Chapter One, the Road Dog Diary by Ray St. Louis
I might never have heard about Renaissance festivals if it hadn’t been for Jack Horner. I’m still not sure
whether to thank him or blame him.
It was back in the fall of 1980. Ronald Reagan was running for president. Soon, he would be moving into the
White House, kicking off a new era of arch conservatism, getting to work on Star Wars and dismantling the
Evil Empire, running the country into deep debt, fighting secret little wars in Central America, trading arms for
hostages, stocking the Oval Office with glass jars full of jelly beans.
Not that any of that mattered much to me. I was beginning to lose interest in politics at the time. Instead, I
found my thoughts gravitating toward issues of a more personal nature—like survival.
I had been living in Minneapolis with an auburn-haired lady named Cathy with whom I had been trying to
create art. We were playing around with theater and masks and sculpture, circus skills like juggling and stilt
walking, and cutting-edge concepts like Brechtian distancing and Jung’s archetypes. During daylight hours, we
worked on whatever show was currently in the works in a small studio in the basement of an inner-city
church, which had ceased holding church services some years before but instead offered its space as a theater
for experimental groups such as ours.
In the evenings, we got together with our avant-garde friends—dancers, actors, poets, mimes, political
activists, anarchists, socialist revolutionaries, pacifists, Maoists, Zen Buddhists, and vegetarians—to drink
coffee at Dudley Riggs Coffeehouse or sip tea and eat avocado and sprout sandwiches at the Modern Times
Café. We talked about art and politics. We planned collaborations that pushed the frontiers of form and
substance. We dressed like proletarians in multi-layered shades of drab. None of us ever shaved, which for the
men resulted in full beards and mustaches, and for the women hairy legs and armpits.
Somewhere in the middle of this Bohemian existence, the whole thing went sour for me. Cathy and I had a
falling out over the artistic control of our theater. I was the one that ended up leaving even though I had started
the group. Once the artistic relationship faltered, the personal relationship wasn’t far behind. Cathy decided that
since she could no longer work with me as an artist, there was no way she could justify sleeping with me.
Instead, she took up with a New Age composer who specialized in Yoko Ono-style compositions awash in
dissonance—bizarre electronic stuff mixed with the real-life noise of traffic, power tools, and the occasional
squawks and squeals of barnyard animals.
I became something of an emotional wreck at this time. Cathy’s dumping me had a devastating effect on my
self-esteem. I begged her to take me back. She said that now that I was acting so weak and needy, I was no
longer attractive to her, which, of course, made me feel all the more desperate. Catch 22.
On top of all that, my parents were putting pressure on me to forget about this art thing altogether, get a real
job and start making some kind of normal life for myself. Problem was, I never was very good at fitting in with
the corporate world. No matter how much they tried to steer me toward that conventional middle-class life, I
knew it was not for me.
No, I had a different plan for myself: I started drinking and seeing a shrink. The shrink helped me get to the
root of my pain; the drinking helped make the pain tolerable. I was barely over 30 and in the prime of a life that
was going nowhere. Winter was just around the corner. I tried doing a little painting and sculpture work and
even attempted breaking into a couple of other theater companies as an actor and mask maker, but my work
was directionless. My situation had become desperate. I was broke, lonely, and lost.
That’s when I ran into Jack.
I barely knew him at the time, but “Little Jack Horner” was beginning to make a name for himself around the
Twin Cities arts community as a talented if quirky variety artist—part mime, part juggler, part magician, all
clown. I hooked up with him one evening at a bar in the Uptown area of Lake and Hennepin. Over a beer and a
game of Pac-man, Jack told me about a Renaissance festival in Texas that was flying him in to do shows on
the weekends. He was pretty proud of the fact that they were flying him back and forth and seemed to
consider that some kind of a breakthrough. The more he talked, the more it opened my eyes to a world I hadn’t
even known existed.
“These Renaissance fairs hire all kinds of street performers, kiddo,” Jack said, after I’d clued him in briefly
on my current predicament. “Maybe they’d hire you to do some of that dancing on stilts I’ve seen you doing
around town.”
It was a skill for which I’d developed some degree of proficiency during my theater troupe experience.
“Do you really think they’d hire me just to do that?”
“Well, you’d have to take it up with King John. He’s the fair’s owner. Dresses up like a king and everybody
fawns all over him and kisses his feet. Of course, you’d have to get there first. And there’s only two weekends
left, so it might not be worth your while.”
