They say everyone runs away to join the circus at least once. In my case, it was a carnival — and I didn’t run so much as stroll onto the Frontier Park Midway during Cheyenne Frontier Days with a borrowed shirt, a name badge, and absolutely no idea what I was doing.
T
urns out, selling pop at the CFD parade as a kid was the ultimate carny boot camp. Who knew slinging sugary soda would be training for hustling balloon darts?
Carnival worker Anise was my mentor many years ago when I worked at the Bill Hame’s Show during Cheyenne Frontier Days (CFD).
CFD is done for another year. Preparations are now underway for the 2026 edition. again upon us. I’ve been away from Cheyenne for many years, but still manage to make it to CFD for at least one day each July.
I was in town for a few hours on Wednesday afternoon, Cheyenne Day. I don’t roam the bars anymore. This quick visit was spent in the backyard of our friends, the Jensens. Their place is walking distance to Frontier Park. I wandered over to the Indian Village. Some of my Northern Arapaho friends generally set up camps and provide cultural entertainment. I also go for an Indian Taco.
Time permitting, another pal, Jalan Crossland, is playing the Paramount downtown. He was lounging in his van before the show. It turned out he was playing at 5 pm. We returned to the Jensens’ for an Indian Taco and caught the tail end of the Little Sun Drum and Dance Group’s performance.
We went back to the Paramount Ballroom and parked in the parking garage just in time for the annual CFD monsoon that dumped buckets for about half an hour. We saw a few familiar faces, but I learned that CFD stays the same, but I keep getting older and older.
There are a bunch of locals who couldn’t care less about CFD. Some rent out their houses for extra Christmas money and leave town during the busiest time of the year.
When I was a newspaper columnist in Lander, I wondered what it was like to work in a carnival, so I decided to give it a try.
It turns out that the TV and movie business is a lot like carnival life. I worked an ABC Sports gig for a CU vs Nebraska game, which was as grueling, but didn’t involve sales.
I worked sound. My supervisor dressed carnival casual and had just flown in from a PGA golf tournament in Hawaii. He was flying out Sunday morning for a game in Louisiana.
I realized that I had developed pretty good hustling skills selling pop at the parade when I was a kid, and I can see how people get addicted to the vagabond carny lifestyle.
This is my account of that July weekend. Many years later, the CFD Midway would be the location of one of my movie shoots.
Pink Floyd’s “Money” filled the clear, still evening surrounding the double Ferris wheel across from the balloon dart game booth at the Frontier Park carnival, where I worked for the Bill Hames Show.
Running off to join the carnival was something I’d always wanted to try, and there’s no better time than the present. Getting a stranger to hand you their money with the chance that nothing will be given in return is entrepreneurship in its purest form.
I always had a very romantic view of the carnival life as one of freedom, no cares, and endless foot-long hot dogs.
The world needs more cowboys.
It’s now 7:30 pm on a busy Saturday night during CFD, and I met Wes, who had traveled with the show for many years. He finished his supper and escorted me across the Midway, where I was introduced to Dozier Simmons.
He and his wife, Angelyn, manage a half dozen games for Kelley’s Concessions out of Alabama and one of several companies affiliated with the Hames Company.
“Here’s a shirt and badge. This is Anice. Just do what she does,” Dozier said as I pulled the blue knit polo shirt over my head.
“The object of the game is to sell a dart for a dollar. They bust a balloon for their choice of a small mirror. Five wins for a large mirror,” Anice explained.
“Mirror” is a misnomer since the prizes are non-reflective square pieces of glass with pictures silk-screened on the back.
“I’m just part-time – a couple nights a week. I live in Englewood and work at a print shop in Denver. I share a motel room in Cheyenne with one of the other women and her boyfriend. I used to work full time, but the guy I was with beat me up, and I left the show a couple of years ago. Dozier asked if I’d work for him again,” she said while tying a knot in one of the spare balloons.
The game is really rough on the fingers – the world needs more cowboys.
Each of the mirrors slips into a cardboard sleeve to protect the paint and prevent patron injuries.
No matter how careful, I still manage to slice little cuts where I never thought had any useful purpose, like on the index finger cuticle, which gets irritated each time a balloon stem gets tied off.
My hands bled the entire weekend.
Tonight, another woman, Amber, is working with us. “I’m trained as a nurse and working here until something opens up in town,” she said.
Amber was tenderly limping around the area, obviously in pain. “It’s not my foot, it’s my back. I was shot in the abdomen, and it hit a disc on the way out.” She pulled up her shirt and showed the scars. “I ruptured another disc moving a box of these mirrors and have to have surgery again.”
Upon my arrival, the counter was divided into thirds. “Amber takes the first third, I’ll take the middle, and you take the other end,” Anice said with authority, since it’s her joint. I was the newbie and was at the end of the lineup.
There’s an infinitely long imaginary line separating each of the sections, sort of like the invisible cylinder above a basketball hoop used to determine goaltending.
