The Telephone Booth Indian - Abbott Joseph Liebling [9]
Twenty years ago, Dufour was head of a carnival known as Lew Dufour's Exposition. The Exposition traveled in twentyfive railroad cars, and Lew's name was bravely emblazoned on each, although his equity was sometimes thinner than the paint. The carnival included a small menagerie, snakes, freaks, a girl show, several riding devices, and a goodly number of wheels on which the peasantry was privileged to play for canes or baby dolls. At the beginning of every season, the Exposition would leave winter quarters in debt to the butchers who had provided meat for the lions in the menagerie. If the weather was fair the first week out, the Exposition would make enough to go on to the second date on its always tentative route. On one occasion the organization was bogged down in mud and debt at a town in eastern Tennessee after two weeks of steady rain. The tents were pitched in a gully which had become flooded, but as in most outdoor shows, the personnel lived on the train. The sheriff came down to Dufour's gaudy private car to attach the Exposition's tangible assets. With the aid of a quart of corn liquor, Dufour talked the sheriff into lending him the money to pay off the local creditors. Then he got him to ask the creditors down to the car and talked them into lending him $1800 to haul the show as far as Lynchburg, Virginia. At Lynchburg he talked the agent of the Southern Railroad into sending the train through to Washington without advance payment. It was a mass migration of four hundred persons and six wild Nubian lions in twentyfive railroad cars, without other motive machinery than Dufour's tongue.
Shortly after that hegira, Dufour decided that while the show owners got the glory, it was the concessionaires traveling with the shows who got the money. So he became the proprietor of a “jam joint.” A jam joint is a traveling auction store in which, as the climax of the “regularly scheduled sale,” the auctioneer says, “Now, my friends, who will bid one dollar for this empty, worthless box?” A man in the audience says, “I will,” and passes up a dollar. The auctioneer is touched. He says, “This gentleman has sufficient confidence in me that he offers one dollar for an empty box. I will not abuse his confidence. Here, mister, is the box. Open it in front of everybody” The box, it turns out, contains “a seventeenjewel Elgin watch.” “I don't want your dollar, mister,” the auctioneer says. “Take this beautiful fortyfivedollar watch as a present.” Then he asks how many people will give him five dollars for an empty box. A few fivedollar bills are passed up hopefully He asks the people if they are perfectly satisfied to give him five dollars for an empty box. Sensing that it is a game, they shout “Yes!” He hands back their money and presents each of them with a “handsome and valuable gift,” usually a wallet or vanity case worth about a dime, as a reward for their confidence in him. Next he calls for tendollar bids on an empty box. By this time the contagion of something for nothing has spread, and the countrymen eagerly pass up their bills. He asks them if they would have any kick if he kept their money and gave them nothing but an empty box. Remembering the previous routine, they shout “No!” “Nobody will have any complaint if I keep the money?” the jam guy asks. Nobody. The auditors expect him to return the money, with a present as a reward for their faith. The auctioneer assures them that he will not give them an empty box for their money. He will give to each and every one of them a special platinumrolled alarm clock “worth ten dollars in itself.” He makes a speech about the alarm clock. That is not all. He will give to each a beautiful Persian rug, worth twentyfive dollars, specially imported