From my point of view, anything was better than languishing in Minneapolis, feeling unattached, unemployed
and desperate. I had never been to a Renaissance festival and was a little vague on the concept. I squeezed a
few more details out of Jack, basic stuff like the sort of costuming that would be required and some general
directions to the festival site in Texas, while Jack amused himself doing magic tricks for the other people sitting
at the bar. It was all basic close-up slight of hand, like making a cigarette disappear into his eye socket and then
pulling it out of his nose. One huge, well-lit biker thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. That was
all the encouragement Jack needed. To the utter amazement of the giant biker, Jack swallowed a lit cigarette,
opened his mouth to show the biker the cavity was empty, closed his mouth, and then coughed up the
cigarette, still lit, from his throat. The biker roared and slammed his hands, which were as big as porterhouse
steaks, on the counter.
When the biker went off to use the restroom, his old lady started making eyes at Jack, who responded by
pulling silver dollars out of her ears and various other body parts. The biker staggered back from the men's
room just as Jack was pulling one silver dollar after another from the woman's cleavage. As I watched him
approach our end of the bar, I could tell by his changing expression that the biker was no longer amused by my
clown friend’s clever antics. I leaned my head toward Jack's ear when the biker was no more than a couple of
steps away.
“Careful, Jack,” I whispered so that only he could hear. Jack looked up, just as he was pulling yet another
silver dollar from the lady's cleavage, and saw the look on the biker's face.
“Oops,” Jack said, then slid carefully off the back of the bar stool so that he would be on his feet, ready to
move if the situation took a turn for the worse.
Even standing, the top of Jack's head barely reached my chin. I am what most people would call average
height, about an inch under six feet. The biker towered over me. To be sure, neither Jack nor I looked like any
kind of formidable opponent. Jack wore a crumpled white frock-like coat with multiple pockets over a faded,
blousy, jester-type shirt with large red and blue checkerboard squares, along with drawstring pants, sandals,
and a ball cap turned sideways, beneath which matted clumps of tangled and knotted blond hair stuck out in all
directions. I was dressed in my usual proletarian artist-intellectual attire; faded blue jeans, gray sweater, dark
gray floppy wool cap and wire rim glasses. I imagined we looked about as intimidating as a couple of
characters from The Bowery Boys.
To make matters worse, half the other patrons at the bar that night were bikers. Most of them were as
intoxicated as our giant adversary. It wasn't hard to figure out whose side they would be on if a fight broke
out. There was little doubt our best strategy in the current situation revolved around the concept of mobility. I
maneuvered to a position alongside Jack and away from the legs of bar stools to avoid getting tripped up when
the time came to move fast.
A moment later, Jack was holding what appeared to be a piece of crepe paper, which he pulled out from who
knows where, at arm’s length in front of the biker's face. Suddenly, the paper burst into a flash of bright flame
followed by a puff of white smoke, which slowly dissipated, revealing a red rose.
Jack stretched his hand forward, presenting the rose as a peace offering to the biker who continued to stare
stone-faced at Jack for what was no more than a few seconds but seemed interminable.
From some hidden well of self-amusement, a smirk slowly materialized on the biker’s face. “Cute,” he said.
With a shaky hand he took the rose from Jack and handed it to his old lady. “You're one cute magic-making
motherfucker,” he slurred, turning back toward Jack. Then things started to happen fast.
The biker pulled back his balled fist in preparation to throw a punch at Jack's head. As the massive fist
changed direction and started heading our way like a ten-ton wrecking ball, Jack dropped to the floor and
rolled. I stepped back just enough so that the biker's fist barely nipped the end of my nose and instead smacked
his old lady, sitting on the bar stool, square on the ear. I saw the woman's eyes roll back into her skull as she
collapsed backwards off her stool. Her boyfriend had knocked her out cold. He and a couple of other well-lit
bikers behind her tried to break her fall, managing only to get themselves pulled down to the floor as well.
Jack pulled at my arm. “NOW!” he cued.
We both ran to the door whereupon Jack turned, pulled a small cloth bag out of his pocket, and pulled the
knot out of its drawstring. He turned the bag over, releasing a couple of hundred marbles, which spread out to
cover the bar's tile floor. “That ought to slow ‘em down for a few seconds,” Jack said, pushing me out the
door. Just before the door slammed shut behind us came the sound of a man's voice yelling “SHIT!” followed
by a crash that sounded of flying bar stools and splintered wood. We both sprinted around the building to the
rear parking lot.
