Column Chronicles: Puddles the Clown, part 1

Puddles the Clown, part 1

Frank Cotolo
October 27, 2022

It's a long, sad story, but as far as long, sad stories go, it is still shorter than some longer ones and sadder than some shorter ones. However, it must be told, or at least should be, and this series intends to do just that.

It concerns a figure that may never be admitted to the Clown Hall of Fame. He is unheralded, rarely admired and often pitied. He is Puddles the Clown.

His tale begins in the 1940s, early on in the decade, before America entered World War II. At least that is when Puddles the Clown made his first public appearance. As far as it is known, a clown calling himself Puddles the Clown showed up uninvited at a ward desperate souls in a mental hospital located north of Chicago. No one knows how he got into the hospital and the staff only noticed because the desperate souls staying there were laughing hysterically.

"The desperate souls ward was always quiet," said Erick Benefactor, an administrative worker at the hospital from 1932 to 1945. "Suddenly one day the patients erupted in laughter. Loud and at times making them spit up phlegm. A few of us from the office ran into the ward and saw this large man dressed in a puffy white outfit with stringy orange hair sticking out of both temples and a shiny bald head and long floppy shoes. He had colored circles around his eyes and ear rings and a bone through his nose and lips the sparkled and he was holding up a water balloon."

"The patients were losing their breaths laughing as he put the balloon into his pants and shouted something like kaboom! Then we saw his pants soaked from the liquid in the balloon and the rest of it pour out of the bottom of his pants. The room suddenly smelled rank, I mean like a trough in a men's bathroom and we knew it wasn’t a water balloon at all. It was a urine-filled balloon. The odor did not bother the patients. They kept laughing but the staff members became faint and nausea set in. It was ugly."

Benefactor went on to describe how the clown began to wave his hands and slide around on the urine-soaked floor and how the patients began to do the same. Then, the clown walked to the exit of the ward and shouted, "It's me, Puddles the Clown. Wawhoo and kaboom!"

...to be continued.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.