SWEDE JOHNSON

Swede Johnson chain-smoked unfiltered Chesterfields and looked about ten-thousand years old. He told me that as a teenager he had been shanghaied in Denmark, then jumped ship in New York. Not speaking English and with his stomach touching his spine he took the first job he was offered, that of a rodeo clown. The job was simple. Whenever a bull threw its rider Swede ran out onto the rodeo grounds with a big sturdy barrel. He would wave a red rag at the bull until it would charge at him. Then he would jump into the barrel so the bull would butt him around the rodeo grounds sothe rider could scamper to safety.
Swede said he kept that job until he found something safer -- becoming a lion tamer for the circus. That particular job lasted for the next thirty years, until the big cats tore up his legs. Then he became a circus clown with Ringling, which is where I met him. I never saw him remove his slacks. Ever. The sight of his legs must have been ghastly.
I can't give you his definite age. He never told it, but sometimes bragged he shook hands with Teddy Roosevelt before the Rough Rider became president. His face in repose looked like a discarded accordion, all saggy and creased. His ample nose took a decided tilt to the left and his ears hinted at kinship with the Buddha. He was reed thin and whippet fast. When not in clown regalia he always wore wooden clogs, yet the blur you felt rather than saw running by when the paymaster yelled "Eagle's flying!" was him. First in line for his money. Always.
You couldn't call Swede's clown makeup and outfit fancy. He did a whiteface with a broad red grin, a dab of red on his nose and a few penciled crow's feet around his eyes. He wore an ancient orange wig that sat on his head like a wet mop. He had two outfits. His favorite was a black keystone kop outfit. It may not have been a Mack Sennett original but it surely hung together by a thread like one. With it he sported a large red velvet billyclub, used with gusto out in the ring to enforce his cranky authority. His other outfit was a black silk top hat with a black swallowtail coat and black dress pants with the shiny black stripe down the side. To add some color to this doleful uniform he wore a red and white checkered shirt and white nurses shoes. In this getup he looked like a mortician attending his own funeral.
His nickname for me was pinhead. I felt honored that he even noticed me at all. He had been around for so long that he simply ignored ninety-nine-percent of the newer clowns; never bothered to learn their names or give them the time of day.
The first year I knew him the show sweltered in Philadelphia during July for three weeks. Despite our best efforts at sanitation, fumigation and ventalation most of us got crotch rot. Things were really nasty and painful south of the border. Talcum powder gave but temporary relief. We were tucked into our clammy costumes for so long each day that nothing had a chance to dry out completely.
After several days of this purgatory I gave in and saw a doctor. It took him all of forty seconds to glance casually at my glowing nether regions and prescribe an ointment. I slathered it on. The relief was immediate.
I sauntered into clown alley that afternoon as cool as a cucumber, foolishly waving my tube of magic ointment around.
I should mention that Swede was never bothered by this horrible ailment even though he never took his regular slacks off before putting on his clown pants. He sat by his trunk, puffing on a Chesterfield, as the mob of itching, sweating clowns surrounded me. They demanded a dab of my magic ointment. I tried explaining that if I gave them each even a teensy-weensy sample there'd be nothing left for me to ward off the evil fungus the next day. Did they care? Not on your tintype! I was about to be engulfed when Swede spoke up.
"Hey you greaseballs" he yelled over the hub-bub. "Can any of you read?" The crowd hesitated, the lynch mentality abated.
"Sure Swede, you know we can all read."
"Then throw me that tube of ointment, pinhead" Swede commanded. I did. Swede squinted at it through the haze of cigarette smoke. "Sez here the main ingredient is zinc oxid. Now, you motherless chicks, go get your tins of clown white and read what the main ingredient is . . ." He threw the ointment back at me. A dozen clowns scuttled to their trunks, picked up their tins of Stein's Clown White and read aloud in a chorus:
"Zinc oxide!"
Clown alley was at half mast in the wink of an eye. In two winks, as the blessed zinc oxide kicked in, the collective sigh of relief could be heard out on the midway.
For the rest of that humid summer before any clown put on his face he slapped on the good old clown white down where it would do the most good.
When I asked Swede why he hadn't told me about this sovereign cosmetic balm before I wasted my time and money at the doctor he gave me a kindly, lopsided grin and said:
"Buzz off, pinhead".

That's the kind of guy Swede Johnson was -- tough on the outside but soft as nails on the inside. I still get a lump in my breast whenever I think of him.