On The Road

We had a full itinerary of Fairs and other such places to go to, from as far North as Wisconsin and eventually ending up in Florida. Once we got to these places we were scheduled to do 3 shows daily as well as 3 Puppetmobile runs(I'll explain later) as well as selling posters of Granpa Cratchet after each show. The Puppetmobile was a custom made miniature car that resembled an old Model-T; it was made so that the puppeteer can squeeze in the back and it made it look like the puppet was driving the car. After each performance of "Granpas Chicken Coop and Roadkill Cafe'" Granpa would make his way to the lower level to sell posters to the kids for $1 each..the kids also got a hug from the puppet(the great thing about the posters was that we got to keep 50% of the profits). I distinctly remember our best poster sale show was at the county fair in Wellington Ohio where we sold over 200 posters...nice!!
One of our stops was in a small mountain town in PA called Gratz, the Gratz County fair to be exact. It was a small event where the main ettractions were our show and Bruno Blaziaks Amazing Tiger show which was located about 100 feet from or trailer. Day and night we heard tigers snarling and Growling; at showtime we heard Bruno's Tiger Coming In Music..a short show, then the Tiger Going Out music. The entire week in Gratz was raining...in order to stay dry we would use the puppetmobile to make trips to the payphone which was located quite a distance away at the sheep barn. It must have been quite a site to see a puppetless tiny car travelling at great speed around the fairgrounds. We were desperate for any type of activity in th is small town reminiscent of "Deliverance"...we asked the locals where all the youong people hung out..they all said, "The Fuzzy Bunny"; I think they said there was a rave there every Saturday night. We had nothing better to do so we headed over to the Fuzzy Bunny...Imagine a smalle bar with a few toothless people drinking Pabst...ala a Gratz rave.
One of the last stops on the road was the State Fair of Virginia in Richmond. I beleive it is one of the larger fairgrounds in the country and we were there for a full week. A bunch of old friends decided to come down form DC to experience the Fair life with us. I think there were 10 of us living in the Super Unit..we drank a lot of beers and ate Church's Chicken for the couple of days they were there. Directly across from our show there was an exotic Petting zoo that featured a baby giraffe named "Romeo". Late at night we would get on our Microphones and call out Romeo's name...after the 3rd night taunting the Giraffe the Zookeeper lady finally came out and gave us a piece of her mind.