(continuation)

What was the kharmic quality about Gibsonton that led the gentle giant to believe this was the perfect place for freaks?

"The fishing's really good here," Rock said, "and dad liked to fish."

Soon, Gibtown was wall-to-wall freaks and honest critics could justifiably call the local government a real circus. Al was the fire chief; dwarf Col. Casper was chief of police. Rock remembers looking up at the dinner table and seeing a couple of giants, three or four midgets, Monkey Girl, Three-Legged Frank Lentini. Her daily grace must have included a prayer that someone would pass her the potatoes before 600-pound Fat Lady Dottie Blackhall got a hold of them.

"Gibtown was a great place to grow up," she said. "When I was in the sixth grade, I already knew how to eat fire and swallow butter knives."

Today Rock, 53, sits in a tiny, cluttered office under the watchful gaze of hundreds of celebrity eyes. They're all here -- Robert DeNiro, Judge Judy, Dan Quayle, Kevin Costner, Angela Lansbury, William Shatner and the biggest of them all, Regis! This child of the freaks today writes polite letters to celebrities requesting autographed pictures and most are willing to oblige. She still runs Giant's Camp, and has been featured in People for her offbeat tombstones she engraves with everything from marijuana leaves to Old Milwaukee beer trucks for the dearly departed.

She mourns, too, for the passing of the freak shows. Even carnivals these days have bent to political correctness like a nimble-limbed contortionist.

"Today's carnivals are all about grab joints for food and rides," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "The whole point is to feed 'em, make 'em throw up on the rides and then get 'em to eat again."

As far as finding any freaks, she, too, is discouraging.

"My dad died in 1962 and mom passed last year," she said. "One by one, the last generation of true freaks is passing away. And no new human oddities are being born. Medical science can correct some of the conditions that led to freaks in the past.
That's good, I guess. But many more babies are simply aborted if the doctor says the baby's going to be deformed. That saddens me. My mom was what they called deformed. She had no legs. But she lived a wonderful, long life and touched many people. I'm very opposed to abortion."

She advises me to go see Melvin Burkhardt, The Human Blockhead, and I turn to go.

"Oh," she stops me, "I don't know if this will help or not, but before she died, my mom always said, "`Hey, let's go see the freaks.'"

Oh? Where'd you take her?

"I'd just drive her out to the mall. There's always plenty of weirdoes out there."

Melvin Burkhardt is a legend among sideshow performers and a highly sought interview among button-down journalists who've always dreamed of asking someone appropriate the question, "So, what's the longest piece of hardware you've ever pounded up your nose?"

Burkhardt is credited with inventing the modern Human Blockhead routine in the 1920s. He's a 93-year-old anatomical wonder who doesn't look a day over, oh, about 83. He's still capable of more stupid human tricks than a month's worth of Letterman reruns, and these days he has to pay if he wants to get into the Showman's Association to see old friends.

"The part of the carnival I represent is not welcome anymore," he said, with an ill-concealed edge of bitterness. "The freaks are all gone. A freak used to be allowed to grow up and maintain his or her individuality and make a nice living. Now, medical science can spurt growth in midgets, it can shrink giants and with DNA, soon we'll be able to grow 'em anyway you want."

Even true human blockheads are fading away, and that's a pity because Burkhardt's act still thrills as he prepares to drive a silver nail as big as a rail spike straight into his right nostril. He swings the hammer at the bulbous bullseye of his nose with plate-rattling vigor. Bang! Bang! Bang! The interview comes to a sloppy conclusion as I'm hypnotized by the sight of a man with two inches of a six-inch nail sticking straight out of his face.

Freakless and frustrated in Gibtown, I head to the Florida State Fair in Tampa to meet legendary sideshow impresario Ward Hall. His World of Wonders sits in a remote corner of the enormous fairgrounds and, symbolically, is faced off against a long, gray row of 12 port-o-johns. Hall's written a book called, "My Very Unusual Friends." On the cover is a smiling shot of him leaning between Siamese twins Ronnie and Donnie Galyon, who spent their entire lives staring directly at one another. Joined at the breastbone from birth in 1951, the two shared a common navel, internal organs and, yep, one penis.

And you thought you and your brother fought about whose turn it was to use the car.

Hall, 70, tells me about the old days: "Yeah, there was Three-Eyed Bill Dirks. He looked like he'd been split down the face with an axe. He'd been born with a deep indentation between his eyes that appeared as a third eye and his nose was divided with nostrils on each side of the depression. Lip was split, too. Great guy."

He tells me about Frog Boy, Sealo The Seal Man, the Ossified Lady, Mule-Faced Grace McDaniels and all the trouble that happened when Priscilla the Monkey Girl eloped with Emmit the Alligator Skinned Boy.

"Yeah, those were the good ol' days," he smiles at the wistful recollections of what used to be and will be no more.

His own freak show features a fire eater/human blockhead, a sword swallower, snakes, a friendly ticket-taker midget, and Fat Man Howard Huge, whose mom wanted him to be a lawyer. He's got some museum exhibits of famous freaks like Three-Eyed Dirks, Lionel the Lion-Faced Man, but really, it's kind of lame. There's a guy selling kettle korn two tents down that looks heavier than Howard Huge.

Hall admits every time he goes to the mall he sees at least one man or woman who could have qualified for the Fat act. Meanwhile, natural born human oddities, the kind that used to flock to his sideshows to escape small town monotony, are disappearing.

"Back in the '50s, there used to be hundreds of true professional human oddities working the country. Today, there are none. And that's too bad, because there's a greater appetite for human oddities than ever before. People are fascinated, but the freaks are all gone."

The only true freaks I find after five fruitless days -- freaks who could still shock and amaze -- are probably Kathy Stiles, 31, and her 9-year-old home-schooled daughter, Misty. They are the clawed, scarred descendants of the infamous Lobster Boy.

Has she ever thought about touring again?

"I quit in '92 and I won't go back," she said. "We made some good money, but it was really hard, and the government made it easier to stay home and collect disability."

I'll be damned. Rush is right.

"People still stare when we go out because, I guess, we're the last true freaks. Everyone's tattooed and pierced, and we saw a kid at the mall with blue hair the other day, but they stare at us just for being the way we were born. People really need to get a grip."

Interesting bit of philosophy, not to mention choice of words, from someone with claws instead of fingers.
Back home I tell friends and family I've failed to find the freaks in Gibtown.

My tanned father-in-law, himself just returned from a long Florida vacation, says: "You should have come with us to Key West. Freaks everywhere."

Everywhere but Gibtown.

The freaks are dead. Long live the freaks.