PHILLIP GOMEZ / PVT From earning the Bronze Star to wrestling with alcohol, this clown's life has not always been a barrel of laughs. Advertisement

In Wednesday's edition Fred Schmitt was introduced. Here is the conclusion to his story.

"I was an athlete," says Fred Schmitt, a.k.a., Fred the clown. "I was a high jumper when I was a kid, and played football. But I never liked school; I went to the 11th grade."

Fred always thrilled to the idea of circus and carnival life. He ran away to join one for a couple of months when he was only 13. But he got homesick and returned home. Yet when a carnival came to town a little later, wanderlust hit Fred again and he joined the carnival, this time staying for half a year. His job there was mundane and less than thrilling: filling go-carts with gasoline.

When he was 16 or 17, Fred ran off to work on a Ohio River boat plying the waters of the Mississippi near his hometown of Cairo, Ill. The boat went to New Orleans and back. He was a deckhand on it for a couple of years.

Fred has tales of going to black minstrel shows in the still segregated Midwest and South. He enjoyed listening to the banjo playing, comedy routines and humorous sketches that were the rough-and-ready entertainment of 1930s and '40s-era clubs. That, too, was what circus performance was all about -- clowning, gags, holding an audience, even as salesmen and preachers are challenged to do.

Peeping under a tent to catch a minstrel show one day, Fred was caught by a big Negro guard, who kindly showed him to a seat. "There were about 10 whites there," says Fred. "The rest were blacks. But I seen the show."

Fred owns a large movie video collection and giant TV on which to watch movies. Among his favorites is Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth," with Jimmy Stewart and Charleton Heston.

One day, while on the paddle-wheel riverboat, the captain called Fred up to the pilothouse. The radio was on and the captain was listening to the president talk about the day that would live in infamy. He told Fred that day would change his life.

Fred went into the Army, was sent to Ft. Benning, Ga., for training and then to England and the European Theater of Operations. He jumped into France with the 101st Airborne Division's Screaming Eagles on D-Day, 1944. It was 1:05 a.m. when Fred made the jump, he recalls.

"The highest rank I ever got was PFC, and I got busted the same day cause I never followed the rules," he says.

"But I always led the way," he adds. He starts telling about how the Germans were lying in wait at a crossroads in Normandy, and the Americans were fighting their way through hedgerows. But suddenly Fred stops, not wanting to continue. Asked why not, he says, "It'll make me look like a hero. Bull****."

Prodded, he continues, but succinctly: "The Germans were throwing hand grenades. It got dark. I carried an M-1. I said, 'Gimme that machine gun ...'"

His lieutenant put Fred in for the Silver Star, but he got the Bronze Star instead.

Fred has "three Purple Hearts and a jillion other kind of medals, but that don't mean nuthin'."

He returned to France before Christmas, just in time for the Battle of the Bulge.

"We thought the war was practically over," he says. "It was snowing so bad. We were starting to run out of ammo. You'd get supper in the dark, if they got to you. A lot of guys got frozen feet. My feet turned blue.

"One time I got my helmet shot off. The hole going in was small, but the hole coming out was big. I could see the German who shot me and he could see me."

The war ended and Fred got married, settling down in Minneapolis, Minn. He trimmed trees for the power company, swinging from ropes for three years. Then he worked for the city and for individuals doing the same thing for a like number of years.

About 1951 or so he decided to go to Bible college. He moved his family to Phoenix, Ariz., and enrolled in the college. "I went there because I wanted to be a missionary to South America, but it didn't work out," is all Fred will say about the bitter experience.

"I went to college for three years. I would preach in missions downtown. If they were real drunk you wouldn't let them in," he said of his customers.

Meanwhile, he and his wife ran a fruit stand to support themselves. It turned into a small business.

But all was not well. "In the background, I always wanted to be in the circus again," Fred says. "I knew how to get in without paying. I'd just walk in the back door dressed as Lou Jacobs," the greatest clown ever in Fred's opinion.

"I went everyday," says Fred.

Fred had five children, but alcoholism led to his divorce and the breakup of his family. He's lost touch with his wife and children. To this day he doesn't know the whereabouts of any of them.

Clowns make people laugh, it is said, because they are really sad behind the painted facade of silliness. They leave mirth behind, carrying away the miseries of the world.

Fred describes his addiction to alcohol simply as "bad," as in "real bad." He said he told his wife to get a divorce. With her went his children. "That's the way it is," he says stoically.

When work commenced on Glen Canyon Dam near Page, Ariz., in 1956, Fred was hired to take part in the dangerous work, hanging from ropes, drilling holes in the rock and placing explosive charges. For six years he worked on the dam as a foreman, dynamiter and driller. "I seen the dam from the bottom to the top," Fred says.

When the dam was completed in 1966, Fred got involved in swap meet sales, traveling to Mexico for goods which he would then resell at a swap meet in Apache Junction, Ariz.

"It was a lot of work because you had to unload the trucks in the morning, put it all out for sale and put it all back at night. I also played the dogs and horse races at night.

"In those days I would make $3,000 to $5,000 a week," he says. "I would go to Laughlin to dance and gamble. I did everything. I loved blackjack. Back then they played with one deck. That made you pretty even playing against the house. Once I stayed 21 days straight in the casino, and I danced there also."

Fred has been in many circuses, performing as a clown in skits with pigs and dogs. He has played a clown in circuses playing in Pahrump, and he never misses a show whenever one comes to town. He had his own circus, called the Circus of the Universe, which he'd like to see revived in his front yard, where he can preach to people after he's corraled them at his circus.

"I've seen circuses all over the United States," says Fred, indicating perhap more than the ones he's witnessed under a Big Top. "You never give up in life," he says. "You have to have a goal. I'm 83, but I'm gonna live another 20 years."