Kent Family Magic Circus Daily Blog: Catching You up on the Weekend Events (part1)

Howdy! Sorry for no recent posts. Truth is I have tried to post blog entries for these past three days but for one reason or another I ended up losing the hours of typing and have come to the point of frustration. I won’t explain in detail here. Just know that the fair festival circuit doesn’t always afford the best internet or web access.

Regardless of that I am pre-typing this in Word and will cut and paste it into the blog site until it takes. If you are reading this…..it finally took!

(I am in Toledo for the day and doing that cut and paste thing….I will have to break this up into several entries.)

We arrived here on Thursday. Though we left on Wednesday we decided that it would be better to arrive at the festival grounds in the morning rather than the eve that we decided to stay at a relative’s house in Toledo, OH and then make a fresh start of it Thursday morn since Toledo is only about an hour and a half from Swartz Creek, the town in which we are performing. (Notice I didn’t say “performing in”….I’ve been trying to kill the ending in a preposition thingy.

We had a pretty easy go of it driving from KY to OH except for losing about 45 minutes near Dayton where three lanes turns into one quite abruptly. A four mile bottle neck took forty five minutes! The drive was only to take around 5 hours but was stretched to 6 and a half when all the stops and the bottle neck are accounted. With gas at nearly $4/gallon a longer drive is never a good thing. But I seem to be the only one in the world who is complaining about the super high prices and I don’t understand it. But it is something I in which I have no control; like somebody else’s kid throwing a tantrum in public. Still, I would love to see fuel prices go down, oh how I would love to see that. I think it is Bush’s fault, but I am not sure why.

We arrived in a very cool Toledo with overcast skies that never amounted to rain. We did hit a cloud burst a hundred miles south of there instantly taking us from the mid-eighties to the mid-sixties instantly, and giving the RV a free bath. I was wiped out for one reason or another when we got to my cousin’s house and went off to sleep in the RV. The kids in the meantime had a yabba dabba doo time playing with their cousins.

Thursday we arrived at the festival grounds and began set up. Our lot is about half the size that is ideal for us but we have worked smaller so consider ourselves blessed. When we arrived the kids took to assembling the show and I went to walking around the grounds and the town to familiarize myself with the event, the town itself, and do a bit of supply purchasing. I discovered that this is one cute town and almost every home has at least one maple tree. I saw at least five varieties of maples. The people are also very nice. As I walked just about everyone I passed said hello. There is also a pride here of keeping their lawns and gardens and yards neat here. I passed at least seven people mowing their lawns; the lawns here are big, for the most part, and everyone seemed to have a rider mower.

Thursday night was the VIP kick off dinner where the sponsors, volunteers, and visiting fair managers and other dignitaries eat together and a few are honored for various services and honors. We we not only guests but we provided strolling entertainment; Kyle was the 7’ tall T Master Robot Ranger, Miles was Goggles the Robot, Jim stilted, and I was strolling magician/ringmaster. Then we sat down (the whole family) to ribs and baked chicken and all kinds of healthy sides. But let’s face it….RIBS! We also met our sponsor, Financial Plus Credit Union.

Friday our shows wouldn’t start until 3pm but the event started earlier so I went out as Maximus Gluteus the robot. I put a decal showing our sponsor on my chest plate. Took lots of pix with lots of folks. Just prior to going out I met with a gent who has a very cool super hero costume from sponsor. He is Benefit Plus Man. He is a tall man who looks a lot like Conan Obrien minus the big pompadour. We met to go over a trick where he and I would give the talking points of the company via a demonstration. In this case we tied a chain around his neck and gave the schpeal about being chain with high fees at other banks but at Financial Plus you can be unchained from those fees. We then had two kids from the audience pull the chain and it penetrated through his neck clean through without him losing his head. We would do the routine in the first two shows each day. It turned out to be a lot of fun.

Each day our shows are at 3, 5, and 7pm. Since our lot is facing west meant that at the 3 and 5 shows the sun is roasting the audience faces. At seven the large cottonwood behind us blocked the sun and so the crowds were larger. The seats are a huge section of stadium bleachers made of aluminum. Basically with the 82* sun beating down on them they become a convection oven. I was so impressed with the folks who were able to sit through our first two shows without turning into roasted chickens. Our poor super hero , who sat in the crowd until his turn on stage was up, was boiling in his suit (or so he said later). I noticed at the next show he stood off on the grass off to the side….smart man. We did leave a swatch of grass in front of our stage for folks to sit on instead of the bleachers during the hotter parts of the day. It is also the place I point out to the kids in the stands that I will choose the volunteers. Volunteers get gifts from us and Financial Plus. (Financial Plus is giving away these very cool picnic blankets the fold up and zipper up into stadium seat cushions and t-shirts.)

To start our VERY first show off we did the poodle act. Belle was introduced with Tator To, as usual, and came running out only to go the very center, very front portion of the grassy staging area and pooed. That’s right, live, in front of a living audience. Oh, Boy! That was embarrassing. But when you work with animal…….(and kids).

The first two shows went fine but the heat and humidity, though not terrible, but strengthened by the audience having to look east into the sun and sit on hot benches, we small. But the seven o’clock show was packed. By the middle of the show we reached nearly 500 people. Of course the sun was behind the cottonwood.

A little note about Michigan. As a Californian/Kentuckian (I added the Kentuckian part because over the years we have really adopted Kentucky as our second home.) most people think “Detroit” when Michigan in mentioned. But Detroit is only a teeny tiny part of the state. This state is gorgeous. It has over 6000 lakes and water ways and trees are everywhere. If it weren’t for the snow in the winter I could easily live here. The towns we have seen are very cute and most the people we have met have been really cool.

Friday morning was parade day. We hooked up with the Financial Plus Credit Union folks and walked with them in the parade. Sadly I had an Imodium night and morning so I had to lay this one out. (I will explain the cause for the sour bowels in a future blog post. Its part of the secret I have mentioned in the past. It was also the cause of three zits appearing on my face a few days ago. Yeah, there is stress involved, but we shall see if the stress pays off.) All the kids were in the parade; Kyle was a robot, as was Miles, Victor was a unicycle riding pink gorilla, Amelia was a clown walking a poodle, Olivia was a unicyclist, Jim walked stilts, and Cousin Wes joined us for the weekend as a clown.

I will pick it up from here next time…..which should be today sometime.