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| SEND IN THE CLOWNS | |
 June 24, 1999 
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JIM FISHER: This is Houston, in the Missouri Ozarks; familiar, since like a thousand other places, it's split by a highway that's become a strip mall for fast food and franchise businesses. Over there is the old Brown Shoe Company Factory, deserted these past eight years since closing and taking 400 jobs overseas. There? That's the Lee Jeans Factory. It's closed, also going overseas with 300 jobs. The booming economy? The 10,000 Dow? Not here. Hope for any new jobs depends on the opening next year of a 1,600-bed maximum security state prison up the road at Licking, Missouri, which says something about 1999 America. Bad went to worst: A good part of downtown Houston burned, five buildings gone due to an electrical short, which may not sound like much, but in a town of 2,200, that's a nightmare. No insurance. Rents in out-state Missouri don't begin to cover premiums. So you'd expect a lot of long faces around Houston. CLOWN: Hey, hey! Hey, look at all those neat people out there. Aren't they neat? Wow! Hey, everybody! Wave! JIM FISHER: Well, not the first weekend in May. Bring in the clowns is taken literally here: Clowns performing, clowns in parades, clowns mugging for children, clowns everywhere. And the residents, somehow, are smiling, too, which also says something about 1999 America, and the resiliency of ordinary people. Hard times come and go. The trick is to survive. Who knows that better than these hill people of Texas County, Missouri? Probably only a clown. And one in particular. Houston is the hometown of Emmett Kelly. Remember? Weary Willie, America's most famous clown, with his woeful, joyless face, tattered outfit, and his cachet of attempting to sweep away spotlights with his broom. Weary Willie, the one clown under the big top who didn't paint a smile on his face. Years with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circuses; parts in the movie "The Greatest Show on Earth;" stints on television and in nightclubs; commercials for Coke. SINGING IN COMMERCIAL: Get king size Coca-Cola! JOHN FISHER: Dead now 20 years. Ironically, the fire downtown brought back to some one of history's most famous news photographs: A shot of the 1944 Hartford, Connecticut, circus fire which killed 168 people, many of them kids. In the background, the big top burns. In the foreground, vainly carrying a bucket of water, is a clown: Weary Willie, AKA Emmett Kelly, a Missouri farm kid who joined the circus and saw the world -- and horror -- but went on with the show. MARK FORBES: Well, you'll need to take it for seven days. You'll need to take it four times a day. JIM FISHER: Mark Forbes, a druggist who went away to the big city, then came back, said there was never any thought of canceling the Emmett Kelly Clown Festival. MARK FORBES: Oh, we've spent too much time and effort into getting it going to just say, "eh." You know? And that was the beauty of Emmett Kelly. No matter how bad it got, Emmett always was still standing after it was done. We're starting to develop a little bit of a name for ourselves as a festival. We're working on a circus for the next year. "EK2K: Emmett Kelly 2000." So everybody else is worried about Y2K, we're getting ready for the E2K thing. JIM FISHER: Hope for the future. And this spring, clowns, as they have for 12 years, filled a little Missouri town, brought here by the memory of an American original, and their love of the craft. MARK FORBES: Some people are very liberated by putting on a little makeup. Oh-ho-ho! Golly gee! You can get up, act in ways that you maybe wouldn't otherwise. It's a freeing experience. JIM FISHER: Clowns amid the ruins-- odd, perhaps, yet better than only silence. CLOWN: Hi, mom, how you doing? JIM FISHER: I'm Jim Fisher. |
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