FRYEBURG – The almost motionless man at the fair – the one who looks like a wax statue handing out fake tickets while behind him two mechanical monkeys play a grinder organ – has, as expected, some exceptional gifts.
The most important is an ability to concentrate. For long stretches, Jim Bryant, 70, stands in front of crowds as he stiffly turns and swivels to give his “free tickets” to children, or rather, to hold them just out of reach as little hands try to grab them from him.
The tickets read, “This is a free ticket. It’s not good for anything, but it’s free.” And then, at the bottom, “Be Happy, For-Ever. Please keep this for future reference!”
Bryant’s previous work prepared him for long stretches of focused attention, he said.
“As a truck driver,” Bryant said on Tuesday, “You have to concentrate on the road, especially these foggy Maine roads.”
The one time he was clocked on the job as the “Hurdy-Gurdy man,” he said he was timed standing still for 35 minutes.
“I can stand for a long time as long as it is not too hot or there are too many flies,” he said. But the cold, too, is not the best work environment because his puffs of frosty breath give away his humanness too quickly.
Before taking up the job as a traveling hurdy-gurdy man in 1991, Bryant, who lives in Wayne, also worked as a steamfitter and an analyst.
Bryant said “hurdy-gurdy” refers to an instrument that must be wound up with a crank, like the organ run by monkeys attached to a miniature, but working, convertible car that he built.
The second talent the job requires is a knack for making delicate and complicated machines. Bryant said he constructed both the organ and the little car that pulls it around. He said he also puts together watches and clocks.
But it is not enough to know how to tinker with gadgets; the job also demands an ability to handle monkeys.
Bryant said the rare twin orange-furred monkeys come from a rain forest in Antarctica. “I trained these monkeys,” he said. “I sent them to Juilliard.”
The monkeys play ragtime, folk music, and “pure gospel,” Bryant said.
But really, how does a man become a performer who works at fairs pretending to be made of wax or nuts and bolts, and handing out tickets to a nonevent to a background of piping organ music?
Bryant said, “I do believe in God’s providence, and I was led to this. I fixed this broken-down hurdy-gurdy. I was at a different fair and brought this along and the fair manager hired me,” Bryant said. He has been working at the Fryeburg Fair for 15 years.
Perhaps most importantly, the job demands a musical leaning. Bryant programmed the organ to play 30 old-time songs and also is producing CD of songs he plays on a musical saw with a violin bow. But the job does not necessarily call for raw musical talent.
“As much as I like music, I can’t play,” Bryant said of guitars and banjos. “I’ve got two left hands.”
Last, but far from least, Bryant said the job requires that he keep up his spirits to entertain people with an act that has him moving as little as possible.
“If the teenagers mess with my hat, I have to stop. But I do take a little bit of abuse,” he said. “But it is hard for me to entertain and keep the smiles if the anger is inside.”
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