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Chicago, June 10, '72 Dear Jack: Thanks very much for CARNIVAL, which I've been reading (and in some chapters re- reading), and while I never regarded carnival workers and "games" as very lovely, the book was an eye-opener. On various railroads we handled carnival outfits - large and small, the Johnny Jones Expo being the largest of that trade. Older railroad men used to think it a good idea to steer clear of the roustabouts (called roughies in the book), as the older "rails" thought they were all lousebound. Outside of one fairly large outfit that came to Lears, Iowa (mentioned in HARD TIMES), about 30 mi. NE of Sioux City, I've never felt any desire to attend a carnival, not even the small street ones that frequently appear under the auspices of the "R.C." Church and are plenty crooked, the games, that is. In the one in Iowa, there was a pit, where one locked down at a woman, who was alleged to show something if enough money was thrown down to her. I waited and waited but nothing happened. A Greek section hand beat the carnival wrestler but never got the prize, as the carnival referee found some technicality to deny the Greek the prize. I was once asked by u "rail" who was re-joining a carnival outfit if I was able to play a rube. He had a game where the patron ("mar) could win prizes by knocking down pretty-well-stable black cats. Proposition was that I would carry off lotsa prized, egging on the real rubes. A brakeman I knew used to go down town to the State Street flophouse area and peddle all sorts of junk, using shills to promote buying. I think some English Jews brought the phoney auction idea to lower State Street and one or two other sleazy locations. I heard an English voice in front of one joint tell an associate (a Goy) to hang around and shill awhile. Of course, we also handled the big top circuses - Barnum & Bailey I recall handling at what used to be their home town- Bridgeport, Conn, this in 1926, before the outfit joined Ringling. My wife knew about the ticket-takers before she ever came to this country the short- changing aspect, that is. I used to see men being beaten, sometimes with small ball bats, at Calumet City, close to the Illinois-Indiana state line. These victims had objected to being short-changed at bars. Whole gangs of roughnecks were employed by the various bars and strip-tease outfits. I happened to see these characters when we came from our Kensington Yard (near Pullman) to make a delivery at the Cal City yard of the Indiana Harbor Belt R.R. (IRB-NYC). One especially tough and sturdy locomotive engineer on our job