Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 9, 1993                   TAG: 9307090082
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CARNIE OPTS FOR A TICKET TO RIDE ROUND THE COUNTRY

He works the Zipper, a gut-twisting, neck-jerking ride at the Salem Fair.

"I open the tubs and let people out," Cole said. He flips the switch that sends fairgoers shrieking through the air, and helps look for keys and other items lost from upside-down pockets and purses.

He also helps move the 25-ton machine from town to town, putting it up and tearing it down at each stop.

Cole, 45, once "laid dead" for a while to try to find a regular job. But after 14 years of working rides and games all around the country, he said, "This is getting to be a regular job."

On a recent afternoon, standing in the sweltering heat amid the blare of midway barkers and the roar of generators and engines, Cole talked about his life as a carnie.

"Carnival people are unique people," he said. "Only certain people are made to do it. You just have to be built for that kind of lifestyle."

Cole is about 6 feet tall, gaunt, with blue eyes, a graying pony tail, drooping mustache and a deep tan that all but hides the tattoos on his arm.

But physical build is not what he means.

It's something unseen - the appeal of show business, freedom, the romance and excitement of living on the edge, or maybe a simple lack of career options - that makes carnies do what they do.

Cole has no health insurance. He earns $175 a week - about average for carnival workers. He works every day, sometimes for 12 hours at a stretch. He has no financial investment plan, but occasionally sends money to his sister in Ohio who saves it for him.

"I'm surviving," he said, smiling.

Yet, in a different sense, carnies are no different from other folks, Cole said. In his free time, he does laundry, shoots pool, or he rides the rides and checks out the sideshows on the midway. Sometimes he sings with bands playing in honky tonks. In the winter off-season, Cole finds construction work or odd jobs in Florida.

"I think people misunderstand. They don't want to get to know them [carnival workers]."

Cole's father was a truck driver and boxer from Brooklyn, his mother a New Jersey homemaker, he said.

"At 12, I started getting into trouble with the law," he said. For a time, he thought about becoming an undercover agent, or counselor for drug addicts and kids.

Life carried him down a different path.

"I was affiliated with some motorcycle clubs in California. I was a hippie. I was a low-rider.

"I was hell-bound, nonstop," he said. He drank and used drugs - he once overdosed on 100 downers.

"I used to serve the other guy at one time." Seven or eight years ago he became a Christian. He's given up drugs and holds his drinking to a few beers on occasion.

He's content, for now, and will probably stick with the Zipper and other carnival work for a while. "But I might be here today and gone tomorrow. It depends on what comes up."