mld, June 25, 2002 at 6:01:00 PM CEST

Hawke Leekeman

"Not all those that wander are lost." --J.R.R. Tolkien

That bearded scoundrel you see there on the right with the mug of ale in his hand, sporting a large green onion on his hat, and the fat lip-print on his cheek, is Hawke Leekeman, a Welshman by birth, a full-throated hawker by trade, a knave by inclination, promoter of fine food and drink, raconteur, singer, trencherman, alepot, and provider of temporary relief to nymphomaniacs in need. In short, one of the more notorious whoresons ever to set foot on the grounds of the Texas Renaissance Festival.

That is, me :-)

In Texas, you sometimes see a bumper sticker saying, "I wasn't born here, but I got here as fast as I could."

Similarly, I found a job at TRF just as soon as life let me.

I started working at the faire four seasons ago. It was only then that my personal circumstances (primarily have given up the nightclub business) gave me my weekends free to work the faire.

I had always loved visiting renfair as a patron, though I'd only managed to get away from work a few times in the previous decade to do so. When you're in the club business, the weekends are the Money Days, and if you're doing your job right, you have to be there.

I'm a history nut, and acted quite a bit in high school and college. Throw in the fact that I'm about 3/4ths ham, Shakespeare is one of my favorite authors, and I acted in several of the Bard's plays. It becomes pretty clear that renfairs and I are made for one another. Actually, it seems that lots of folks are the same way, from the way renaissance faires are growing around the country. (I've some Deep Thoughts on why this is here)

So, it's no surprise that I'd enjoy wandering around the grounds with a turkey leg in one hand and a double Guinness in the other, people watching, seeing the shows, and admiring the wonderful things those 16th century bustiers do for a woman's, umm, presentation.

After an hour or so of reacquainting my mind with the speech patterns, and after quaffing a few stouts, it was easy to start scatting in period language on those improvements, to the improved, in a suitably clever, frank, ribald, but historically correct manner. This manner would get you at least slapped, in not in fact arrested, at the local grocery store, or any other present day location, with the possible exception of those establishments dedicated to the vending of over-priced drinks in exchange for the sight of young women writhing around in their birthday suits, and other varieties of cathouses.

But at faire such appreciative comments are not only graciously accepted, but gratefully appreciated. This all by itself just about makes faire one of my Most Favorite Things.

To work at faire, I needed to come up with a character - a name, personal and family history, personality, the whole kaboodle. Every participant, from the veteran actor that portrays King Henry, to the greenest boothie selling garlands, is required to do so.

This young lass sells hats at TRF I did an OK job with it, creating a run-of-the-mill just above peasant class character, when I happened to one day spy a leek. This simple observation gave me an idea for my character, but that's a whole 'nother story. I started to include it here, but decided that it deserved it's own entry.

The character works pretty well. Even after those first few weeks, I was already spending as much time in front of the booth hawking in business as any of my other duties. After I strapped the biggest, baddest leeks I could find in the grocery store onto my head, and started waving one around in my hand like a traffic cop does his flashlight, to steer patrons over to the tavern, sales went up about a factor of 40%. We're talking Big Bags O' Money here. I won several awards as the best hawker at the faire.

I went to hawking full-time, and the owner hired somebody else to take over all the stuff he originally hired me to do. He also me a raise after some other vendors tried to steal me away. Gotta luuurve that. All of the sudden, this renfair thing I was doing mostly for the fun of it morphed into a fairly lucrative hobby.

I've been at it ever since, working for various vendors, in a nearly perfect amalgam of having fun and making money. Last year sort of sucked, as the guy I was working for was new to faire, and Fairely Clueless. We were chronically understaffed, and he was gone a lot of the time. So I had to spend waaaay too much time picking up the slack, working behind the bar. At any rate, last year was his first and last season, as it turns out, so I dunno who I''ll be working for this year.

But you can bet I'll be there. So if you're visiting TRF, make sure to stop by and give a hearty "Well met!" to the Leekeman.

 

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mld, March 25, 2002 at 9:28:00 PM CET

Excalibur Faire, Interrupted

As advertised, CG and I loaded up Otto Saturday morning and made the run up to Excalibur.

