Summary
The year is 1963, the setting is small-town Michigan. At age fifteen, Peter Fenton is a gawky math whiz schoolboy with a dissatisfied mother, a father who drinks himself to foolishness, and no chance whatsoever with girls. That's when he meets Jackie Barron.
Jackie is the unlikely progeny of Double-O and Vera, professional grifters running a third-rate traveling carnival, and he's been part of the family business since he started earning his keep as the World's Youngest Elephant Trainer. Jackie is a smooth-talking teenage carnie with his own Thunderbird, and with wisdom beyond his years.
Jackie shares Pete's way with numbers, and he has a proposition. They'll start a rigged casino in Jackie's basement and take their classmates for thousands of dollars. Pete hesitates, but not for very long. Two years later, he's working joints for the Barrons' Party Time Shows, wearing sharkskin suits and alligator shoes, and relieving the public of its hard-earned cash. He learns to hold his own with veteran con men who have nicknames like the Ghost, Horserace Harry, and Talking Tony, and colorful personalities to match. This is the world of the Alibi and the Hanky Pank, of Flatties and the mark. Amazingly, Pete Fenton has never been more at home.
But in this strange new world with its topsy-turvy code of ethics, where leaving a mark without a dollar for gas is outlawed while cheating a best friend is par for the course, the tension between teacher and student grows until Pete finds himself attempting the ultimate challenge: to out-con his mentor.
Eyeing the Flash is a fascinating insider's view of the carnival underworld -- the cons, the double-dealing, the quick banter, and, of course, the easy money. The story of a shy middle-class kid turned first-class huckster, Peter Fenton's coming-of-age memoir is highly unorthodox, and utterly compelling.
Author Biography
Peter Fenton served for fifteen years as a tabloid reporter for the National Enquirer and is the author of two humor books, Truth or Tabloid? and I Forgot to Wear Underwear on a Glass-Bottom Boat. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.
Excerpts
Chapter One: Why You Should Always Leave the Mark a Dollar for Gas 1967 I had my back turned to Jackie when he said, "You'll never get rich with your hands in your pants."I whirled around. "Where'd you read that one, a fortune cookie?" It was hard to breathe, let alone come up with a decent retort. I had twisted away to adjust the sweat-soaked roll of cash in my black silk briefs and Jackie was no more than three feet from me, watching my every move. I couldn't let him spot the mysterious lump on my right hip -- because, after all, it was his money I'd stolen."No, I saw it in a friggin' Oreo. Anyway, who cares? I've got to have lunch with the county sheriff in ten minutes. Can I just show you how to work the Swinger?"My throat felt like it was being constricted by kielbasa-size fingers. I had struggled to convince Jackie that I deserved a shot working one of the best money-vacuums on the Party Time Shows midway, and now I couldn't get a word out except "Sure." I was anxious about the money slipping down my pant leg. I was sick from the cold corn dogs, pizza crust, and flat Coke I had for breakfast after waking up, fully dressed in my new blue sharkskin pants and white satin shirt with western-style fringe, under a Party Time Shows semitrailer. I couldn't safely sleep in a room, because spending the night in a Motel 6 might have tipped Jackie off that I had a source of income beyond my official cut of the action.Jackie, on the other hand, was clean and calm, his auburn hair smelling of Vitalis. He was absently cutting a deck of cards with one soft, manicured hand while palming the croquet ball with the other. Then he dropped the cards into the breast pocket of his white, short-sleeved cotton shirt."See my pinkie finger?" Jackie asked, holding it in front of my face. "On the Swinger, your pinkie is the gaff, so don't get it chopped off in a bar fight.""How so?""You see, even though it was probably invented in Alabama by some guy with three teeth, the Swinger is based upon a fundamental principle of physics, which is that the angle of reflection always equals the angle of refraction. Or maybe it's the other way around.""Yeah, I did a science project on that in the fourth grade.""Let me show you how it relates to the Swinger." Deceptively stripped down and simple in appearance, the Swinger was an "Alibi joint" that required the adult customer to knock a bowling pin down with a croquet ball. The bowling pin stood in the crux of a wooden coat hanger that had been nailed flat on a chest-high plywood counter. The croquet ball hung from a chain directly above the pin. Jackie turned and faced the counter. "In order to win a prize on the Swinger," he said, "the player needs to swing the croquet ball forward so that it misses the bowling pin as it travels past, yet knocks the bowling pin down on the return trip.""So where does my pinkie finger come in?""When you want some moron to win, for publicity purposes or whatever, you wrap your pinkie around the back of the bowling pin so that when you seem to place the pin in the crux of the coat hanger, it is actually slightly off center. Which will result in the croquet ball knocking the pin down on the return trip.""Because of the angle of reflection equals the angle of refraction thing.""Like every game on the midway, the Swinger is all about science and the unchangeable laws of nature," Jackie joked. He glanced at his watch, then the neon-lit hot dog stand, where he was due to buy the county sheriff a foot-long and probably hand over a popcorn box full of cash, so that the sheriff would order his deputies to ignore every loser's complaint. Jackie was wise to every carny scam in the book even though, like me, he was seventeen and just a week short of graduating from high school."What's a good call?" I asked about the line of patter I'd use to attract a mark's attention.Jackie shrugged. "Whatever
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