Bozo the Clown’s last flight

For decades, Larry “Bozo the Clown” Harmon entertained generations of kids across the globe. The Man Behind the Nose: Assassins, Astronauts, Cannibals, and Other Stupendous Tales is his just-released autobiography, written just before his death in 2008 and co-authored by Thomas Scott McKenzie. An excerpt:

When I was five years old, my parents purchased a refrigerator from the Sears Roebuck catalog. After the appliance was installed, my mom beamed at the gleaming addition to her kitchen. My father returned to the Cleveland Indians game on the radio. And I investigated the empty shipping box in the backyard.That box became my pirate ship, my tank, my stagecoach, my castle, my tunnel, my mountainside. I would lug the box upstairs in our house, climb in, and slide down the stairs like a runaway train. Anything a little boy could envision, that box could accommodate. But its most frequent incarnation was as a flying vessel. Sometimes a plane, like the one in which I imagined Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. Other times, the box became a flying saucer, capable of propelling me into the heavens like the brave souls in Jules Verne’s sciene-fiction stories. I felt the urge to fly, to travel at high speeds, to leave a mark in the sky that people would see.

The Man Behind the Nose: Assassins, Astronauts, Cannibals, and Other Stupendous Tales