vessel

A pregnant womans fetus is but an old soul within  a new vessel on its journey into eternity..This soul "chooses" the ride .. believe it!..Bobby B..

drawn

The desire that we humans have to leave Earths orbit is a perfect theme for the new era of space travel.. we as a race want to explore..we definitly want to go somewhere. we desire a "destination'.....Bobby B

Why a carny??..

People often ask me about my life as a carnie. Why and even how I became one.. I generally have a form answer that I tell and that is..
I joined my first show at the age of 16 and it has been in my blood ever since..
That is in-fact the simple answer..

Carnies overall have a terrible reputation for being the "Dregs" of society and well, sometimes that reputation has been well earned. As a child I went to carnivals and theme parks as did many of you.. I remember riding the rides and walking past all the games with all the colorful prizes that were mine for the taking..I remember walking the midway hearing the screams of joy from the people on the rides and the raspy voiced pitchmen in the booths trying to get my mom to spend more money...Not much has changed since on that aspect..You can still walk through a midway and hear the screams and the see the toothless men and women in the games trying to get your money..That is their job..... No matter what I have done over the years, and I have had many real jobs over time.. I have worked as a carpenter, laborer, forklift operator and many many other jobs and few have ever seemed to satisfy my need for adventure and travel... I have learned so much over the years.. Some would call me a "jack of all trades" and we all know what they say about a "jack of all trades"? Can't hold a job.. True.. I could never seem to hold a job of any sort for more than a couple years at a time..With my addictions and inability to sustain anything substantial in life, I always returned to the carnival..

You see, when my mom died I went to a highly dysfunctional environment where quite frankly,I was told more often than not that I wasn't wanted there..So when I had the chance,I left.. I joined the carnival and suddenly I was among people that were just like me.. Misfits of society.. I had a family.. A surrogate one, but albeit a family just the same..

So as a kid of sixteen and making the kind of money I was making I was hooked.. I was given a place to sleep and I had food everyday and virtually no responsibilities to worry about..we were in a different town every week and there was a different girl in every town.. It WAS the life..

I managed to finish high school and did a couple things along the way, but as life went by I always felt the draw to return to the carnival. I am not sure what the lure was.. All that I think is, I believe it was the freedom to come and go as I pleased to, along with the sense of belonging to something, and the feeling of being wanted .. And of course the money was pretty damn good..

In the mid to late eighties and into the early nineties, the money was incredible..I worked for the same guy for about 8 straight seasons and was getting paid, for the most part, to party my ass off..I traveled the united states and had seen things that otherwise I probably would had never seen..For 10 straight years at the end of the season I took my money I had saved,along with the 10% bonus for staying the whole season and spent my winters where ever I wanted.. The last 2 big fairs of the season were the N.C.State fair and the Broward County Fair.. both ten days long and in each spot I came out with an avg. $4500.00 each.. only those two spots.. keep in mind there was 40-45 other spots throughout the season.. the economy was strong and the people played the games .. we were making bank...At 25 years old I was grossing around $70,000 in one half a years time... Staying in the best hotels, driving the best rental cars, and partying on the most beautiful beaches I had ever seen..Of course, with all that money and the ability to indulge in any vice that I chose, I did .. and I did it big.. Cocaine,weed,speed, you name it.. anything that got me amped up, I was in..I had often gotten a real job in some town that I took a shine to and lived a normal life for a while.. However, what was considered normal to most was certainly not my normality..Normal for me was a new town every week of the season and spending the winter just hanging out.. not doing much of anything but living for the day.. living for the next season..

So now another season is upon me and I am about to go out again for another 40 weeks or so.. Sometimes I often wonder where I would be had I done things differently and gone to college and pursued my mechanical engineering degree but then i realize, that would not have been me.. this is what I love to do..I am an entertainer of sorts..I travel and meet some of this countries most interesting people.. Sure, Carnies have earned themselves a bad rap, but overall they are some of the best people you could ever meet..I once had a First Baptist minister tell me that he trusts some of us carnies more than he trust some of his own church members.. I asked him how he could and he said.." Because you people tell it straight up, like it is.."And he was right we do..It takes a rare breed to last in this business.. You either love it or you don't.. There is no in-between..

Perpetual Anxiety..

When life turns on the turbulence
Dreams fade from your grasp...
You ride a wave of uneasiness
that forever seems to last..

When life dictates your fruitfulness
You outgrow the childhood lies..
The regrets and shames that haunt you so.
never seem to die..

