Call of the Road : The Chance to Travel and Meet People Beckons Carnies to a Life of Hard Work, 14-Hour Days

They had a full day of work ahead.

Before it was over, the 180 workers on the carnival payroll and their helpers would have to be finished setting up the Hurricane, the Zipper, the Yo-Yo, the Paratrooper, the Falling Star and Wild River, a portable log ride that is making its West Coast debut.

In all, 51 adult and kiddie rides would have to be erected for the 95th annual Orange County Fair, which begins Thursday in Costa Mesa.

But shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday, few of the carnies were stirring. Most were still asleep in their recreation vehicles, in the carnival’s traveling bunkhouse or in nearby motels.

They had rolled into town Monday from two locations--one unit of the carnival coming from a fair near Riverside and the other having just completed the Del Mar Fair, where the carnies had been working days of 14-16 hours for 17 days straight.

“They’re all a little bit tired from getting here,” said Buddy Merten, 43, co-owner of the carnival based in Yuma, Ariz.

Besides, Merten said with a grin, “most of these people are night people and aren’t up early in the morning--unless they’re still partying from the night before.”

Merten, with a large collection of keys hanging from a belt loop on his blue jeans, was headed toward the “cook shack,” a portable kitchen that will serve the carnies three meals a day during the fair’s 11-day run.

This year, in addition to the carnival, the fair’s main attractions will include a rodeo, a musical revue with laser lights, specialized poultry exhibits (the fair is saluting the poultry and egg industry) and such ‘60s-era headline entertainers as the Righteous Brothers, Jan and Dean and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.

Pig aficionados, however, are in for a disappointment: The swine breeder show has been canceled because of pseudo-rabies, a highly contagious swine virus. But, fair officials said, market pigs who have tested negative for the virus will be auctioned as scheduled during the junior livestock auction.

Ordering a cup of coffee at the cook shack, where workers were beginning to trickle in for breakfast, Merten said that B and B Amusements, which he co-owns with his brother, Bobby, is one of about a dozen carnivals operating in California.

The business was established by their parents in 1948.

“Our folks used to run a gas station in Fontana, and somehow they acquired two kiddie rides,” Merten said. “Dad would give kids free rides while the cars were getting lube jobs.”

The Roman Catholic parish where the Mertens once went to church borrowed their merry-go-round and airplane ride for a church festival and charged 10 cents a ride. “Dad looked at all the money being made and said, ‘This could be pretty lucrative,’ ” Merten said.

The Mertens employ 180 people full time and also rely on local people to augment their work force. “We’ve got 30 to 40 men coming from the unemployment office to help set up the rides,” Merten said.

For some, once they’ve had a taste of working in a carnival, the life of a carnie proves irresistible.

“I think the attraction doing this,” Merten said, “is you’re not punching a time clock, and you’re not doing the same routine, like on a factory assembly line. And there’s the travel, going to different places and meeting a lot of different people.

“And they all like kids, or they wouldn’t be out here. They like watching the kids--and watching the girls and everything else.”

The job requires hard work and long hours, he said. During the carnival season, which begins in February and ends the week before Thanksgiving, the carnies log about 5,000 miles.

“It’s a different life, and there are a lot of people who couldn’t deal with it,” Merten said, pausing to greet an employee from the unemployment office who asked him where the workers should report.

“Oscar,” he shouted to a worker, “take them to Big Al.”

Merten grinned: “Everybody has a nickname out here.”

Christopher (Moose) Knight had just finished breakfast under the cook shack’s striped canopy. The 320-pound Dallas native was seated on his personal dining chair, a truck wheel hub.

Knight, 30, said his fellow carnies christened him because he was “picking up a 450-pound house jack and putting it on my shoulder and walking around.”

“He’s our bouncer,” joked one of the men at the table. “You ought to see him when he gets mad.”

Knight joined a carnival 11 years ago because, he said, “I didn’t feel like paying no more rent.”

“And (because of) the women,” piped up another worker with a grin.

“Yeah . . . and the travel: just seeing different places and meeting different people,” said Knight, who often sleeps on the ground under the Ferris wheel.

During the winter, Knight lives in Bell Gardens, where he works in construction until the carnival season starts. “I can’t stay in one spot too long . . . makes me nervous,” he said.

Johnny (Ruffy) Waters, wearing a cap with the words “Welcome to the Zoo,” said he started working in carnivals three years ago in Texas. A former roofer, Waters, 28, has worked for the Mertens a year, doing carpentry and driving a truck.

Waters said the rides are set up at a fairly leisurely pace. But they’re torn down so fast at the end of the fair that he sometimes has problems loading his truck.

“They all try to get done quick to get to the beer store before it closes,” he said, The men at the table agreed that “town people” often misunderstand carnies.

“I think the public, they look down on us. People think, ‘Oh, there’s those dirty carnies,’ ” said a tattooed man at the end of the table, who identified himself as Mikey, (“No last name; just Mikey.”)

“They believe we can’t hold a regular job,” said another man (“I go by Shadow”). “But we put in 12 to 18 hours a day. We gotta maintain the rides. . . . Safety is our No. 1 concern.”

Shadow glanced at the fairgrounds where the carnies had begun to assemble the rides.

“When you work for a show, you gotta enjoy what you do,” he said. “The reason I got into this is like the others: I like seeing people have a good time. It’s hard work, but it’s fun. And I like handling that steel. It keeps me in good shape.”

He pushed away from the table. It was time to start getting in shape.