spend time with the cooks who were making the hot roast beef sandwiches. They all knew him. These were people that he had worked
with.”
Until his death, Parker remained active with the Showmen’s League of America, contributing generously to their causes. “He did a lot of good work for the Showmen’s
League,” remembers Campi, who first met Parker in the ’40s. “He was a beautiful guy, a good man, and a friend. Of course, he was an enemy if you were his.”
But the code of the carnies directed that even his enemies had to concede one point: “I think that everyone in our show business world considered Colonel Parker a great man,”
assesses Larry Davis. “He was just about the best there was at thinking and figuring things out. I’ve never met anyone who thought as deeply as the Colonel.”
In the winter of 1933–34, only a few months past his awful ordeal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Parker probably still had enough of his army discharge pay, sizable for the times, to
see him through the winter.But his compulsion to take to the streets to finagle money or promote a free meal had not dimmed since his childhood. The elderly locals of the
area remember him from those days as someone who did what the carnies called “rough hustling”—hawking candy apples, popcorn, or whatever he could—on the streets of Tampa.
Joan Buchanan West grew up in the area hearing her mother tell stories of how Parker sold potatoes and onions off the back of a pickup truck between carnivals, traveling to the little agricultural
communities of Ruskin and Plant City and dickering with the farmers, saving enough beans and tomatoes to keep himself from starving along the way.
It was during this period that Parker met Louis “Peasy” Hoffman, a special agent for Rubin & Cherry Exposition Shows. Hoffman, a short, portly man with an ever-present cigar
setting off a face framed by rimless eyeglasses and a seasoned hat, was a legend in the carnies. Before moving over to Rubin & Cherry, he had carved out a solid reputation as an expert public
relations, advertising, and advance man for Johnny J. Jones, Lackman Exposition Shows, and Cetlin & Wilson.
Tom Parker may have shared much of the flair and philosophy of P. T. Barnum, but if he ever had a hands-on mentor and guide, it was Hoffman, who had started out as a well-finessed and friendly
but persistent game operator. By the time Parker met him, Hoffman was a front-office man in his late forties who dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit and carefully knotted tie. What’s
more, noted the young Parker, who had developed a prominent stutter in his transition from Dutchman to homegrown American, Hoffman could speak smoothly and glibly about nearly anything. One of the
most crucial lessons he passed on to Parker was the importance of getting to know every influential man and woman in even the smallest of burgs in the South and Southeast, long the provincial heart
of the carnival circuit. That was the way the world really worked, he told him.
Yet if the show needed to get a carny out of jail, or if a bribe was required to set up on the grounds or to run unlawful games, another man, the “fixer”—also known as the
“legal adjuster” or “patch”—would step in.
As the promoter Oscar Davis remembered, Parker paid close attention to such ways of dealing with authority, knowing that like almost everything else he learned on the carnival, they would become
useful in other negotiations in life.
Parker understood that the real clout in the carnival lay in the front-officepositions like Hoffman’s. He aspired to such a job himself, where he could be a big shot
and dress in a fine tailored suit. He admired how Hoffman could handle almost any situation with grace and aplomb, certainly a prerequisite for any front-end employee. But it was Hoffman’s
skill at selling advertising that Parker coveted most, and so he offered to chauffeur Hoffman on his local rounds in
with.”
Until his death, Parker remained active with the Showmen’s League of America, contributing generously to their causes. “He did a lot of good work for the Showmen’s
League,” remembers Campi, who first met Parker in the ’40s. “He was a beautiful guy, a good man, and a friend. Of course, he was an enemy if you were his.”
But the code of the carnies directed that even his enemies had to concede one point: “I think that everyone in our show business world considered Colonel Parker a great man,”
assesses Larry Davis. “He was just about the best there was at thinking and figuring things out. I’ve never met anyone who thought as deeply as the Colonel.”
In the winter of 1933–34, only a few months past his awful ordeal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Parker probably still had enough of his army discharge pay, sizable for the times, to
see him through the winter.But his compulsion to take to the streets to finagle money or promote a free meal had not dimmed since his childhood. The elderly locals of the
area remember him from those days as someone who did what the carnies called “rough hustling”—hawking candy apples, popcorn, or whatever he could—on the streets of Tampa.
Joan Buchanan West grew up in the area hearing her mother tell stories of how Parker sold potatoes and onions off the back of a pickup truck between carnivals, traveling to the little agricultural
communities of Ruskin and Plant City and dickering with the farmers, saving enough beans and tomatoes to keep himself from starving along the way.
It was during this period that Parker met Louis “Peasy” Hoffman, a special agent for Rubin & Cherry Exposition Shows. Hoffman, a short, portly man with an ever-present cigar
setting off a face framed by rimless eyeglasses and a seasoned hat, was a legend in the carnies. Before moving over to Rubin & Cherry, he had carved out a solid reputation as an expert public
relations, advertising, and advance man for Johnny J. Jones, Lackman Exposition Shows, and Cetlin & Wilson.
Tom Parker may have shared much of the flair and philosophy of P. T. Barnum, but if he ever had a hands-on mentor and guide, it was Hoffman, who had started out as a well-finessed and friendly
but persistent game operator. By the time Parker met him, Hoffman was a front-office man in his late forties who dressed impeccably in a three-piece suit and carefully knotted tie. What’s
more, noted the young Parker, who had developed a prominent stutter in his transition from Dutchman to homegrown American, Hoffman could speak smoothly and glibly about nearly anything. One of the
most crucial lessons he passed on to Parker was the importance of getting to know every influential man and woman in even the smallest of burgs in the South and Southeast, long the provincial heart
of the carnival circuit. That was the way the world really worked, he told him.
Yet if the show needed to get a carny out of jail, or if a bribe was required to set up on the grounds or to run unlawful games, another man, the “fixer”—also known as the
“legal adjuster” or “patch”—would step in.
As the promoter Oscar Davis remembered, Parker paid close attention to such ways of dealing with authority, knowing that like almost everything else he learned on the carnival, they would become
useful in other negotiations in life.
Parker understood that the real clout in the carnival lay in the front-officepositions like Hoffman’s. He aspired to such a job himself, where he could be a big shot
and dress in a fine tailored suit. He admired how Hoffman could handle almost any situation with grace and aplomb, certainly a prerequisite for any front-end employee. But it was Hoffman’s
skill at selling advertising that Parker coveted most, and so he offered to chauffeur Hoffman on his local rounds in
Similar Books
