The Sunday Profile : Clowning Glory : For Andy Beyer of Santa Ana, being Bumbo is more than a job. It’s a magic carousel ride.

The question is put to Andy Beyer the moment he comes home from work.

“Andy, dear,” his wife, Margaret, says. “Are you planning to take your face off?”

Margaret Beyer doesn’t mean to pry, but when you’re married to a man who wears an orange wig and greasepaint for a living, you can’t help but wonder:

Will he take off his makeup before dinner?

Or dine as Bumbo the Clown?

Beyer, of Santa Ana, has been Bumbo for nearly half a century. At 77, he is Orange County’s oldest professional clown. He has performed for three generations of Orange Countians--at birthday parties, picnics, baby showers, even his own dinner table.

He shows little sign of slowing down.

OK, so he walks with the help of artificial knees. So rival clowns call his act outdated. Phooey, Beyer says. He’ll be clowning around until he’s at least 100.

“I have to,” Beyer quips. “The mortgage on our house won’t be paid off till then.”

Beyer smiles. It’s obvious his motivation runs deeper than dollars and cents. You can see it in his eyes, hear it in his owl-hoot laugh. This silver-haired granddad loves to make others happy. The cynic in you doesn’t stand a chance.

Beyer drives a polka-dotted truck, a ’68 Chevy fitted with a small, old-fashioned merry-go-round. The carousel, powered by the truck’s engine, features a dozen miniature wooden horses. Beyer brings the carousel to all his performances. He refers to each horse by name.

On weekends, Beyer (a.k.a. “Bumbo the Clown and His 12-Horse Merry-Go-Round”) performs a couple of parties a day, at $80 to $90 a pop. On weekdays, his mission is entirely different.

Beyer leaves his house around 3 p.m. He drives the polka-dotted truck into low-income neighborhoods, offering carousel rides for a quarter. The quarters don’t add up to much, but that’s OK, Beyer says.

He gave up the dream of owning a Lincoln Continental a long time ago.

*

The suit-and-tie world beckoned when Beyer left the Marine Corps in 1946. He and Margaret were two years married, with a baby on the way. Beyer got a job in Philadelphia selling Hoover vacuum cleaners and was offered a similar position in Santa Barbara. They couldn’t wait to be Californians.

Then Beyer spotted the ad in Variety magazine: a portable merry-go-round for sale in Boston for $1,200. It was an enormous sum, but the Beyers were intrigued.

Margaret had fond memories of riding a horse-drawn carousel as a child for a penny a ride. Her uncle Arthur insisted it would be a moneymaker out West.

“After oranges,” he predicted, “the next great crop in California will be children.”

Beyer cashed in his life insurance policy and headed to Boston. The merry-go-round was theirs. He drove it across the country, stopping along the way to offer rides for 10 cents. He made so much money--enough to pay for all that 15-cents-a-gallon gasoline, anyhow--that he decided the heck with vacuum cleaners. He’d sell carousel rides instead.

He and Margaret settled in Orange County, living in a Quonset hut on the Marine Corps base in Tustin. Everywhere they looked, they saw orange groves. Beyer needed customers. He started making forays across the county line, into a new patch of suburbia called Lakewood. His merry-go-round business thrived.

One Long Beach man admired Beyer’s carousel so much that he built one of his own. The man’s wife encouraged him to dress up in makeup and costume. Chucko the Clown was born.

Chucko later gave up the merry-go-round and landed his own TV show.

Beyer became Bumbo, performing at kids’ parties for five bucks an hour.

*

Bumbo doesn’t wear big shoes. He prefers ordinary white loafers. Big, floppy shoes are for circus clowns, he says. Not for clowns who drive a truck.

Bumbo wears a baggy jumpsuit sewn from a pair of Disney bedsheets. His hat is made from an umbrella, or bumbershoot, inspiring his name. He no longer wears a red rubber clown nose (it scared children). His wig is goldfish orange.

Growing up as sons of Bumbo meant knowing these details all too well. It meant waking up each weekend to a familiar smell: pancakes, sausage and hot, bubbling greasepaint. Beyer would warm the paint on the kitchen stove, making it easier to apply.

For Richard, George, Tom and Dave Beyer, now in their 30s and 40s, that smell was their wake-up call. It meant time to get up and wash the truck, stored in a chicken coop at night.

Being a clown’s son had its perks. You could ride the merry-go-round for free and master a few magic tricks. But it also meant having to hose off the carousel when some poor kid got sick.

It meant you and your date getting picked up in the polka-dotted truck whenever the family car broke down.

It meant listening to your father lecture you about the importance of a solid career, when inside you were screaming, “But Dad, you’re a clown!”

For the record, Beyer’s sons turned out fine. Richard is a psychologist, George a music professor. Tom is a district manager for a furniture company. And Dave is drummer for rocker Melissa Etheridge.

As teenagers, though, the Beyer boys sometimes had to be Bumbo, substituting for Beyer at parties when he got sick.

“I remember it being 106 at a party in Anaheim once,” Richard says. “Mothers would come up and say, ‘Gee, your makeup’s running. I know exactly how you feel.’ That was real fun.”

Says George: “It was the last thing I ever wanted to do.”

