‘Carnival Girl’ living the dream
Phyllis Horne has lived a life made for movies.
At 14, the Coeur d’Alene woman ran away from an abusive home and was living under a bridge when “carnies” from a Long Beach, Calif., carnival took her in. For 21 years, she would eat, drink, and sleep carnival while traveling the country with colorful characters and making gobs of money.
Phyllis tells her story in an autobiography, “The Carnival Girl,” that was among the items being sold at a Hoffman Avenue garage sale Saturday. Dressed in a straw hat and a peach blouse, Phyllis, now 77, didn’t appear to be a woman who spent her teen years and early adult life as a carnie.
She understands that most of us view carnies as lower-class drifters who sell tickets and run the rides by day and sleep in their truck or under the Ferris Wheel by night. But the backbone of the industry, she told Huckleberries, are the carnies you don’t see — the ones who own the games and collect the money.
Phyllis told Huckleberries she was paid well for hard work eight months a year, from 9 a.m. one day to 2 a.m. the next. She and other carnies ate and slept at the best places.
Phyllis said she was successful as a carnie because she enjoyed meeting and entertaining people.
“When I was working in a booth,” she said, “my only job was to make all the adults and kids smile and have fun. This brings out the side of carnies so often overlooked. Most have amazingly big hearts, and it brings joy to them when they make people have a good time.”
Phyllis was a risk taker who later got into real estate, owned a grocery in Oregon, and with her son, Brad, owned the Texaco at 15th and Sherman for seven years. All this, and she wrote a biography despite dealing with dyslexia. She’s now comfortably retired in Coeur d’Alene and owns a few rentals.
“The carnival was salvation for me,” she told Huckleberries. “I’ve lived the American dream.”
Easy come, easy go
In “The Lord Giveth, the Gummint Taketh Away” Dept., Angela Goodman of Rathdrum tells Huckleberries that daughter Ava, 4, found a penny on the ground and wondered if she could buy bubblegum. Angela: “No, but you can pay tax on your bubblegum with a penny.” Ava: “What’s tax?” Angela: “It’s the government’s share of the money you spend.” Ava (to brother David, 6): “Look! I found the gub-man’s taxes on the ground!” Would that paying taxes was that easy.
3 down, 2 to go
“The Idaho Miner” is coming along nicely, thank you. The miner will finish a series of five pieces at Sixth and Front, sculpted by artist Terry Lee of Hayden Lake. The others are “The Working Man,” “Idaho Farmer,” “Idaho Lumberjack,” and “The Suffragette” (coming in August). The miner, Lee tells Huckleberries, will have a pick, shovel, and antique hat. He wants to light the miner’s hat with solar. Also, Terry said, he has “secured a real antique ore car with pop rivets” to complete the piece. Stay tuned.
Huckleberries
• Poet’s Corner: “The independence declaration/and blood and tears that built this nation,/Two centuries on come down at last/To firecrackers and a beer blast” – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“4th”).
• Randy Adams, of Hayden Lake, has a biblical sounding solution for the outbreak of iconoclasm besetting this country: “He who is without sin among you, let him tear down the first statue.” The problem? Many today have no idea what sin is.
• On July 2, 1995, the late Bob Paulos name-dropped in his Coeur d’Alene Press column. Quoth: “You’re right … that gorgeous brunette at The Coeur d’Alene Resort last week was Jaclyn Smith, the film and television actress and one-time ‘Charlie’s Angel.’” Yeah, yeah, I know. You shouldn’t describe a woman, even an actress, as gorgeous. But it was 1995. And Bob was right.
• On Page 101 of his informative history, “Coeur d’Alene: Beautiful & Progressive,” author Robert Singletary provides this nugget about the first year of Coeur d’Alene Junior College, 1933-34. In its first game, the men’s basketball team, the Jaycees, beat a team from Spokane 29-27 — a team named Gonzaga. Of course, that was before the Mark Few era.
Parting Shot
Slowly, Higgens Point, properly spelled with an E, has replaced Higgins Point with an I, in public awareness. Higgens Point is named after chiropractor Milton C. Higgens, who bought the land in April 1939 and sold it to investors 10 years later. Then, the investors sold 31 acres and 2,600 feet of shoreline for $275,000 to the Idaho Department of Highways. The agency had planned to use the property for a rest stop and a full interchange for the old I-90 (now Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive). However you spell it, Higgens Point now ends the two-state Centennial Trail and remains a swell place to watch eagles.
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You can contact D.F. “Dave” Oliveria at dfo.northidaho@gmail.com.