When darkness spreads its slander..
to the ones who have left the womb..
you see the light from far away..
amongst the impending doom.. Bobby B...

Heartless confusion

You salute yourself and pretend you have a plan and darkness fades it out..
Mother shows and stunted gets the child..
Find a place to hide..
Christmas Holly in the red dress.
wooded country smells the best..
Play the song that makes you marry for money..
And leave it all behind..Bobby B...

Leave it on the Street

 Led astray by weakness and worshiped as greatness..
Guided through the divides to other realms that surely exist.
 We unknowingly traverse these magnificent majestic worlds together..
 living each simultaneously uncommitted.. Bobby B..

Where were you ??

It goes without having to say, but I will say anyway. Everyone in the civilized world knows where they were on 9/11/01, and everyone knows exactly what they were doing at exactly the time that they heard what had happened.

Myself, I was on a platform 150 feet up in the air on a smoke stack of a power plant in Oswego, New York. I worked for a company that Audited the C.E.M's (continued emissions monitoring systems)of which every power plant in America must have to abide by the pollution standards that the E.P.A has set forth.

It was the beginning of a great day and we had been over the days testing protocol and made our way to the platform. We had partied hard the night before so I was actually dreading the climb to the top on one hand, and looking forward to getting up there so not to return to the ground until the days testing was complete.

Lunch would have been sent up via our pulley system that we used to send up the testing equipment. A bottle and a bucket we had as well for other emergencies.

Our crew consisted of six, three engineers, three technicians. The plant was a gas burning facility with four 600 megawatt gas turbines with two stacks. We had completed testing on two of the turbines and made the move to the other stack and were in the final two days of the testing protocols. Myself and Ronnie were on the stack and Jimmy was the runner between the lab truck and the pulley to send the impingers back and forth from the stack to the ground. The three engineers in the lab truck shuffling through the myriad of data that was running through the different gas analyzers inside the truck.

Once we are settled in and the testing began, Sean, the chemist of the group had climbed up to where Ronnie and I were and went over some more of the days testing. When we had finished and had agreed that we were on the same page, he prepares to head back to the ground. While donning his climbing gear, he non-chalantly says,"Oh by the way two planes have slammed into the twin towers." Now Sean, being the practical joker that he was, and he was often playing pranks and such, had a grin on his face that made me sure that he was again playing a joke. He tried his best to convince us that he was totally for real. I for one was not convinced. While we were in the middle of a testing scheme, nether one of us assigned to the stack could go to the ground to hear the news for ourselves.

Sean returned to the ground and we were left to ponder if in- fact this was true. I started to look above me and was eerily aware that the skies were absent of any airplanes.

A few hours go by and we are finally able to get a break between test schemes and both Ronnie and I returned to the ground to see for ourselves on the TV that, yes, Sean was NOT playing a joke. My heart sunk, my mind shattered and my thoughts were immediately on my family. I called my girl to make sure that all were safe. I reached her finally and she was insanely concerned for my safety, for all that she knew was that I was in New York. What she didn't know was that I was clear on the other side of the state. I was safe. My family was safe. She was relieved and so was I.

Well now, we still have a job to do and we return to work. We first go to the local "Radio Shack" to get a radio to bring to the top with us so we can listen to this tragic news.The TV's in Radio Shack were all turned to the same channel.  While watching the news of this tragedy we are informed that it was a terrorist attack and there may be more. That being said we buy a wind-up radio so if we lose power we can always here what is going on. The irony of that is this.

As practical as it seemed, we are at a Power generating facility and if we lose power, we most likely would have lost our lives as well... Sitting on the stack with our wind-up radio, searching the skies, we begin hearing sirens and vehicles screaming down the road in front of the plant we are at. Turns out that there is a Nuclear power plant just one mile away from where we were and the military was now locking that facility down. We could see the stacks of that plant from where we were but it never registered that we may be in some real danger now, if in fact, someone was to breach the security there. Not knowing the extent of this terrorist attack on our nation, anything could have been possible.

We finished testing the facility. They passed their compliance requirements and we returned to Foxboro Mass.

Driving home we had to drive over the George Washington Bridge in N.Y.C and that was a chore in and of itself. I could see the smoke and the dust looming over the city and it presented to me that, the fact is, we are not entirely safe anymore and we probably will not be forever more.

It was a trying time for all, and I get excited with the same angstnow speaking of it as I had the day we were attacked.

So that is where i was and what i went through . I would love to hear stories from you..