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28 Bobo Revisited Inthe spring of 1962, Dad and Ed made amends with Frank"Bobo" Nickerson, who had appeared briefly with the Clowns during 1961. Bobo suggested that he was going "to catch a ball from an airplane flying at 1,000 feet this season." Dad questioned the ambiguity of Bobo's language. "Does he mean the ball will be thrown from a plane at 1,000 feet and Bobo will be on the ground to catch it or that he'll be flying in a plane at 1,000 feet when he makes the catch?" Bobo ultimately caught a ball dropped 650 feet from an airplane. But no matter what Bobo did, Ed Hamman and Bobo Nickerson just could not get along. Whenever they looked at each other, they did it like two gunslingers squaring off on the streets of Tombstone. So when Bobo returned to the Clowns that spring, he did so as an independent contractor at $20 a day, $8 a day accrued and sent directly home twice monthly to his wife, Marilyn, $12 paid in cash daily to Bobo. From his $12, Bobo paid for travel in his own car, food and hotel. (If you wanted to see Bobo cringe, you used Ed Hamman's expression "You pay for travel, eats and sleeps:') Unlike Ed and the players, who ate economically, Bobo dined in nice restaurants, not fine places, but good clean ones serving large portions of pure Americana . As we discovered the days I roomed with him that year, Bobo and I shared pedestrian gastronomical tastes. We preferred peanut butter and jelly on rye to veal cordon bleu. We sought baked chicken and green peas, not beef Wellington and asparagus tips in cheese sauce. We would pass a mile of cherries jubilee or baked Alaska to attack a sliver of chocolate cream pie from the Roubidoux (but that reverence is a story of its own). For the moment, it is enough to say that once Bobo paid for travel, food and room, he spent the daily balance on beer, which, depending on the cost of living where we were, might buy him a single can of the worst or schooners of the finest draft. He was able to more than double his daily intake the days I traveled with 328 PAR T S I X THE S I X TIE S him dividing hotel costs. (If I really wanted to irritate Bobo, I would ask him if we were going to share the bill for sleeps that night, and if that didn't get him, I'd ask, "Well what about eats?") In June 1961, Ed Hamman wrote Dad candidly of Bobo, after Dad had prevented Ed from firing his nemesis. After pointing out Bobo's attitude deficits, Ed wrote: We can't afford incidents like ... the army camp Fort Hood. Swearing is never funny and if one has to drop to this to get laughs it is bad. With his great talent he doesn't have to. His pepper, ball handling, and bat juggling is the greatest ever done by any human being. His going thru the stands changing hats is one of the warmest personal touch act anyone could see. He rarely ever does it. His audience loves it.... The only enemy is Bobo himself.... On May 30, the Clowns played a game in the rain for the troops at Fort Hood, Arkansas, and Ed Hamman was soaked. On June 2, I graduated from Florida State University. I had no job as of June 6, when Joyce Hamman called with the stunning news that illness had chased Ed Hamman down the road from Ft. Hood, and he was hospitalized in critical condition with double pneumonia in Enid, Oklahoma. Freddie Battle was acting road business manager, and Danny White, a utility player and Ed's driver, was working the P.A. ''Alan:' Dad said. "You're always saying how you love the Clowns. Now you get to show it. You're taking over for Ed till he gets back, at least two weeks, Joyce says, probably more:' Dad bought two tickets to Kansas City, and on the plane, he simulated setting up the gates pregame and showed me how to do daily reports, replenish banks, do my bookkeeping and handle hypothetical problems he created. Marti and I were to marry December 1st that year, but in late May when Mother and Dad brought her to Tallahassee for my graduation, marriage [3.143.23.176...

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