Class of 1976, Part 4, Chapter 7 . . .

Bill Ballantine talks about the Class of 1976 in Part 4,Chapter 7 of Clown Alley, published in 1982 by Little, Brown.  The most amazing person on the faculty was, of  course, Lou Jacobs.  Even then, he was being called "master" clown.  Other Ringling clowns who came to teach were Frosty Little, Peggy Williams, Billy Baker, Barry Lubin, James Tinsman, James Briscoe, George Koury, Steve LaPorte and Anthony Cicchino. 

Other staff included Bob Momeyer, Assistant Dean and teacher of magic; Gerald Quimby, Anatomy of Comedy; Chris Barnes, Voice, Music; Victor Gaona, Acrobatics; Hugo Zuniga, Juggling; Manuel Navarro, Unicycling; Stephen J. Margill and Cyrus P. Koski III, Equilibrium; Laurie Logan and Dee Garrett, Clown Dance Movement; Antoinette Attell (Toad), Mime; Anne DeVelder and Sarah Nash Gates, Costume Making; Roberta Ballantine, Health and Nutrition; Phyllis Rogers, Clowning's Roots; and Harvey P. (No relation to Steven D., far as I know) Copeland and Billy Dahne, Clown Props.  And of course, the Dean, the one and only Bill Ballantine . . .

Graduation was on November 20, 1976.  Everybody got two tickets, each ticket admitting two guests.  Looked like this . . .

There were 72 various and sundry presentations in the graduation program.  Almost every student was given the chance to showcase his/her abilities up close and personal for TGSOE Producers, Irvin and Kenneth Feld, but I do remember Kevin Hardy, from Carlisle, Massachusetts lamenting during the final week, "I'm not in ANYTHING!"

 Every standard, and some not so standard, piece of clown business was demonstrated, some more than once.  Of course, at the time, it was all new to me. 

I was in four group displays; juggling, stilt walking, something called "Animals Chorale" that I don't remember at all, and a dance number that we performed with our backs to the audience, wearing tin soldier masks on the backs of our heads (cuter than funny, but hey- opportunity).

I was in one of the two boxing gags, but I don't remember if it was the first or the second. The only thing I remember about it is Bob Boasi looking at me blankly half way through the gag and whispering "what do I do next?"  When all the dust settled, he was one of the students awarded a contract with The Greatest Show On Earth. 

Robert Boasi

I was also allowed to perform two numbers of my own.  "BAD BABY" was me standing in a high chair in baby garb with my legs hidden by a black cloth, and foam baby legs sticking out from under the tray.  John Coan, a little person from Brooklyn Center, Minnesota played my mom.  It seemed like it went well . . . I started out crying, and he gave me a giant pacifier, which I threw at him.  Then he gave me a giant bottle that I squirted him with.  Then he gave me a bowl full of basic, standard, whipped shaving soap and I pelted him with spoonfull after spoonfull until he took away my spoon.  Then when he came up to yell at me, I squashed the bowl on his head and the soap shot up into the air through the little hole cut in the bottom of the bowl.  Then I reached down, picked up the high chair and ran off with him chasing me. 
(John didn't get offered a contract.)

Bill wrote about my other gag in Clown Alley.

"We had a graduation act in which a clown performed as a wild-rock trainer; the big papier-mache rock, in obedience to the trainer's commands, had to be moved for each trick by an assistant straining behind the master's back.  For the blowoff, the trainer opened a trap door in the "rock"  and put in his head (ala Wolfgang Holzmair).  The trainer was Bruce Warner, a male nurse who'd been employed in psychiatric wards of vererans' hospitals" (Ballantine, 369). 

That was me, alright.  But he left out the best laugh . . .  Right before the blow-off, I stepped back, looked at Hugo (I named the rock . . .), threw my hands up in disgust and reached for a bag of sawdust I'd hidden behind the prop.  Then I threw sawdust around, behind and under Hugo, as if he'd just . . . well, you get the picture.

All things considered, I got a great opportunity to demonstrate what I'd learned.  As did all 56 of my classmates, except maybe Kevin Hardy.  Twenty-eight students were offered contracts with TGSOE on the morning after the gala graduation performance.

The above is the official photo of the Class of 1976, I think.  Just students, no faculty . . . I didn't know I had this picture until relatively recently.  After my brother died, my niece (of whom I am very proud-- has a PhD and teaches at Harvard) brought me a bunch of stuff that looked like it would be mine from cleaning out his house at Chernobyl, and this photo was stuck inside a program from the Moscow Circus . . .

Below is another shot, this time with faculty . . .