Common courtesy is to avoid cross-hawking. Taking a fellow carny’s business is counterproductive. Anice advises me, “If you pull that stunt on one of the guys who’s traveling with the show, he’ll knock the hell out of you. I’m just telling this to you for your own good, if you decide to do this again.”
The dart game marks are pretty easy to spot: biker types wearing all black and mirror shades, “Hey buddy, I’ve got an Ozzy mirror that would go great with the Ozzy T-shirt you’re wearing.”
Pre-adolescent boys, minus their parents, with their fists gripped around several one-dollar bills. “Do you play Little League? Then this game is a cinch. Bust one and win a Bon Jovi mirror.”
Young touchy-feely couples, “Hey, pal, why don’t you be a gentleman and win her another one of these cute panda bear mirrors?” Grandparents escorting grandchildren who are too short to see over the counter. “Tell you what, I’ll let your little cowboy stand on the edge here so he can be equal to the taller kids.”
The Simmonses stop by to pick up our money on their regular rounds. This time, Dozier has a swollen eye and skinned elbows. “Some college kid from Colorado punched him out over there. The police took him away,” Angelyn said in a scornful southern drawl.
The carnival business is tough. I didn’t run into any trouble.
Of course, the dart game is pretty easy to win, but you’d be surprised at the number of people who miss.
Losers are bad for business.
As soon as someone misses, the crowd disperses as if in mass thinking, “Yes, this game is somehow rigged.”
The hours on your feet are long, and the mental intensity is high.
At midnight, there’s only one more hour to go, and even Anice’s bark is complacent. The smiles become forced.
When you get busy, you have to keep up the endless personal chatter with everyone waiting in line while you locate the right mirror or put up more balloons so they don’t leave. Everyone who plays is a potential return customer.
It’s closing time.
Dozier calls my name. “See you at 10 in the morning. We’re each paid a percentage of our individual take. I inflated 150 balloons today, and my jaw aches.
Angelyn hands me $31.00.
It’s now Sunday, the last day of CFD, and the crowd is much smaller. When the rodeo lets out, there’s a brief surge. No night show tonight, either. Tomorrow is a work day for the locals, and many of the tourists are either gone or out of money.
Amber called in sick this morning and arrived late in the afternoon. I noticed she’s working another joint across the way and worry that I encroached on her balloon dart game turf.
Anice and I spent the morning chatting between marks. It being Sunday, religion dominates the discussion. Anice is a born-again Christian and feels carnival witnessing is part of her calling. There’s a Shroud of Turin mirror that is very popular today, available in both sizes.
I told her about my UFO experience near Laramie and why, like Billy Graham, I believe the spacenauts are angels.
She was skeptical, but would read Graham’s book, Angels: God’s Secret Agents.
A young drifter asks me if it’s okay to stow his bag under the counter. He’s looking for Dozier to ask him for a job.
The next big stop is the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo. We hit it off, probably because I didn’t rifle through his stuff.
He turned out to be a real hard worker.
The food isn’t very appetizing, and I chose to go without, because time not spent hawking means fewer sales opportunities. That proved to be a mistake.
By nightfall, the marks are getting tired and not as eager to play. Women and kids just ask to buy a mirror.
“No, they’re not for sale. There’s more personal satisfaction in throwing the dart.” I could have made more money selling them from under the counter.
Men try to get better terms and ask, “How about three darts for a dollar, or two wins for the large mirror?”
At 10:00 pm, the place comes to a screeching halt.
The air is finally quiet.
The neon lights stop flashing.
“Let’s get this place cleaned up. I want it to look like we were never here!”, Juanita screams to three kids in charge of sweeping the asphalt parking lot.
Juanita runs the joint across from ours, in which softballs are tossed into a milk can to win a Spuds McKenzie stuffed toy.
The women who operate each of the joints are the informal lead workers supervising the “slough,” which is the carnival dismantling process.
There are a dozen of us sloughing. All the prize stock is bagged and locked in the water race trailer.
The dart game trailer is hitched to the panel truck and hauled out.
The parking lot is empty.
It’s now 2:15 am.
Dozier hands me $50 and says, “We’ll see you next year.”
I earned enough to make a deal with another CFD vendor and ended up buying a pool cue from him, which I still have.
Like in the movie business, Carnival inner circles are tough to break into, and I felt like I gained a little respect among my fellow carnies by paying my initiation dues all the way through the slough.
As I trudged across the empty parking lot at 2:15 a.m., $50 in my pocket and mirror cuts on every finger, I realized I had lived a weekend most people only imagine in neon and popcorn-scented dreams. I’d been baptized by spilled soda, blistered hands, and gospel according to Anice.
Next time I’ll bring gloves, pack a lunch, and maybe ask for a raise. I earned more than money that weekend. I earned my stripes, a pool cue, and just a touch of carny street cred. Not bad for a drugstore cowboy.
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