The Life of a "Carny"

STEP RIGHT UP! (270 pp.]--Don Mannix--Harper ($3).

Dan Mannix was a flop at Annapolis. On review, his uniform and brace were technically correct, but the total effect reminded the commandant of somebody "going duck hunting." The Mannix temperament was incorrigibly informal for Annapolis, and the Navy gave up at the end of his plebe year (1932). Dan Mannix found a new vocation for himself--and the makings of a lively little book--when he stopped to watch Flamo, the fire-eater, in a traveling carnival show.

With his mouth full of gasoline for an aerial spray effect, Flamo misjudged and blew himself to the hospital. Mannix applied for the job and got it. Step Right Up! is his amusing if sketchy story of what happened to him in the next few seasons with various carnival shows.

His life as a "carny" was not easy, and a lot of it was painful. While he was learning to eat fire, his mouth and face were a mass of blisters, but no one even suggested that he should see a doctor. During the worst of it, he kept his mouth filled with cracked ice. Before long he took on sword swallowing and its modern refinements: his big moment came when he swallowed a lighted neon tube. Still later, he took on mind reading. One routine that proved too much for him was the Human Pincushion act (sticking pins through his flesh). He did manage to sew buttons on his wrists and fasten his shirtsleeves to them, but he never could get used to the pain. One artist that Mannix did not even try to emulate was the Human Ostrich. The Ostrich swallowed white rats and frogs and brought them up again.

One day Mannix decided he had had enough: being a carny was fun, but so were a lot of other things. At present, he is living on a farm in Pennsylvania with his family, an eagle and a cheetah, and making plans for a trip to Africa.

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