Hugo was the biggest laugh I got that night.  But he wasn't big enough.  I wasn't one of the twenty-eight.  Years later, after we were done with the circus, I took Hugo back to a rock sanctuary in East Haven CT, where he could live out eternity in peace.  Was it cruel to rip him from his surroundings when he was just a pebble and subject him to twenty years of the uncertainties of circus life?  I don't know.  But he never complained  . . .

This is a photo of our final goodbye . . .  He was so old that I had to prop his mouth open with a stick so he would be able to breath . . . 

They tell me at the sanctuary that he never moved again . .

So it goes. 

Class 0f 1976 #3 . . .

I was cleaning out my garage yesterday, and I found this in a box I hadn't opened in years.  I threw most of the other stuff in it away . . . this is the key to my room at Villa Paradiso, one of the courts at Venice Villas, the motel that housed Clown College students for many years.  It's one of the very few things I have left from Clown College.  And I'm not even sure that I kept it in 1976, since I was back at the Villas in 1977 as bus driver, but in 77, I think my room was in the motel building, not in one of the Villas.   (Maybe my CC room-mate, David Carlyon could shed some light . . .   one could always ask)

The back of the key fob says"we recommend SMITTY'S Cocktail Lounge and Beef-Eaters Room-- Charcoal Broiled Steaks, Prime Ribs. US 41, at the lights . . ."  I guess there were so few traffic lights in Venice in 1976 that the reference was plain.  I don't remember Smitty's.  I think I wasn't drinking then, or eating a lot of red meat, so that I could hold my head up high in the presence of Mrs. Ballantine, who taught about the "Care and Feeding of Clowns."  Didn't have a lot of money, either . . .

This is David Carlyon, my Clown College room mate.  This is a link to his website. As you can see, if you click the link, he's gone on to great heights in theatre, publishing and academia . . . but he's really still a clown at heart.

Dave is the one in the polka-dotted hat.  The young lady is Ms Ruthie Chaddock, quite a clown in her own right, and also a CC grad, slightly earlier than Dave and me.  (This photo is from the 40th CC reunion at the Clown Hall of Fame in Baraboo, Wisconsin in 2008.)

 I didn't go.  I had to work.

So it goes . . .

Class of 1976 ( cont'd) . . .

I think I must have gotten a letter, or a packet, or something from RBB&BCC detailing reporting instructions and directions etc, but I don't have any of it left . . . I know from reading Clown Alley, Bill Ballantine's "salty and affectionate memoir" of his tenure at Clown College, that the class of 1976 convened on September 27, 1976, and I remember that I was overjoyed to confront Dick Brown again, this time with paperwork that demonstrated that I belonged.

Sometime near the beginning of the eight week course, I think, everyone got one of these . . .

I've seen this drawing reproduced in numerous places over the years, but I still have mine.  "Welcome to Clown College 1976."  Personally autographed by Mr. Bill Ballantine.  I never met Felix Adler, but I would have liked to.  Everything I've read or heard about him indicates that he was one of the all time greats.  It would have been something to see him work . . .

This is the list of students in the Class of 1976 . . .

The list was included in the graduation program.  This was the cover, again, Bill Ballantine artwork . . .

It was a most amazing 8 weeks.  Went by way too fast.  A blur of unicycles, stilts, juggling, slaps & falls, foam rubber, plywood, needles and thread, shopping for material, make-up, the greatest time of anticipation in my life, and finally, the greatest disappointment . . .  

Class of 1976 . . .

It must have been in July, or August 1976.  I think it was a Monday.  I was doing what I hated the most, and would never have chosen to do voluntarily, except I was in charge, and everyone else refused to do it.  Yes, it was my job to make out daily assignments, but everytime I tried to change things up, nothing worked right.  As long as I assigned everyone to what they wanted to do, which was what they always did, things went incredibly smoothly.  They'd all been doing what they always did long before I got there, and doing it quite efficiently, thank you, and they didn't need me coming in with my Yankee education thinking I knew better than they did what they should do . . .

Which meant that no one else on the nursing staff was going to sit in the room while our assigned psychiatrist interviewed new patients who had been admitted over the weekend.  So it was me, and the doctor, and people in varying degrees of stress, dysfunction, psychosis, mania and/or agitation.  Often times, the longer the initial interview took, the greater the degree of agitation became.  The word we used for it was "escalation."  Our assigned psychiatrist was a master at promoting escalation.

His favorite question, part of his every intake interview, was "do you have insurance?"

If the answer was yes, the hapless individual was shortly listed on all hospital records as a "private" patient, and billed separately for any and all provided services on every available occcasion . . .