“You got a car?” I called out, breathless from running.
“Right here,” Jack said as he turned between two rows of cars and stopped at the driver's door of a beat-up
van that looked like it might have been white at one time but was now a rusty gray. He fumbled for his keys.
Just then, a handful of potbellied bikers came around the corner of the bar. Some were carrying broken bar
stool legs as clubs.
“Let's go, man,” I urged, while Jack pulled everything but a set of car keys out of a myriad of pockets.
Within seconds the asphalt next to Jack's van was littered with clown/magician accessories: decks of cards,
colored scarves, short pieces of rope with knots in them, plastic werewolf fangs, roses, a whoopie cushion,
clown nose, rubber chicken. I was about to give up and make a run for it when Jack produced a set of keys
from within the folds of a latex Richard Nixon mask and hurriedly unlocked the driver’s side door. He got in,
leaned over to unlock the door on my side, shoved the key into the ignition, and started the van. The pack of
pissed-off bikers was no more than 15 feet away, and I had half my body still hanging out the open door when
Jack threw the van into gear and slammed the pedal to the metal.
Tires screeched as bikers leaped to get out of the way of the hurtling mass of glass and rusted steel that was
Jack’s van. I was holding on for dear life and still trying to shut the door as the van exploded out of the alley
onto Hennepin Avenue. A sudden left turn resulted in additional squealing from the tires, followed by a half
block of fishtailing as Jack fought to regain control of the vehicle. A couple of blocks later we were able to
relax.
Jack thanked me for helping him out.
“I didn't do anything,” I said as Jack pulled the remains of a joint out of his shirt pocket and lit up. He offered
the joint to me but I refused. “Makes me paranoid,” I said.
“You stood there with me; that's something.”
“This kind of thing happen to you a lot?”
“You mean fights? Naw. I guess I just have a way of drawing attention to myself. I don’t do it on purpose.
It just happens. Been kind of a problem in my life.”
“And what sort of person carries around a bag of marbles in his pocket? What the hell is that all about?”
“Pure coincidence,” Jack answered. “I bought them at a garage sale this morning. Hadn’t owned a bag of
marbles since I was a kid. Thought they might be fun. Lucky thing, huh?”
Jack took another hit from the joint, then extinguished the roach and dropped it into his pocket. I looked
around the van for the first time. The interior was a confusion of costumes and props, and makeup in little tins,
and juggling balls, rings, pins, and torches. One corner held a folded up wheelchair. Other items stood out in
the clutter: a unicycle, the torso of a female mannequin, a box of surgical gloves, hockey stick, scuba gear,
and a cage, inside of which was a live duck. The duck seemed rather agitated from the wild ride it had just
experienced and was currently engaged in an incessant fit of squawking to express its displeasure.
“His name’s Wally,” Jack said. “He goes everywhere I go.”
“Okay, I can understand the duck, but why do you carry a wheelchair in your van?”
“To avoid waiting in lines; they're great at amusement parks,” Jack said, then broke into a laugh that was,
without a doubt, the most distinctive and infectious I'd ever come across. It had a mule-like quality to it—both
guttural and nasal at the same time, like a human foghorn breathing deep from the diaphragm. It was also
generous, the kind of laugh that let everyone in on the joke. The joke this time had to do with propriety and the
conventions of society, the breaking of which, I was beginning to think, Jack had made into his life's mission.
When we pulled to a stop at a red light, Jack said, “You didn’t leave a vehicle there, did you?”
“I got a bike out front.”
“Harley?”
“Ten-speed.”
“I'll take you back. They ought to all be inside by now.” Jack drove around the block and doubled back to
the bar. He let me out just a few yards before the bar entrance where I had my bike chained to a light post.
“All right then. See you in Texas,” Jack called out before rolling the van back onto Hennepin Avenue. I stood
there for a moment, wondering about this strange little man and the unexpected turn my life appeared to be
taking.
I hopped on the bike and headed north on Hennepin. In my head, I kept mulling over the events of the night.
About the time I crossed 28th Street, I started to laugh. I realized I hadn't laughed in a long time. It felt good. I
kept on laughing the rest of the way home.