It was a nice ninety minute run, as the weather was Just Right. I was surprised to see that the bluebonnets are coming up strong already along the highways, and even the odd Indian Paintbrush or two.

Excalibur is a little baby faire, only two or three years old, held on the site of the Rocky Hill Ranch, parts of which are a working ranch the rest of the year. It does have a small cafe right on the road, and evidently has mountain bike trails that are available for riding year-round.

Consequently, all of the booths and structures are limited to temporary pavilions, as opposed to the permanent structures most often found at the larger, older faires.

Attendance is measured in the hundreds, not the thousands, so the feel is completely different from TRF, where I've worked and played lo' these many years. A vendor pal of mine told me that they'd had 1,200 folk through the door last Saturday, an all-time record for the faire, and a few of the cast members I talked to confirmed that. As a comparison, TRF commonly has over 30,000 a day.

It may even make it. Most faires don't, as the infant mortality rate is undogly. That particular location was once the setting for a faire yclept Cavalier Days, set in the 17th century, but it went tits up years ago. It all depends on how deep the owners' pockets are, as I doubt they've even reached breakeven yet.

It'll still be an uphill battle. This faire only runs four weeks, and for a reason. They can't extend it much farther into the summer, as they'll run smack dab into Scarborough Faire, which will not only compete with them for customers, but drag away about half of their performance cast and two thirds of the vendors. Nor can they extend it back earlier in the year without running into weather that'll keep the patrons away in droves.

Furthermore, they're stuck in the spring slot, as it's man-killing hot there in the Hill Country of Texas in the summer (and all the top-of-the-line entertainers and vendors are doing much bigger, established shows up north) and nobody is gonna want to try and mess with the 3,000 pound gorilla (that's six 500 lb. gorillas) that is the seven week run of TRF in the fall.

But, I digress, as I am wont to do. :-)

We ran into lots of acquaintances, the RenFaire world being the incestuous clique that is it, to include CG's favorite rose vendor, Ron. We managed to slow him down long enough to stop and take a picture with him.

We saw several shows, to include the Renaissance guitar of one of our TRF Saturday Night ChowHound pals, SturmRitter, and a three girl Bawdy Wench Act, whose name I didn't get. They performed the standard songs you expect from the wench acts, One-Ball Reilly, No Balls At All, Roll Your Leg Over, and so on. They were better than the crowd was, especially the dark-haired lass on the right.

Being ever the ham, I had to participate, of course, in the Limerick Song, even though they were not explicitly trolling the crowd for people to join in, as is the case when all of the other wench acts I've seen do it.

So, when it came time for the limerick, I shot my hand up and waved it around.

"Do you have a limerick?" the dark-haired lass asked.

I stood up on the table where I had been sitting.

"Yes, good lass, I do!"

I took a deep breath and started to belt it out...

"Wait! Wait!" cried the red-haired lass. "No Nantuckets! No Nantuckets!'

I laughed. "Indeed, no Nantuckets at all."

"You understand what I mean, right? No Nantuckets."

"Yes, I know what you mean. Nooooo Nantuckets."

Finally, the were comfortable that I wasn't going to use one of the Words You Can't Say Onstage At A Renfest. So, in my semi-famous stentorian tones, I held forth with my favorite guaranteed showstopper limerick...

"There once was a lassie named Alice, Who used a dynamite stick for a phallus. They found her vagina In North Carolina, And bits of her tits in Dallas."

The crowd howled and applauded, while the girls nearly fell off the stage. I doffed my cap and bowed, enjoying, as always, that rosy glow you can only get on stage. It was surely the highlight of my day.

After the show, I tipped the girls a fiver, and talked to them for a minute. I told them to feel free to use the rhyme if they'd like, as I'd stolen it from somebody so long ago I'd forgotten where I stole it. (Later, I did a google search, and found about 300 hits for that limerick and it's variations.)

