Unique surprises at the Al. Ringling

During the half time show today Ernie picked a contestant in one of the boxes that surrounded the second level. Instead of picking a prize, the winner, a 6th grader from Madison, said “Surprise me” so Ernie said “You look like you could use a pickled egg” We had a lot of trouble in Baraboo with the audience not wanting to pass the prizes and this was no exception but they reluctantly passed the egg. We had no plan in place to get prizes to the boxes since the lighting was so low Ernie could barely see the audience as it was we didn't think he could see the folks in the boxes, but we were getting ready to improvise as the egg made it’s way back toward the booth. But as it neared, it took a turn in the audience and headed off to the left and surprisingly, when it got to the back of the house, the person with it stood up and tossed it up to the waiting winner in the box at least 10 feet above him. Let’s just say, no one was really listening to the final word from our sponsor!

When our 'booth' is in the middle of the audience as it has often been on this tour, we get a lot of visitors. When a young woman stopped into the booth today and said "This is going to sound strange but..." we thought 'probably not!' We were wrong! The woman's name was Vicki Kvernen, the sister of the real Cubby Kvernen!!! Chris “Cubby” Kvernen went to High school with Fred Alley and was in attendance this afternoon in box number 7 with his family. Vicky told us that when Cubby and Fred were in high school together Fred always loved the name... Cubby Kvernen!

This afternoon we had a lot of trouble prior to the show with a short in one of our lighting instruments. Unfortunatly it was the primary front light on Doug. We thought we had it fixed but about 15 minutes into Act I, it started to flicker and then went out. Moments later it was back on and though it flickered a couple of times during the show, it worked when we needed it for the rest of the show. Bill's opinion was that it was the ghost of Al. Ringling helping us out and taking a cue from his buddy, PT Barnum's, The Show Must Go On!!