Sally Franson
In 2018, a clown is also a noun, an alter ego, a social pariah, and a spiritual calling. Each of us has a clown living inside us, according to clowning philosophy. The only matter is bringing it out.
A mother’s death catalyzes this process, according to informal polls of clown campers. So does living in Florida.
The clown living inside me is named Shelby. I met her last July at Christ the King Retreat Center on Lake Buffalo, a Catholic sanctuary that transforms itself for a week each summer into Mooseburger Clown Arts Camp. Shelby and I got to know each other pretty well over the course of six days, seeing as we shared a tiny dorm room decorated with crucifixes.
For example, I know that Shelby hates mandatory fun and loves to watch Netflix while drinking wine from cans. Shelby’s favorite parts of clowning include meeting new clowns and marveling at their idiosyncratic lives. Her least favorite part is having to dress like a grotesque baby.
Let the record state that Shelby is not me. Shelby is my clown. I can take no more responsibility for her actions than I could for, well, a grotesque baby’s.
Founded in 1996, “Mooseburger Camp” is a national mecca for beginning and seasoned clowns, including your humble correspondent. For reasons I can neither explain nor fathom, I pack up my clown car one Tuesday this summer and travel west like the great explorers before me. I call my friend Chelsea from the road and tell her my destination. She clears her throat.
“Is this for business or pleasure?” she says delicately.
“Business!” I say. “I am not a clown.”
This is not entirely true. Last year, at my birthday party, my boyfriend Ben and I surprised our guests with 30 foam clown noses. I’ve displayed the leftovers in a decorative bowl, the way others festoon their homes with ferns and apples. A few months after we started dating, while playing a parlor game, a friend challenged Ben to describe me in two words.
“Elegant clown,” he’d said then.
Or as Chelsea says now, “I just know how much you love adult enrichment.”
Over the past few years I have taken up Argentine tango, ballet, improv, the Enneagram, personal finance, and Pilates. I am a certified yoga instructor, Level I Reiki master, amateur dog trainer, and indoor gardener. Now, a 300-page clowning manual takes up half my backseat.
“I hear what you’re saying,” I say.
The median age of a Mooseburger Happy Camper is 50 years old, but what is age to a clown? Sixty-five of us young-at-hearts gather one July afternoon at Christ the King for the official Mooseburger welcome. In our ranks are teachers, health care workers, campus clowns from Mott Community College (in Flint, Michigan), Shriners, Ringling Bros. alumni, retirees, and a surprising number of white-collar professionals. I introduce myself as a first-time novelist and sometimes college instructor—which people here take to mean a sad clown.
One woman wears a giant plastic flower on her head. One Shriner with a vest full of badges has a badge that reads, “Stop reading my badges!” Tricia Manuel, founder of Mooseburger, begins the proceedings by honking on a kazoo so vigorously that the rubber chickens in her ears begin to swing. The clown living inside Trish is Priscilla Mooseburger.
“Welcome home!” Mooseburger bellows. “To the island of misfit toys!”
We clap our hands like cymbals, as misfit toys will. A man with a paper napkin bib does an actual round of applause. Next, Father Lon, one of the priests at Christ the King, echoes Mooseburger’s welcome.
“Most of the groups who come here are on silent retreats,” he laughs. We follow dutifully. “Seriously, though, clowns have been getting a bad rap. But I can tell you, from my experience, none of you can be as scary as I can be.”
Then he smiles garishly. In hindsight, the timing is poor, given the Pennsylvania clergy sex-abuse scandal. Yet he’s right. On YouTube, where users hoard views like misers gold coins, “Top 10 Scariest Clown Sightings Caught on Video” has amassed 4 million views. In the comments, user Killer Clown Pranks writes, “I think whoever sees a clown should beat them up, like if you agree.”
Three hundred seventeen users agree.
***
At dinner that evening, served promptly at six, we feast on turkey and tinned vegetables. We need our strength. Clowning, I am often reminded, “IS NOT A JOKE.” Cardboard clowns and paintings of Jesus grin from the walls. I’ve never been afraid of clowns, but I’ve never been outnumbered by them, either.
That night, the all-staff show stars 20 clowns in full costume and makeup. If clowns are like caviar, best in small doses, watching the show is like eating the Caspian. Ventriloquists, vaudevillians, and magicians vie for stage time. I sit beside a woman named Lyn, whose husband, Gene, tells knock-knock jokes. Lyn is not a clown, nor would I call her a fan. She is there to support Gene.
“The staff, they are crazy. They are cr-azy,” she says.
She would rather be in Florida with her granddaughter, Zevaeh: “Heaven spelled backward with a ‘Z.’”