Then the phone rang.  I hated it when the phone rang.  It meant that something was going wrong on the other side of the door that no one out there could deal with, and it meant that while I was on the phone, I couldn't give my full attention to what was going on in the room, which was usually an already agitated individual engaged in "escalating" behavior, provoked by our insurance seeking psychiatrist.

So, reluctantly, I answered the phone.  "Is this Bruce Warner?"

Yes, it is.

This is Bill Ballantine . . .

"This is Bill Ballantine . . ."   

Bill Ballantine.  Author, artist, former clown, current Dean of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College.  Calling me!  CALLING ME!  Could it be . . . ? 

Within days after Dick Brown had me escorted out, I had filled out and mailed a new application to RBB&B CC.  No one had contacted me when I applied in 1975. 

Now, almost a year later, BILL BALLANTINE was on the other end of the phone!

BILL BALLANTINE, Dean of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College was the other party in a conversation with ME!  This could only mean one thing . . .

I'm going to Clown College!

I dropped the phone.

I didn't pick it up.  I got down on the floor, crawled under the desk where the phone had landed and continued the conversation from there.  Yes.  Yes!  YES!  I not only am still interested, I can be there this afternoon!!! 

Which wasn't necessary, as class didn't start until September.  I got all the information, and thanked him, and hung up.  Then I crawled out from under the desk, said good bye to the psychiatrist and the now thorougly agitated, escalated patient, and left the room.  I went next door to the office, saw my supervisor sitting there and gave two weeks notice . . .

Her immediate concern was that I wouldn't try to use up all my accumulated sick and vacation time over the next two weeks.  The day before I left, the other staff threw me a going away party . . .

There was fried chicken, and country ham, and mashed potatoes and gravy, and sweet potato pie and corn bread and three of four different kinds of greens and a whole banquet of incredible food, all laid out on six or seven adjustable tables in one of the empty patient rooms.  There was enough to feed all the staff, and probably 3/4 of the patients as well.  I asked Nurse Wright, my favorite other employee, the one whose guidance had proven invaluable during my year in Jacksonville, why there was so much --

"Well," she replied, "we're not like you.  When we have a party, we don't like to have to stop on the way home to get something to eat . . ."

It was then that I noticed the lone bedside stand in the corner by the patient restroom with a small bag of Ruffles and a plastic container of Lipton Onion Soup Dip.  Next to it on a three by five index card, perfectly hand lettered, were the words "White People Food!"

I don't think I ever laughed that hard before . . .

And now for something completely different . . .

" . . . the angel answered and said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he is risen, as He said."

He is risen.

Indeed.

Happy Easter!

Associate Degree Nursing . . .

In the fall of 1973, I started in the Associate Degree Nursing program at University of Bridgeport's Junior College of Connecticut. 

Did I want to be a nurse? 

Didn't really enter the consideration.  I didn't want to work.  I was elligible for the GI Bill.  I could go to school . . .

I had been a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy . . .

I was a Nursing Assistant in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit at the West Haven VA Hospital . . .

Nursing should be a breeze.  And it was.  In the entire program, the only thing I had to learn that I hadn't learned before was the one semester of OB/GYN.  There were over 100 people in my ADN program, and only 6 of us were guys, and we were all ex-military medic types.  I graduated cum laude in 1975. 

And I applied to Ringling Bros Barnum and Bailey Clown College.  I never heard from them.  But, knowing that no news is good news, I decided to go anyway.  I went to Florida and showed up at the RBB&B winter quarters on the day Clown College started.  I met Dick Brown, director of security.  It took him a while to figure out that I didn't belong there, and while he was figuring, I watched from the wings as Gale LaJoie entertained the new class.   This is Gale . . .

He was in a ring full of props.  I remember a gorilla head and a step ladder and a wine bottle.  I don't remember what he did with them, but I do remember he made me laugh.

But all too soon, Dick Brown got me sorted out and then he got me escorted out . . .

So close . . .

I stayed in Florida, and got a job as charge nurse on a 40 bed psychiatry ward in Jacksonville.

Then Nursing got difficult.  Actually, it was the day my license came in the mail that Nursing got difficult.  Somehow, I instinctively knew that I was never going to know as much about how to do the job I had as I thought a person who had that job ought to know.  I had been a really good nursing assistant.  Being a nurse, being in charge, however, was a whole different story.  I was never comfortable at work again.  There was a rule of thirds in psychiatry then- no matter what you did to or for psych patients, one third got worse, one third showed no change, and one third got better. 

It was a very strange year.  I got punched on a regular basis.  I got threatened on a regular basis.  I administered a lot of valium, and haldol, and thorazine.  And it rained almost every afternoon right at the time I would be leaving the building to go home, and I never learned to not leave my umbrella in the car . . .