Dave: “The longest hour of my life.”

Tom avoided it altogether. “I grew a beard,” he said. “That kept me out of clowning.”

Times were not always easy. There were reconditioned bicycles under the Christmas tree. Sometimes a pound of hamburger had to be stretched for six. During rainy stretches, Beyer would bolt out the door as soon as the weather broke and drive around hoping to give carousel rides. With a pocketful of dimes, he would rush home so Margaret could buy dinner.

They ate a lot of tuna-stuffed tomatoes.

Underprivileged? On the contrary. Every Sunday after church, the Beyer family climbed into their big Lincoln Continental. Well, it wasn’t theirs exactly. But they test-drove it so often that it sure felt like it was.

The house of Bumbo was one of refinement, at least at the dinner table. Everyone was expected to follow “Top of the Mark manners.” Elbows off the table. Close mouth while chewing. Hold knife and fork correctly. Andy promised his sons that if practice made perfect, he’d take the lot of them to the Top of the Mark restaurant in San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins Hotel.

The following Thanksgiving, in the City by the Bay, they feasted on Top of the Mark hors d’oeuvres.

*

It is nearly 4 p.m. on a Friday, and Beyer parks the polka-dotted truck--license plate “Bumbo 1”--along a residential street in southern Santa Ana. Beyer wears his street clothes--red-and-white-striped shirt and crimson pants.

No one pays much attention. Traffic from nearby McFadden growls by. Toddlers wobble at their mothers’ knees on worn, brown lawns.

But then Beyer switches on the old turntable, and the carousel music begins.

Within several minutes, two dozen youngsters are lining up, clutching their quarters. A father asks his 2-year-old son in Spanish, “Quieres subir solo?” Do you want to go alone? Beyer takes each child by the hand and guides them up the steep, steel steps onto the horse of their choice. The ride begins.

Smiles are instant. The children are a blur of laughing eyes and silly grins. Beyer watches intently, beaming as if these were his own grandchildren. “Hooo-hoo, hooo-hoo,” he says softly. His signature Bumbo laugh comes out even when he’s not in costume.

The ride lasts about three minutes. Beyer gently escorts the riders off, keeping an eye on the youngest ones to make sure they find their way to their parents. Another group awaits.

A girl of 8 or 9 waves a dollar bill as if it’s a winning lottery ticket. Today, she says breathlessly, she and her little brother have enough money to ride two times.

Occasionally, Beyer will spot a glum-looking child watching from a few yards away. Margaret says her husband often gives free rides to children without quarters. Beyer insists this isn’t so. Over the years, a policeman, even a homeless man, have offered Beyer spare change so more kids could ride. He just makes sure it happens, that’s all.

Beyer will be 78 in March. Two knee replacements haven’t slowed him. He developed bursitis in his shoulder recently--after rebuilding his backyard fence. Doctors say his blood pressure is that of a 20-year-old.

What stress in pursuing a life you love?

Not all clowns have Beyer’s energy. Chucko is said to have retired years ago, living somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Gumdrops--a.k.a. Bill Davey of Garden Grove--is retiring this year at 61. Beyer has all his respect.

“Bumbo is king,” Gumdrops says.

Not all area clowns are so kind. One dismissed Beyer as outdated. Another, who described herself as a “graduate of the University of Wisconsin clown school,” questioned Bumbo’s credentials in a rather uncharitable tone.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Has Bumbo gone to clown school? Not just locally but at a top-rate place? Has he won awards? Does he compete? Does he go to conventions? Just because you operate a ride doesn’t mean you’re a performer or a clown,” she sniffed.

Awards? Conventions? Maybe that’s what it takes today. Modern clowning--one of the “circus arts”--has become a high-powered job. Clowns have 800 numbers, fax machines, car phones. Check out the Internet, you’ll find clowns galore: Fizzo and Snorkels and Sunshine. Binky and Pinky. How about a personal workshop on finding the clown within?

There are clown clubs, a World Clown Assn., even something called the Seven Clown Commandments (“I will learn to apply makeup in a professional manner. I will abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages while in makeup and costume. . .”).

It goes on and on.

Beyer shrugs and smiles. He’d probably be lost in cyberspace, he says. Contests? What for? He’s a self-made man, an old-world clown. He likes things the way they are.

*

The carousel--which is parked in Beyer’s backyard when it’s not on the road--is weathered, the paint on its wooden horses faded. The horses’ ears are made from snippets of leather belts, which Beyer buys at church rummage sales.

Beyer introduces his steeds: “This one here is Sheriff, the police horse,” he says. “That one’s Black Beauty. Over there is the Ice Cream Horse. . . .” It’s as if Beyer is introducing old friends.

He starts the carousel slowly.

“Want to go faster?” he asks his visitor. Sure, she says, crank it up. Margaret, watching from the lawn, looks a little concerned.

“Andy,” Margaret says in a “now, you be good” tone.

Beyer grins and kicks the speed up another notch. Then another. And another. The carousel is spinning fast.

“Andy!” Margaret says. “Really now, Andy. Slow it down. Andy! Ann-deee!”

Beyer doesn’t hear her. “Hooo-hoo! Hoo-hoo!” he laughs.