Shocked and Amazed - On and Off the Midway

MN: It was a guy in a store show in New Orleans at Mardi Gras time. Bob harassed that man for about four or five weeks. It was the only show he had! All he had was suitcases, a wife and kid, and a monkey. Our car was about ready to break down and we had good credit standing in Lynchburg, VA, so Bob sent a wire up there saying we needed $300, which was the most he could borrow. The going price at that time was $300 for a chimp, and we needed a car too. So he wired it to us. Well, we needed a car to pull my trailer and the $300 goes to the monkey. It turned out to be one of the best investments we ever made, I guess, because Snookie was a really good chimp. He was a wonderful animal really. But after we bought Snookie, we turned around and felt sorry for him because he was all by himself, so we bought him a wife. We didn't know then what we know today, that you're supposed to get the female bigger because she'll be more like a matron to him and he'll be like a child and he'll respect her when he gets big. Well, Snookie was the big one and Suzy was the little one. We did it wrong. He would pick her up and throw her the whole length of the cage. We figured he was going to break her all to pieces, so we took her out. So now we've got two cages we have to take care of and after a time we began to feel more sorry for her than we did for him and we got her a male that was about the same size as her. She was smaller than he was but approximately the same age. He was brought from the Detroit zoo, and he was a wonderful trained animal. Joe. Joe the Boxer. He's the one who is featured in the posters.

MN: Well, he used his feet as much as he did his hands because they are hands. We finally had to put tennis shoes on him because he was pinching with his feet, and we had to put boxing gloves on him because he was pinching and doing naughty things with his hands like scratching people. When Snookie weighed 49 pounds, we got a big guy in there to wrassle with him and the guy didn't follow the rules. It was a game. It wasn't to try and hurt the animal or hurt the man. We showed in Washington, right within hollering distance of the Humane Society. One of the women came down once to investigate us and sent some man out to see the show and the man went back to her and told her, and told us as they left the lot, "Hell, this isn't cruelty to animals. This is cruelty to man!" It was really a game. It started out as just playing with the animal and this sonofa-b came in and was going to kill the chimp and grabbed his collar and was trying to choke him. Well "trying" is the best word to use. The chimp was not going to take any crap from anybody, and they've got more strength than anybody and Snookie saw that something had to be done pretty quick and he ran both of his little thumbs in and went WHAM! on the guy's nose.

MN: He left the stage and we left town. It's the truth. We said, "My God! We didn't know he could do something like that!" Well, he asked for it. He's the one that did it and the audience was for the ape. If they hadn't been, it would have been an awful situation. But the audience was actually for the ape. But there was always a wrassler who "killed the ape in every town we showed in, but no ape has ever been licked by nobody. They talked around, "Y'know we had a gorilla show in here and that monkey he wasn't much of a fighter. Hell, see that fist? I killed him with one punch. That's what I did." Well, when they talk that way, you knew they got the hell beat out of them by the chimp! Well, some of them weren't good sports. Some of them were real SOB's. There was a bully - this wasn't the town bully but the bully of the county - believe it or not, Joe made a Christian out of him. Literally made a Christian out of him! He thought he was dying in that cage. He didn't have to beat him. He picked him up after he got him all undressed.

MN: Just about. Almost every week. That was a way to get rid of them. If they turned out to be an SOB, that was the quickest way to get rid of them.

MN: No, they did that on their own. We didn't teach them one damn thing except to stop when we told them to. That was the only thing we taught them. That's all we ever had to teach them. They figured out more damn ways to get rid of a guy, some of them very, very frightening. I'm telling you, there wasn't a single night that we went on that I prayed before we went out there that no one would get hurt. I was so damned scared that someone would get hurt all the time. That's probably why I had the open-heart surgery and all the different things that have happened to me. It was funny as hell and I enjoyed watching it, if everything went good, but if something didn't go right, I was sick. We put a helmet on each man, for example. One night, one guy got dragged all the way around the floor by the helmet and everybody's screaming because that was liable to break his neck and I ran in there with a pair of scissors, and I cut the main rope and it still held on until I pulled it. God, the guy finally got up and staggered out of there. An hour later, with two other guys, he was in the middle playing and laughing. They came around the midway and I said, "Fella, you scared the living hell out of me." He said, "You guys scared the living hell out of me!" But he was a good sport about it.

MN: Hell, I'd rather have my clothes ripped off than some of the things they did in there. They'd hang up there and kick you with both feet. Pick you up by your belt and swing you around. Do all kinds of stuff. You wouldn't believe it. But there was a special award we gave the good sports. See what it says inside the heart. I had a purple stamp pad for that.

S&A: [Reading] "Special award: Purposeful Heart. Awarded to the ones who emerge from the match without a scratch. Noell's Ark. This should be subject to revocation if the contestent re-enters the ring and violates the rules. Exclusive Order of the Ape Fighter."

MN: Our certificate was the only way I could control some of the men who went in. I'd say, "If you break the rules, then you don't get a certificate." A lot of them would say, "I'm just going in for the certificate. What do I have to do?" That's the way I kept anybody from getting a broken neck, back or busting their head against the bars. I'd say, "Play it smart."

MN: And the runners. Bamboo was a runner. We didn't have him very long. He didn't know how to work, so we made a runner out of him.

MN: Run after the guys, and if the guy succeeded without having his clothes torn off then they got the certificate. Most guys, nice guys, would go in there to hang that certificate on their wall afterwards. But these were the rules for the runners.