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8 Year old John Steven
with baby Burro
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(This is the second in a 2 part story of our dad’s
Rice Creek Rancho business. He had purchased about 60 wild burros from Mexico,
and kept them in a 40 acre, rented field across the street from our suburban
home in Fridley, MN.)
Even though my brother Mark
and I were still little kids, right from the get-go dad got us up on the
burro’s and away we went. He had purchased some really cool leather saddles
with brass and chrome studded medallions accented into the inlaid leather work.
All the saddles he brought home had ‘horns’ on them, were very shinny and
initially that was how we stayed on the burro’s; after we learned to ride, we
just held on with our knees, many times without any saddle at all.
However, the big problem
was that all these creatures were wild, right out of the Mexican desert, and
had never been ridden. Although not nearly as big as a horse, or even a mule,
these burros were whirling dervishes in every way. Kids came from miles around,
jumped over the fence, snuck up on the burro’s and took them for bare-back
rides. Much of the time the bucking
burros would run directly toward the low hanging branches of the numerous Box
Elder trees which studded the field. Many a rider was knocked clean off their
wily burro as it galloped under a tree branch. All told, I can only remember
one kid getting really hurt, but he only broke an arm. Considering the big
picture, not too bad…
Of all the burro’s back
then, ‘Jock-O’ was the absolute wildest burro in the corral. He was jet black
with a pure white star on his shoulders, and a longer black mane than the rest
of the burros. We couldn’t even get on Jock-O. Somehow, without looking
backward, he could tell when we were in range, and quicker than quick, Jack-o
would whip a hind leg out and kick you in the ribs – hard. Nope, none of the
kids bothered with Jock-o, for a few years anyway, but that’s another story…
In the meantime, little by
little, dad’s herd of burro’s started dwindling, although we had burros for over
20 years (they kept multiplying!). So, dad thought to himself, ‘with sales lagging a little more than the
initial business plan had taken into account, how else can I make money with
these burros? How about a concession at the Minnesota State Fair! Now there’s a great idea!’
So started our many
adventures working the burros at the State Fair. Our concession was on top of
the knoll at the west end of where the Sky Ride is now located. For a dozen
years we would go to the Fair and dig 2 concentric circles of fence posts, and
string rope between the two circle outlines – making a circular, rope ringed
track. It was a pretty big track, probably about 200’ in diameter. Dad had an
old, rickety, white washed work bench with a drawer that he kept the ‘money
box’ in. He painted a sign of sorts that said, "Mexican Burro rides," 25 cents. We were in business. To
attract attention to his fabulous State Fair Exposition, in his HUGE, LOUD
VOICE, dad would yell out: “2-bits for a ride on a Mexican Burro. Who’s up next?”
Honestly, you could hear
my dad from over a block away, even with all the commotion of the fair. (For
those that don’t know, 2-bits equals twenty-five cents.)
We had a very busy concession.
Like all of these businesses, dad did all the thinking, as well as the working
part that we little kids couldn’t handle. But he was a great mentor, and showed
us how to do as much work as possible, as soon as possible – and have fun doing
it. However, there were many things to think up and dad was a great delegator. For
instance, why waste $.50 on buying tickets for Mark and me every day when we
could just stay over night in grampa’s miniature travel trailer? And, we could
watch the burro’s at night to feed and water them. So, even at the tender ages
of 10 and 8, Mark and I would stay at the Fair almost throughout. It was great
fun, and the burro’s only escaped one time (boy, was that a circus!)