Heaven spelled forward for some people is clown camp. By the end of the performance, clowns and audience alike leap to their feet. A conga line kicks off to the tune of “Everything Is Awesome.” Lyn, who uses a wheelchair, stays in her seat. I ask if she ever thought she’d be married to a clown. Her answer? An emphatic “NO.” Gene became a clown later in life. He’d called her during his first year at Mooseburger Camp and said he’d found his people. Lyn thought he’d lost his mind.
The conga line weaves and sways like a drunken snake. Grown adults, laughing like children, chase each other around. For whom, if anyone, does life turn out as expected? The unexpected life can be surprisingly sweet. At the end of the show, Gene, who wears an oversized green suit, rainbow fedora, and enormous floppy shoes, helps Lyn back into her wheelchair and pushes her out of the auditorium devotedly, his shoes flip-flopping behind the wheels.
***
There is only one official rule at clown camp, and the rule is a cheer: WATER, WATER, WATER, AND DON’T MISS THE BUS! The first part refers to previous campers becoming so dehydrated they required medical attention; the second to the vehicle that will transport us to the week’s clowning—ahem, crowning—achievement: Saturday’s All-Star Clown Show at the Buffalo Civic Center.
Because I find fine print irritating to the eye, I did not realize until arriving at Mooseburger Camp that the week culminated in a public performance. My first response is to fling myself into Lake Buffalo. My second is to text my friend Kate. She agrees to bring herself and her grade-schooler, Frank, to “bear witness.”
The fact that Mooseburger Camp’s one rule neatly subdivides into two rules illustrates Priscilla Mooseburger’s surprisingly tight fist. She abhors lateness, side conversations, and unenthusiastic kazooing. I should know, given my proclivity for all three. Mooseburger, along with her daughter and heir apparent, Julia, teach Clowning 101 for three hours every morning. By the end of the course, Julia tells us, we should not act like clowns, but feel we are clowns.
“You are the owner of your clown destiny!” Mooseburger shouts.
The first thing we do as a class, therefore, is set goals. Goals are to clowns as discipline is to soldiers. The military veteran in our class, whose inner clown is Spangles, says her goal is to lose her “cop face.” Delon, a college-age juggler, hopes to come out of his shell. Marii, here with her husband, Neil, wants to visit children in the burn unit near their home in Naples, Florida. Marii lost a child two years before; she and Neil recently joined the Shriners.
I say my goal is to make one person laugh.
People laugh. Mooseburger suggests I might consider setting a more ambitious one.
“Be open,” I say. “Have fun.”
At the end of class, Mooseburger hands out business cards that say: DON’T LOOK BACK UNLESS YOU WANT TO GO THAT WAY.
I take a workshop that afternoon on clowning with masks. Not to brag, but I take to it like a clown to rubber. Some other things happen, like an “Under the Sea” theme party that features a mermaid in a kiddie pool and a sequined lobster. Next is a pratfall-heavy solo show by Neal Skoy, a local theater and Renaissance Festival mainstay, and the camp’s featured performer. By nightfall I am seeing spots—or are they juggling balls?—humankind being unable to bear that much reality.
***
The weather takes a turn the next morning toward the cold and damp, but this does not dampen the brisk pace of Mooseburger Camp’s proceedings. The All-Star Clown Show is just two days away, and we have skits to rehearse, makeup to perfect, costumes to sew, and kazoo horns to manufacture. Kazoo horns, by the way, shouldn’t be confused with kazoos, which I learn the hard way:
Me: I’m here to buy a kazoo?
Prop Shop Attendee: No, you’re not here to BUY a kazoo.
Me: I’m here to invest in a kazoo?
PSA: No, you’re here to CREATE a KAZOO HORN. Buying a kazoo is boring for you AND the kids.
Me: OK, umm. . . I have money?
Tucked away from the rain, beneath the Prop Shop’s rickety tent, I Frankenstein a kazoo horn out of kazoo, pipe cleaner, garden hose, and multicolored duct tape. It sounds exactly the same as a prefab model, but I do it for the children.
Sometime after that I get pied in the face. It is more formal than you’d expect, kind of a workshop setting. Clown etiquette requires that whoever gets pied must return the favor, so I pie my clownrade, Jen.
I could spend a Proustian number of words reflecting upon the soft whump pie makes when hitting a human face, but there is no time. Clowning is in danger! Or at least, that’s what Brad says.
Brad is a Christian clown who moonlights as a gastroenterologist. Throughout his talk he identifies the fear of clowns, coulrophobia—sounds like coulaphobia—as a “specific phobia” designated by the American Psychiatric Association.
“It’s not a fear of cauliflower!” he jokes.
