Stories Of A Boy Who Did Not Become A Priest Chapter One - Carnival Days Terry Mulcahy   © Copyright 2026 by Terry Mulcahy

Photo courtesy of  the author.

I had a lot to think about while sitting in a jail cell in Jennings, Louisiana. I had been working for a Midwest carnival owned by the Murphy Brothers: Murphy’s Mile Long Pleasure Trail, which was directly connected to my sitting in this belowground cell. I was in a corner cell, so I had access to the prisoners on either side of me. The guy to my left asked me if I had any drugs. Well, sure enough. In the '70s, drugs were easy to come by, especially in a carnival that was always on the move through many states. The Snake Girl, who handled “deadly” snakes, was also the Drug-Addict Girl in some towns, using the same booth, who, for twenty-five cents apiece, talked to the marks about the horrors of the drugs she had experienced.

She had a white-haired dog named Cocaine, and he was always getting loose, so she walked around calling “Cocaine! Cocaine!" Although I was not much of a drug user, I had purchased a nickel bag of marijuana. There was still some left, and I passed it over. My cell neighbor had papers. A good thing, because I had none. He rolled up some joints, and passed them to me to distribute down the line to the right. A few minutes later, he asked if I had kept any, and since I hadn’t, he passed a lit one to me. I hadn’t had any matches either - clearly not a regular user. Before long, that cell block was filled with smoke, and I was feeling less stressed about being arrested. My neighbor, the one who had rolled the joints, told me that most people there were in jail for drug use. There was a book in my cell, an autobiography of activist/singer Joan Baez, so I stayed up all night reading that. I don’t remember any of it. In the morning, there was plenty of Louisiana sausage for breakfast, and they were the best tasting things I had ever eaten. Duh.

I had joined the carnival as I was bicycling through North Dakota, mid '73, early in the traveling carnival season. I had stopped at a 7-Eleven for a carton of milk for my granola, and an apple. In my bicycle panniers (saddle bags) I had a sack of granola, which is why I needed the milk. I also had a sack of brown rice, and a sack of soybeans. I made fires and cooked lunch and dinner with those every day. I was traveing in a westerly direction from Michigan after a visit to Canada. The combination of rice and beans provides the full array of amino acids I could have gotten from animal products, but I had no way to keep those fresh, and not enough money to buy those already cooked. I was doing OK. I paid for my milk and fruit and asked the gas-station clerk if there was any work nearby. He told me to check out the carnival just up the road, as this was their last day, and they always needed people to tear down at night. Cool.

I got hired to do just that, as soon as I found the carnival in a big open field. I helped tear down a Ferris Wheel. Finished with that, I was told to ask Duane, the electrician if he needed help. He did. He set me to disconnecting power lines from the junction boxes scattered all over the midway. Generators supplied the power, and as each ride, food truck “popper”, or games-of-chance joint shut down, I would disconnect the thick power cables from the junction box, roll them up and store them in the cable truck.

The unfortunate thing was that cables still ran out the other side of the box, so the metal connecting bus in the center of the junction box still had power, 440 volts. It was a dangerous job. Some time later I was told that I got the job because the last guy had died. But, here I was, pulling a cable out, while the cables - another high voltage one, a neutral, a common, and a ground were still connected. For safety, there was a thick plastic ring covering the edges of the holes as I pulled cables out of the metal box. As I had just used my speed wrench (covered in black plastic electrical tape) to undo the nut on the connecting bus, and was slowly pulling the cable through a hole, I noticed the hole had no protective ring. Carefully, I started to back it up, but it was too late.

The power running through the cables was such that it could easily bridge a small gap, and that one did. Hoo boy! Did it. BANG, a blinding flash, a shower of burning sparks, and the generator whined before it shut down. Darkness. Pure darkness. Not only because the lights were off everywhere, but my eyes needed time to recover from that flash. Couldn’t see a damn thing. It didn’t take long for Duane to find me. I explained what happened. He grabbed the (now powerless) cable, which had welded itself to the edge of the hole, and yanked it off. He looked at me strangely. I thought I was going to get fired. But all he said was, “Don’t do that again,” and ran off to restart the generator. While he was doing that, I disconnected the other four cables as fast as I could turn the wrench.

After a long, tiring night (I had been bicycling that whole day), I collected my pay, intending to move on. Money for food was all I wanted. Them rice and beans were getting low. But Duane suddenly appeared next to me, and asked me if I wanted to join up. Considering that I had no real plan, and very little money, I did. I was getting paid $80 a week, but they took $20 out every week so I could get it as a “bonus” if I stayed through the season. It was hard to save money, as I had to buy everything I ate from the poppers, so-called for their original function of selling popcorn. My job was to be one of Duane’s helpers, starting the generators each morning after I had shut them down the night before, and maintaining them. I repaired the loose lugs on the end of the cables. Sometimes the junction boxes needed new protecting rings over the access holes. Yes they did. I also washed the generators, and painted the trailers they were on. When I wasn’t doing maintenance, I walked around the midway, looking for problems, a joint without power, frayed wires, etc. Sometimes, to speed up repairs on this mile-long midway, I rode my bicycle with my tools in the front basket. Mobile repairs.

The next stop after I joined was Minot, North Dakota. There, I met Amy, a very pretty co-ed. She still lived with her mother. We walked around a bit just looking at all the rides and joints, but she was more interested in me. We kissed a lot and snuggled behind the rides. At the end of each day, she’d go home. Soon, the carnival would leave town. So, one day, Amy asked me to stay. She said there were lots of jobs in the coal mine. She hoped I would come live with her and her mom while I worked in the mine. Her mom approved. Now, that was an interesting idea. She was very pretty, and our kissing had aroused me no end. The thought of settling down with her was appealing. But, in the end, I couldn’t bear the idea of working in a coal mine on purpose, raising children at that point in my young life - I was 22 - or ending my travels.

