The carnies became Jeff's friends. There were the "front-end" men, who had the concessions, and the "back-end" people
cheap newport cigarettes, who ran shows like the fat woman and the tattooed lady, and the flat-store operators, who operated the games. The carnival had its share of nubile girls, and they were attracted to the young boy. Jeff had inherited his mother's sensitivity and his father's dark, good looks, and the ladies fought over who was going to relieve Jeff of his virginity. His first ######ual experience was with a pretty contortionist, and for years she was the high-water mark that other women had to live up to.
The carnival was a world unto itself. "We don't run a Sunday school show," Uncle Willie explained to Jeff. "We're flimflam artists. But remember
newports cigarettes, sonny, you can't con people unless they're greedy to begin with. W. C. Fields had it right. You can't cheat an honest man."
One day Uncle Willie said to Jeff, "You're doin' real good, kid, and I'm proud of you. You're ready to move up to the skillo."
The skillo operators were the cr��me de la cr��me, and all the other carnies looked up to them. They made more money than anyone else in the carnival, stayed at the best hotels, and drove flashy cars. The skillo game consisted of a flat wheel with an arrow balanced very carefully on glass with a thin piece of paper in the center. Each section was numbered, and when the customer spun the wheel and it stopped on a number, that number would be blocked off. The customer would pay again for another spin of the wheel, and another space would be blocked off. The skillo operator explained that when all the spaces were blocked off
good luck (92), the customer would win a large sum of money. As the customer got closer to filling in all the spaces, the skillo operator would encourage him to increase his bets. The operator would look around nervously and whisper, "I don't own this game, but I'd like you to win. If you do, maybe you'll give me a small piece."
Jeff started out with the six-cat "hanky-park," a scam where customers paid to throw balls to try to knock six cats made out of canvas with a wood-base bottom into a net. The operator running the joint would demonstrate how easy it was to knock them over, but when the customer tried it, a "gunner" hiding in back of the canvas lifted a rod to keep the wooden base on the cats steady. Not even Sandy Koufax could have downed the cats.
Nice and easy was the password, and the moment the operator said it, the hidden gunner would drop the rod, and the operator would knock the cat off the board. He would then say, "See what I mean?" and that was the gunner's signal to put up the rod again. There was always another rube who wanted to show off his pitching arm to his giggling girl friend.
"Someday all this will be yours," Uncle Willie told the boy, "and the only way you're gonna hang on to it is to know more about it than anybody else does."
Uncle Willie arranged for Jeff to work at various jobs around the carnival.
Jeff worked the "count stores
cartons of marlboro," where clothespins were arranged in a line. The customer would pay to throw rubber rings over the clothespins, which were numbered, and if the total added up to twenty-nine, he would win an expensive toy. What the sucker did not know was that the clothespins had different numbers at each end, so that the man running the count store could conceal the number that would add up to twenty-nine and make sure the mark never won.
"Hey, you hit it too low," the operator would say. "All you have to do is hit it nice and easy."
life is hard (9)
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