According to Brad, John Wayne Gacy ruined things for the rest of us, what with the murders and kids buried in the yard. Now we need to tone down the makeup and NEVER HUG KIDS BACK, unless we want to make the six o’clock news.
I can tell this good, clean Christian clowning bothers Neil, Marii’s husband. Neil’s inner clown is Chuckles, a self-described “dirty clown.” Chuckles wears a beaver puppet on one hand and speaks like Krusty from The Simpsons. In a recent clowning competition in Florida, Chuckles, who works as a divorce attorney, got marked down by judges for being “too much.” He dismisses that assessment with the wave of a beaver puppet. “How can a clown be too much?”
Clown competitions have suffered from waning attendance in recent years due in large part to the industry’s PR problem. The Midwest Clown Association used to have 300 clowns in competition; last year, only around 60 showed. Formerly popular community-ed classes now draw just a handful of people. Ringling Bros. shuttered last year in the wake of declining ticket sales and animal-rights lawsuits, and in fall of 2016, a rash of “scary clown” sightings briefly dominated the news cycle.
What bothers Mooseburger most about the latter is that the initial report was fraudulent. “They caught the person who made that false report, but the cat was out of the bag,” she says. “It started this horrible ball rolling, when people thought it would be fun to terrorize and scare people. The whole clown industry came to a screeching halt. Clowns were afraid to go out in makeup. Clowns would be sitting in their car, waiting for a gig, and police would show up.”
Mooseburger, a former Ringling Bros. clown and successful costumer, is leading the charge to “promote, protect, and preserve” the art of clowning. Next year’s Mooseburger Camp will feature the first ever Clown Summit, a world meeting of clown leaders to address issues plaguing the industry.
“Clowns just want to go out and make people laugh,” she says in an impassioned all-camp address. “We haven’t been our own best advocate.”
The Clown Summit will allow what Mooseburger calls “Real Clowns”—#realclowns on social media—to present a unified front against scary clowns and cultural stigmas. “We’re gonna do something really positive.”
***
Mooseburger Camp itself is undeniably, albeit strenuously, positive for most clowns in attendance. Spangles comes out as a clown to her parents by FaceTiming in clown makeup. Afterward she’s beaming, her veteran/cop face gone. “It’s like I don’t feel so alone!” she says.
Delon, whose goal was to come out of his shell, performs a bang-up juggling set at Friday’s open mic that earns him a standing ovation. He flips up his bowler hat as a thank-you and it lands neatly back atop his head. Neil stops wearing civilian clothes entirely and speaks solely in Chuckles’s growly voice.
Sally Franson in clown makeup
Christopher, a staff member and former boss clown at Ringling Bros., reflects during a rehearsal, “One of the things I love about Mooseburger is that it sets you up to succeed.” I thought a lot about this while texting selfies in clown makeup to my friends and family.
To boyfriend Ben I write: “will u ever have sex with me again?”
“Yes,” he texts back.
Success! I think.
Still, real success—clown success—seems far away. Saturday’s show looms like a great polka-dotted whale. My so-called costume—a mix of street- and beachwear—gets a thumbs-down from Priscilla Mooseburger. “It’s a starting point,” she says. She suggests striped socks and a pinafore.
“I am NOT wearing a pinafore,” I say to Ben over FaceTime that night.
Suffice to say, Mooseburger and I suffer from irreconcilable differences in leadership styles. She screams about tardiness that day during Clowning 101 (“IF THIS IS THE BUS, YOU MISSED THE BUS!”) and demands I cover up my tattoos.
“There are lots of ways to be a clown,” Ben reminds me.
“Not here,” I grump, and sip canned wine poutingly.
I begin to fancy myself an artiste, struggling against the zeitgeist, kind of like Van Gogh. Then I remember I am a 35-year-old woman at clown camp.
“Are you staying open?” he implores. “Are you having fun?”
“I am oppressed!” I declare.
I loll around for a while watching Mamma Mia! on my iPad, and then I fall asleep in my crucifix-heavy cell.
***
The morning of the All-Star Clown Show, it becomes clear that Mooseburger and I are not the only ones suffering from ill tempers and apprehension. Across the cafeteria, clowns flag. Coughs and sneezes echo. Mangled balloon animals drift sadly by.
We eat leftovers and soggy cereal. James, the sequined lobster, whose inner clown is Haw Haw, admits, “I’m sad it’s over, but I’m also glad, because I’m exhausted.”
Spangles worries about sweating off her makeup. An ambulance comes for another camper, for undisclosed reasons. And both Brad and Priscilla Mooseburger lose their patience during the final rehearsals. Managing 65 clowns will do that to even the brightest beacons of positivity.
During the photo session, Brad screams, “UNLESS IT IS A MEDICAL EMERGENCY, SHUT YOUR MOUTH!”