After the show, I ran into John, another TRF veteran. At this faire he plays some French nobleman of some sort - he told me the name, but it was about five names long, and I don't recall it. At TRF, over the past coupla years he's been a barbarian named Smash, and last year, he was the Goblin King, nearly unrecognizable under his makeup and partial mask. I handed CG the camera to get a pic of us, just so I'd have at least one pic to show I was actually there. :-) I spend most of my time on the back side of the camera, so I end up with hundreds of pics, but none of me. Probably a good thing. :-)

Speekina witch, I took a lot more pics than you'll see here, but my cantankerous Agfa digital decided to act funky. It ate the rechargable batteries in it right off, then devoured the only set of alkaline backups I had with me. It is sometimes capricious. It acts as if everything is fine as you take the pics, leaving you to find only later that since it didn't like the flavor of batteries you fed it, it tossed a tantrum and didn't actually bother to write the images to the memory card, even though it appeared to. :-( It has something to do with the delivered voltage and the automatic low battery shutdown or some such, I've been told.

We talked for a bit with a lady that sells handmade angora wool items - rugs, scarves, vests, and yarn from her booth. It was most interesting, as while I had read about the process, and seen pictures, I had never before actually seen anyone spin wool before.

She had a scrapbook with pictures documenting the entire process from shearing the goats (which they raise on their own ranch) to the weaving of the yarn to make the finished product. She explained to me the difference between combing and carding wool, something I'd been unclear about, and the difference in the sort of thread produced by the two processes. I'd joked before that we oughta make a sweater from all the hair my wolfhounds shed, especially Caesar, and now we know somebody that can spin it for us :-)

The jousting show was a bit different from that I've seen at other faires. The did an entire show of feats such as spearing rings tossed in the air, and lancing targets at a gallop and such.

The show at TRF has lightly armored (chain-mail coifs and hauberks only) cowboys on little cutting horses (they really are, in Real Life, working cowboys on the quarter horses they use to work cattle the rest of the year) playing "shield tag," busting light balsa lances on each other's shields. The show is fast and furious, with the jousters barely slowing down to grab a new lance before they turn and charge for the next tilt.

While at Scarborough, the jousters are clad in full plate mail, barrel helms and all, and are riding monster draft horses. It looks a lot more impressive, and it certainly appears more authentic, but they run at each other a lot slower, no faster than a canter, and there's a complete stop in the action after each tilt.

As you can see from the pics, these guys were wearing no armor at all for that show. It wasn't really a joust, more a display of jousting skills. They did mention that they do a full-contact joust in the late afternoon, but, unfortunately, we had to leave before then.

By mid-afternoon, CG allowed that she'd had her fill, and was ready to leave. I think she likes working at faires a lot more than playing at them, and considering the money she makes at them, she may have a point. (As it turned out, she had an ulterior motive.) So, we said our goodbyes, and laden with a bunch of stuff she'd manged to buy while I wasn't looking, we left for home.

We didn't manage to make it there very soon, but that's a whole 'nother story.

 

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mld, March 19, 2002 at 9:26:13 AM CET

TRF Tales - The PonyGirl

After I had offhandedly mentioned seeing a girl in ponygirl garb at TRF last season, a friend of mine, unfamiliar with the concept, asked me to elaborate...

Well, there's not really that much to the story. Here I am, out in the street,hawking and generally messing with the patrons, when prancing up the lane comes this tall slender dark-haired girl in full pony regalia, to wit:

Knee-high black boots with hooves built into the front half of the boot, so that she was basically forced to walk on the balls of her feet, a skimpy black leather halter top and g-string, long black hair braided into a pony tail (what else?) and a long horsehair tail sticking up from her butt, to arch down to her ankles.

Her outfit was completed by a full halter/reins thang on her head, in black leather with chrome gewgaws, to include a large black bit in her mouth.

Holding the ends of the reins was a somewhat less attractive older woman dressed also in black leather, but much more concealing.

She was prancing down the lane with an exaggerated staccato pace, lifting each leg until the thigh was parallel to the ground, before placing her hoof on the ground, looking most like a trotting horse in slow motion. Her hands were tied behind her back at waist-level.

Unfortunately, it was so busy at that time, I couldn't get to the camera in time to get a pic.

But here's a pic I found on the net, if you're still unclear on the idea. :-) Google around for "ponygirl" images and you'll find plenty more.

 

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