TWIN FALLS • Billy Smith’s job defines livelihood.
“This provides a home and a family,” he said Wednesday at a ball-toss booth at the Twin Falls County Fair.
The former Bostonian’s home is a tent or mobile bunkhouse. Family is a network of mile-hardened carnies he’s on the road with with year-round.
“You have to be either that or live under a bridge,” he said.
Smith began working shows at 14, in a dime pitch. He’s since spent decades traveling with amusement and concessions operations and has been through all 48 lower states “twice,” he said.
Smith did a stint as an iron worker but lost the job in 2006 when the economy tanked. Unemployment left him living under a bridge.
Being a carnie is a tough job, and commission isn’t always great, Smith said, but steady work keeps him off the street.
“This keeps me from flying a sign: ‘God please help.’”
Like Smith, John Hanschen has been in the business more than half his life. As president of Thomas Carnival Inc., he’s also raised a family on the road.
“This is year 39,” he said Wednesday.
His company has the contract to operate amusements and concessions at the Twin Falls County Fair.
His South Dakota-based firm was founded in 1928 and is four generations old. Its fleet of trucks, rides and bunkhouse, and accompanying caravan of carnie campers, will visit 48 cities by season’s end.
“It’s a new experience every week with the same neighbor,”
In Filer, Thomas is operating with a crew of 150 to 170. A few were hired locally, Hanschen said, but most live on the road.
“We’re a kind of traveling community,” he said.
It takes more than ride jocks, ticket takers and sideshow workers to keep the show on the road.
Randy Muller is Thomas’ fleet mechanic. His mobile repair shop — an oily semi-trailer full of tires, tools, parts and machines, sat in a lot full of campers and trailers.
“I can do just about anything on the road,” he said.
Next to Muller’s shop, Steve Pegg launders the crew’s show shirts.
“I do as little as possible, but it seems like I work all the time,” he quipped from inside the rolling laundromat.
Walking past a row of campers, Hanschen said the nomadic lifestyle isn’t “Hilton Hotel living,” but he thinks the crew is comfortable.
The convoy arrived in Filer Monday, after a 700-mile drive from Miles City, Mont. The fair’s 33 rides and many concessions were operational by Wednesday morning.
“We tore this down Sunday,” Smith said, amid the swirl of light and sound that filled the midway. “They call that a circus jump.”
Next week, they’ll tear it all down again and head to Salt Lake City for the Utah State Fair.
Carnie Thomas Alvin Milton Sr. plans a quick trip home to Great Falls, Mont., before that. He drives his own car to shows, he said, and prefers to sleep in a tent. He’s 30 years deep in the carnie game but doesn’t live on the road because he doesn’t rely on it for income.
“This here is for fun,” he said, holding a fistful of yellow darts in front of a balloon covered wall.
After seeing two Vietnam War tours, Milton lives off his military pension. But his slick pitch brings patrons in, and profits keep the bosses calling.
“They call me J.J. Giveaway,” he said.
Milton has been know to hand out prizes and pay for them out of pocket just to produce smiles.
“It takes more muscles to frown,” he said.
Milton said he thinks the word “carnie” means “carnieing people out of their money,” but he believes something different.
“I learned in the carnie game that you can tell people the truth and make just as much money,” he said.