Mooseburger adds, “DO YOU UNDERSTAND? IF YOU’RE TALKING, YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.”
We do not understand, apparently. We have concerns. When is dinner? Will snacks be provided? Do we have to take the bus?
By some miracle they herd us, nervous and kvetching, onto a rented school bus by 4 pm.
Four minutes later, we tumble out at the Buffalo Civic Center, situated amidst cornfields and baseball diamonds on the outskirts of town. A giant inflatable clown waves hello in the parking lot. Inside, the BCC has transformed from a pole barn into a twinkly big top complete with cotton candy and a face-painting station.
We clowns head backstage, an area of open cement designated by a sign: CLOWNS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT! We kill time before our audience arrives by stress-eating peanut-butter crackers. Spangles writes out her lines, just in case, on the back of her giant flag necklace.
At one point I go outside to breathe some country air. I hear “Eye of the Tiger” somewhere in the distance. Is it my imagination? No, it is a Ford F-150.
Can I do this? I can do this. I do not want to do this. I am a clown, I repeat like Zach Galifianakis in Baskets. I am not a clown. I am a clown. I will do it anyway.
***
Clown camp
Kate and 9-year-old Frank arrive as others trickle in. Kate’s face upon seeing me as Shelby registers an entire range of emotions best summarized as grief.
“This is batshit,” she says.
“Is it that odd?” I say, looking down. I have lost my sense of proportion.
The ratio of guests to clowns is somewhere between two- and one-to-one. Eager new clowns take turns trying out their walkaround bits on stunned-looking children. A mime named Bob “says” hello to Frank.
“What’s the difference between clowning and miming?” Kate asks him. Bob mimes the answer, which is incomprehensible.
An announcer tells everyone to take their seats. Let the clown show begin!
“This is funny,” Frank says, looking around without laughing.
I’ll be the first to admit that the show has some issues. For one thing, the clown car won’t start. An explosion frightens a few children, and Chuckles gets too aggressive with his pies. At intermission, a clown named Heather tells me she made two kids cry.
Haw Haw asks worriedly from the wings, “Did my skit go OK?” I tell him he was marvelous. Nearby, a campus clown stretches her injured neck thanks to Chuckles’s ministrations.
And the thing is: Haw Haw is marvelous, as are all the clowns, in the sense that he, and they, cause me to marvel. How wild is this world! How diverse its co-citizens! Every time I think I’ve sized up these clowns correctly, they defy categorization. In the ’80s, Haw Haw worked as a dancer at Limelight, the outré nightclub. Priscilla Mooseburger blazed a trail for female clowns at Ringling. Even dirty Chuckles gives away not free pens but beach balls at his attorney’s office. “I do it for the kids.”
I do not cry; it is just the greasepaint in my eyes. I want to tell Haw Haw of my fun and open heart, but I barely have time to say “bozo” before the show reaches its finale.
“HORNS UP!” Priscilla Mooseburger shouts for the last time, and Dinah, do I blow my horn mightily from the back-back-back row. Mooseburger rolls in on the functioning clown car. Streamers and confetti burst. Clown relief is palpable as we clap and cheer. We’ve graduated!
Feeling benevolent, I give my kazoo horn to Frank after curtain call and teach him how to bring dignity to the instrument, as Priscilla Mooseburger taught me. Then I thank Mooseburger for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“Once in a lifetime?” she says, and invites me to join her troupe that clowns around the Cities. At one point I even agree to play a clownlike washer woman in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. But, clown oaths, like confessions, shan’t be enforced when made under duress.
“Honk, honk, honk,” says Frank happily through the kazoo. In the parking lot, a trio of women gives him a balloon hat.
I caravan with Kate and Frank back to Minneapolis, gabbing with Kate on speakerphone. Frank toots little ditties from her backseat. I open the windows on the county highway and smell the clownless air.
“Are you OK?” Kate says.
In fact, I am giddy, not unlike an escaped Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption. She asks if I had fun. I say I did. I feel, to my surprise, instinctively protective of Spangles and friends.
“Some people really are clowns,” I say.
Then I put on Shelby’s nose for the drive home, for old time’s sake. It cost $18.95 and smells like a gas tank.
***
What is a clown, anyhow? It’s not just the nose. The question has as many answers as strands in a rainbow wig.
My favorite comes from Mooseburger Camp’s featured performer, Neal Skoy. From the age of 4 he’d wanted to be a Ringling Bros. clown; at 19, his dream came true. For two years he toured with his childhood heroes, and one day, his mentor sat Skoy down for a bit of fatherly advice.
“You have to have a heart,” he said, “the size of Alaska.”
Skoy said it was the best advice he ever got. Might be the best I’ve gotten, too.