On our next-to-last day in Minot, Amy pleaded with me to stay, again. I told her that I had a job. I asked her to join us. She said no, and she was pissed. She left and never came back. I thought I might see her on our last day, before we tore everything down, but she had been husband hunting, it seemed, and I disappointed her small dream. Betty didn’t show again. It takes all night to disassemble a carnival. As the sun rose, I was dead tired, but still, I looked for my marriageable friend. I wanted to say 'bye properly, but, no such luck. Later on, unexpectedly, it turned out there would be several women to meet while I was a Carny.

In Skokie, Illinois, a cop stuck his .357 magnum in my face. James, a friend who ran the “Shoot-out-the-stars” joint had decided to run his motorcycle around the fairground’s track. Cops had shown up. They told him he couldn’t do that. He agreed to stop, and as he started to ride back to his trailer, they stopped him and arrested him for “Failure to obey lawful orders.” The carnival day was over, and all of us Carnies were wandering around at night, partying until I had to shut the generators down. We were all very interested in what was going on, and mosied on over to see what was happening, to one of our own. James was explaining, over and over, that he was just riding it home, but they were not buying it. When they said to stop riding the bike around the track, they meant: “Get off of it.” When the Skokie cops realized they were surrounded, and there was a bunch of us, they panicked. They pulled their guns out. We all were just normal people who happened to be working for a carnival. They were terribly outnumbered, and our reputation was not saintly. I tried to get to James, which is when that large bore gun appeared inches from my eyeballs. The cop told me to go home. Well, I was home, but staring into that gun, I decided not to say anything. A scared young cop with his finger on a trigger might panic, and that would be the end of me. He just had to say he feared for his life, and that’d be that. Feeling like I’d failed my friend, I walked around the tent I was in front of. The carnival supports their own, like a band of European Gypsies, so they were able to get James out of jail, and he joined us at our next stop.

Things like that weren’t uncommon. A Skokie narc had shown up one day, smoking weed with a small crowd of Carnies, including our supervisor, Jack Tapt. The very young narc ‘fessed up to being a narc, and to prove it, he passed his badge around. Tapt, being Tapt, decided to take it. He put it in one of the claw machines with prizes you tried to lift out. He got arrested. This was before the other incident. But he was back real soon. Tapt was an interesting character. He used to joke about running bicycles off the road with his semi. I didn’t find that funny, whether he did or not. Once I had learned how to drive one of the big rigs, expertly backing it into a tight space, I asked him for a raise, He just laughed and walked off. Another time he got into a nasty fight with another Carny. The guy was drunk, and didn’t last long. Knocked out, or passed out, on the ground, Tapt kicked him repeatedly in his temple, something that could kill a man. I said, “You'll kill him." Tapp said, “I'm going to,” but after another kick and a feint, stopped his rage, The downed fighter was snoring, so we carried him to bed. In the morning he told me he didn’t remember any of it. He seemed fine. I told him what Tapt had done to him.

When that year’s carnival season ended, before I left, I was invited to come back the following season. I wasn’t finished traveling just yet, but the whole experience had been memorable. I had met some really interesting and very nice people with the carnival. It was a lifestyle. I had already met several women. The carnival could provide a trailer for me, with financing to pay it off. Work part of the year. Travel part of the year. That might work. And it is hard work, work that people do that we never see. Save my money. Marry a carny. Buy or build a few game booths. Use the money to buy a small ride, etc. A tenuous new dream.

However, there was a kink. The official traveling-carnival season was over, but there were still some venues to play. We stopped in Norman, Oklahoma for a small fair. Many of the large rides had already returned to the carnival’s home base in Tulsa. My duties as an electrician’s helper were over. Duane’s other assistant, who had taught me the basics of the carnival’s electrical system was Chayton. He had returned to Oklahoma shortly after I joined, and after I’d learned what I needed to know. But now, he was back. He and Duane took care of the work there still was. They knew how to balance the electrical loads around the midway. I didn’t.

I was assigned to assist the foreman of the Tilt-a-Whirl, a ride where you get strapped in standing up. Then the ride spins quickly, slowing rising on one end until you are hanging sideways, pushed backwards as you defy gravity with centrifugal force. “Toothless” Lester was the foreman. I had already collected my “bonus” but that night I met a cute co-ed at the Texas-based Gilley’s bar in Norman. We hooked up quickly. That first night I spent in her dorm with a roommate. The roommate was very popular, and it seems Cindy was very shy, but jealous of her roommate’s success with men. However, we screwed on the sofa while her roommate stayed in the bedroom. After that, since I had money, I rented a motel room, and Cindy spent every night there with me. There was a lot of sex. She was wonderful, sweet, and eager. I’m glad we had a bed, instead of the cable truck I had been sleeping in. I had to sweep out all the dirt, mud, and dog crap from the cables that accumulated over each ten-day stop. Now, I could take hot showers, instead of the cold ones from a water hose stuck in a ticket booth. It was paradise. But paradise is fleeting. I had to leave Cindy on my last day of work in Norman. I had her name and phone number. We stayed in touch. On another cross-country trip, two years later, I saw her again, but that’s a freaky story for much later in this narrative. Meanwhile, Lester had disappeared, and so had my gear and the rest of my bonus money. I was broke.