatest showman of the early 20ths Century and the first to join a the first showmen&#8217;s association. Kelly Wilson&#8217;s look shows he knows his showmen&#8217;s traditions. That, plus he knows it looks cool in a place like this.<\/p>\n<p>I just knew the story safe at a carnival trade show would be at the bar and the key is the bartender with the Buffalo Bill beard.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wilson&#8217;s Laws<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kelly learns from everything he comes across, religion, philosophy, music and art. He&#8217;d be a humanities scholar if he ever went to college.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy college is life,\u201d he said as he poured rum and coke.<\/p>\n<p>Then he began mixing disciplines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLove and music are my religion,\u201d he said. \u201cBuddhism and Daoism make sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was careful not to \u201cdis\u201d Christianity either. He&#8217;s not ruling out ideas so much as seeking unifying laws for life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKindness,\u201d Gandhi and food service are the disparate concepts he&#8217;s been mulling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGandhi said you should be the change you wish to see in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to be kind as much as possible. Even to the meanest people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bartending is Kelly&#8217;s off-season gig. He&#8217;s tried lots of sucker jobs. He&#8217;s trained under some good restaurant chefs, so, \u201cI know how to cook.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cseason\u201d calls him back, though, like it does migrating birds.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI tried the normal life,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery a April I&#8217;d get the itch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s because he was raised on the road in a cramped blue trailer, in a family of six.<\/p>\n<p>His childhood was spent running around, free rides, free sweets, playing with the other carnival kids from town to town.<\/p>\n<p>He worked some games coming up but he spent more than half his life on the road making cotton candy, gyros, pizzas and hamburgers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy whole life, there wasn&#8217;t a year I didn&#8217;t go out and do something,\u201d he said pouring whiskey and Coke. \u201cMy friends always say I&#8217;m like the Allman Brothers song, \u201cRamblin&#8217; Man.\u201d That&#8217;s the way we lived in a blue bus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When he reached his teen years the cramped living and maybe his phase in life, led to lots of arguing. Sometimes it was great but somewhere it turned.<\/p>\n<p>Music was his savior. At his first \u201cRave\u201d he had an epiphany. I don&#8217;t have to live like this any more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was like the Bob Marley song, &#8216;If you are unhappy then travel wide.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nevermind he was already traveling wide, it was a freedom song to him.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unification theory<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From July to October he travels the Midwest and South working a Mexican food trailer.<\/p>\n<p>About five years ago he began selling hula hoops on the side. On breaks he went to the meeting room off the bar area so he could hula with kids.<\/p>\n<p>I videotaped the dance. It started out with a \u201clife&#8217;s a playground\u201d feel. Then he kept going, part dervish, part &#8220;auana,&#8221; a Polynesian hula word for &#8220;to wander or drift.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kelly hears all the wild carnival stories as he pours drinks but I asked him what&#8217;s the weirdest thing he ever saw on the road.<\/p>\n<p>He kept pouring drinks and making change but was stumped for a while.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me, weirdness is just normal,\u201d he finally said. \u201cLike people having sex in random spots is normal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When I prod him about his future, he says maybe he&#8217;ll buy his own trailer some day.<\/p>\n<p>Which tells me, he isn&#8217;t like some carnival people I&#8217;ve known who envied homes in towns they passed.<\/p>\n<p>He was more like a nester, who sets up home where he migrates.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, he searches for the unifying theory of his life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like cooking. I like people. I like traveling. And this is the best way to do all three.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What I find disorienting about his unified theory is the backdrop. We&#8217;re in a carnival bar, everyone in this bar is a carnival person. He was raised in carnivals and lives in carnivals.<\/p>\n<p>Yet he&#8217;s not jaded. His theories are idealistic, at times romanticized and wishful.<\/p>\n<p>Bob Marley, the Allman Brothers, Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Gandhi, cooking, traveling and \u201ckindness\u201d even to the mean people.<\/p>\n<p>Such are the truths he lives by &#8211; Wilson&#8217;s laws &#8211; as he dances in hula hoops through life with his beard of Buffalo Bill.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<br \/>\n<em>I recently finished working a year in traveling carnivals in California, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Alaska, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia and a Florida freak show. I trekked down into Mexico to see the new face of American carnivals, Mexican carnies. I&#8217;ve traveled more than 20,000 miles through 36 states, Canada and Mexico. I&#8217;m attempting to sell a book on the America I saw from the carny quarters and the side of the highway.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220; &#8220;Someday I&#8217;ll wish upon a star Wake up where the clouds are far behind me Where trouble melts like lemon drops High above the chimney tops That&#8217;s where you&#8217;ll find me&#8221; Somewhere Over the Rainbow, music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg The 30-ish bartender sports a shiny bald head, purple triangle [&hellip;]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qqmC-l0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302"}],"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=1302"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}