QUARTER TO THREE
by Sparrow

Billy’s Pleasure Circus

Illustration by Thomas McDonough

An Interview with Billy

I was lucky enough to interview Frank
Ruballa, the former owner of a circus.

Sparrow: So you were the owner
of a small circus?
Ruballa: Yes, for 11 years.
Billy’s Pleasure Circus, I called it.
Sparrow: Was it a difficult life?
Ruballa: No, we were popular. At that
time prosperity blessed all circuses.
Sparrow: Where did you travel?
Ruballa: From Utica as far south
as Hagerstown, Maryland.
Sparrow: What were the
clowns like in real life?
Ruballa: They all loved toast.
I never met a clown who
didn’t love toast.
Sparrow: Did you have
lion tamers?
Ruballa: Yes. We had three
lion tamers, over the years.
Sparrow: What were they like?
Ruballa: They all kept their
rooms extremely neat. One of
them later hung himself.
Sparrow: Why?
Ruballa: He retired. Circus
people say that if a lion tamer
retires, he goes mad.
Sparrow: And the acrobats?
Ruballa: They were the most
remarkable. One time I went
to the bathroom, and Zeke,
a trapeze artist, was clinging to
the ceiling like a spider. Once two gymnasts—from a family called
The Torellis—shaped themselves
into a bed, for a third one to sleep on.

Sparrow: And after the circus?
What did you do then?
Ruballa: I opened a dry cleaners. “Billy’s Fast Pants,” I called it.
Sparrow: Why Billy’s?
All your businesses are Billy’s.
Ruballa: I’m not sure. It’s my nom de commerce, I suppose. I picture Billy as a tall fellow with bright red hair. Anything Billy does must triumph.

A Realization
There is no male form of the phrase “what’s-her-face.”

Patron of the War
Formerly a patron of the arts,
he is now a patron of the war.

He gives parties for generals,
not sculptors.

He shows slides of burned cities.

And his paintings are all gone.
Instead ... flags.

Legal Porno
One type of legal pornography is photographs of naked people taken from a
distance of 500 ft., where no details are visible.

Poem
Why
is there no
League of Men Voters?

Roads
In order to travel from one town to another, one must use a road. There is no other way. Even walkers walk along a road.
Imagine if there were no roads. Travel would be so taxing. One would drive for a few miles, across meadows and streams and over bushes, until the car broke down. Thereafter, one would walk.
One would walk through the forest, until one came to a fence. Leaping the fence, one would find a man named Ron holding a rifle. “Leave my land!” Ron would shout. One would race across his property, and climb the further fence. There an infuriated bull, black with a white spot on its chest, would face one. Slowly, one would back away from this intelligent beast. But behind one would be Ron, with his loaded rifle.
We must thank our ancestors who wisely laid out roads!

On The Bus (3/12)
I looked up, and a young man to my left (with brown curling hair) is asleep, his head resting on a roll of toilet paper.

Heard In A Dream
“to fax is to conquer”

The Princess Who Lay an Egg
Long ago there was a princess named Hegalla. One day, when she was 16, she felt a solid round shape emerge from her. It was an egg. This egg was 4" long, with a gold shell. She gave the egg to her father, the king, who placed it on a cushion in the kitchen, near the stove.
Two weeks later there was an earthquake, and everyone ran from the castle. When they returned a large white bird sat in the kitchen. It looked like a swan, but with slightly longer wings and a shorter neck. The Princess insisted that it live outside, near the moat.
The king gave it the name Manra. (He believed it was female.)
Two years later Manra stumbled into a bear trap, and her leg was mangled.
Afterwards, she walked with a slanting step.
Manra could sing, in an almost human voice. Her song sounded like:

uyrrruyrr syurrurrr
bayrrrrr.

The Princess married, and moved to another castle.
She never said goodbye to Manra, and the bird did not observe her leave.

Manifold Contest Report
Contest results are engulfing our small office, here in Phoenicia, NY.
For the Paleolithic Hairnet Contest, where entrants were asked to write hate mail
for Quarter To Three (this column), we received:
Sparrow is a “free-market” lover.
from Charlie Paikert.

And the Plant-A-Textbook Contest (whose goal was to memorably separate words)
yielded, from David T. Budd:

alter native
or chest rate
man ages
to which he added, “Thank you for inspiring fun.”

(And merci in return, David T. Budd!)