However during the
daytime, our main job at the fair was to keep the stubborn burros moving around
the ‘ring’ with all the little kid riders, which was from dawn to dusk. The
burros would get tired, and we had some extra’s in the corral to the west to
trade off during the day. But even so, many, many times each day one or more of
burros would just stop. Well, this was a perfect job, not only for Mark and me,
but also for little brother Jimmie and best friends Cris and Brian Archibald
(who lived across the street in Fridley). This really was a good job for kids
that were from 6 or 7, all the way up to 10 or 12 and beyond. I mean really,
can you picture a grown man walking around behind these little burros just to
keep them going? I can’t, but then, I was kind of protective of my job back
then too…
Anyway, we each had our
own favorite stick to slap the behinds of the burros when they wouldn’t
cooperate, and 95% of the time, we could get them going again. However, if we
simply couldn’t get one or more of the burros started, ‘the big gun’ would be
called in: Dad. Our dad had huge, strong, callused hands and when he slapped
the butt of a burro you could hear it for a hundred yards. Right when he would
make the connection, huge hand to butt, he would yell out, “On delay” (it’s Spanish; we
didn’t know what this meant either?). The little burros ears would go back
and they would leap into action, not to stop for quite some time.
After one or two of these
encounters, the stalled burro in question would crane his head, and roll his
eyes all the way back to see if dad was indeed coming after him. When the
stubborn creature was sure it was the target of ‘the big gun’, the burro would
tuck his tail between his legs and start running around the ring – with a
little kid on board – bouncing (and sometimes, crying) all the way around the
ring until dad could catch up to the now stampeding herd of jackasses. Are we
having fun now, or what!? The show was just beginning.
Most of the time our days
were spent taking turns walking burros around the ring, and when it wasn’t our
turn, we would go down to the Midway where we had made friends with the kids of
the professional ‘carnies’, the guys that ran all the Midway rides. We kids
became compatriots because we all ‘worked’ at the Fair and our gang would get
free rides in the Midway, and the Midway gang would get free rides on the
burros. It was a good deal, and very cool indeed, for young boys!
If you can imagine being a
little kid whose job it is to walk behind burros in a circle for 12 hours a
day, you can get a taste of working at the fair at the Mexican Burro concession.
We liked it, and were able to go down to the Midway and everything, but it was
still a lot of boring work. So, we had to make up some games. One of them went
like this:
Of course, being creatures that ate, the burros of
course had to poop too. Because we all did such a good job keeping the burros
moving, they could poop on the fly. Many people, maybe most, haven’t really had
the opportunity to study the hind end of a burro for days on end. Well, I’m
here to tell you that there is a certain sequence of events that occurs as the
burro is working up to this particular project.
Our ‘honey-bucket’ was a wheelbarrow that we kept in
the middle of the ‘ring’; we kept the show shovel in the honey-bucket for
picking up after the burros. The contest was that the kid that was ‘up’, had to
recognize the symptoms of the next bowel movement for one of the 6 or 7 burros
working, run to the honey-bucket, get the snow shovel, run back to the burro in
question, and catch the poop in mid-air, before it hit the ground. We developed
a point system for winning points for perfect catches, and losing points when
the one that was ‘up’, got the snow shovel and there was no action; this was a
serious loss of points. The winner wouldn’t have to put the burros away that
night. I really hate to brag, but I usually won this contest.
When I think back on this
whole affair, I’m pretty sure that the parents had just as much fun as the kids
did when they visited our dad’s Mexican Burro Concession. There was always
plenty of action and interesting things happening.
As for our wages, ‘we
weren’t cheap, but we could be had’. Each day we earned $3 each, and all the
chili-con-carne and Dinty Moore Beef Stew we could eat. Of course we got free
rides in the Midway, and we had an old, miniature travel trailer on the site
that we could sleep in; we didn’t have to take baths when we slept over, were able
to play around at the Fair, and got to spend all kinds of extra time with the
burros. We loved the Minnesota State Fair!
By the time the fair
ended, we were all pretty tired, but rich. We all had the money we earned at
the fair and for the set-up/tear down, and on really good days, dad would give
us more money as a bonus. He would take out all the money he earned and we
would help him dump it on the big bed in mom and dad’s bedroom. You’ve never
seen so many quarters in your life (at least we hadn’t). Then we helped put all
the money into the little paper tubes so dad could bring the money to the bank,
in bags. A lot of bags.
To all of us kids, our dad
was the richest dad on earth, and as I came to realize when I became a father,
he was richer in more ways than one.
John Steven Mickman
MN State Fair Concessionaire
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