The Amazing Balancing Man: My Life as an Acrobat, Circus Performer, Stunt Man and Comedian

By David Linden

The Amazing Balancing Man
By David Linden

This is the personal story of one person balancing pursuing his dreams and putting bread on the table. Born during the Great Depression to a barber and a homemaker in Albany, New York, Davids prospects were not very bright. However, his parents, who immigrated from Russia and Austria shortly after World War I, instilled in him the belief that you could do anything you wanted, as long as you did the work needed to prepare for it. He left high school before graduating to work and bring in a little extra income to help out the family. This was his first balancing act: finish high school or help the family. It wasnt a lot of money, but it helped stretch the family budget a bit, and taught him valuable lessons about doing every job as well as he could and always trying to do better. David, it turns out, was an excellent salesman, regularly winning bonuses and recognition for tripling and quadrupling a departments sales. Whenever he needed to put bread on the table or a roof over his head, David could always get a job as a salesman. He was very good at it, but was not particularly passionate about sales.

As a teenager, David enjoyed participating in all sports and started developing a love of physical fitness, reveling in what he could get his body to do and enjoying the cheers of the crowd when he made a great play. It was while learning and practicing diving and some basic gymnastics at a local park with a pool that he started becoming aware of the strength and gratification he received from cheers and applause, especially from the attractive girls. When the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus was came to town and he saw Ove Unus The Talk of the Universe perform a one-finger handstand and heard the thunderous applause, David knew that was what he passionately wanted to do perform acrobatics for live audiences! He taught himself the art, building up the necessary physical and mental skills, watching others perform, and studying pictures of acts to figure out how to do them. Along the way he recruited others to join him, met and became friends with other performers, first in the Albany area and then at Muscle Beach, California, and around the Western Hemisphere. David performed with many circuses around the United States and Canada. In 1976 he joined the Harlem Globetrotters for a five month tour of the United States, Canada, and South America, performing his acrobatic and plate-spinning acts during half time. During one show in South America, he had a major fall which left him nearly paralyzed from his waist down. In only five weeks, he rehabilitated himself and rejoined the tour. He continued performing acrobatics and selling shoes and fitness equipment as needed to put bread on the table for another twenty years. In his seventies, he retired from acrobatics and tried retiring, but couldnt stand the quiet, so he re-invented himself as a stand-up comedian. The mental and physical preparation for appearing before an audience and the applause for a performance well done are as essential to Davids well-being as having blood pump through his veins. Without the former, the latter is of little importance. Ultimately the story is about balancing ones inner passions that define personal success against societys measures of success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499066906

David Linden

Born in 1935 in Albany, NY, to a barber and housewife who immigrated from Russia and Austria soon after World War I, David left high school early to help support his family. He became interested in physical fitness and taught himself acrobatics in the 1950s and early 1960s. He moved to California in 1965 at the urging of his older brother, Harvey, to develop his acrobatic career. Married three times, divorced twice, David performed acrobatic balancing and plate-spinning acts with many circuses and solo shows, including a tour of the western hemisphere with the Harlem Globetrotters in 1976-1977. Retiring from acrobatics after forty years of performing and traveling extensively, David re-invented himself as a stand-up comic, which he continues as he turns eighty.

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Copyright © 2014 by David Linden.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014916763

ISBN:      Hardcover       978-1-4990-6691-3

                Softcover         978-1-4990-6692-0

                eBook              978-1-4990-6690-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 09/29/2014

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Albany – The Beginnings

Chapter 2 Muscle Beach – Making the Break

Chapter 3 Romance

Chapter 4 The Lindens are Born

Chapter 5 Globetrotting – Part 1

Chapter 6 Globetrotting – Part 2

Chapter 7 1977 – Back In California

Chapter 8 1980s – Winding Down

Chapter 9 Transitions

Chapter 10 Family Support

Chapter 11 New Beginnings

This book is dedicated to my older brother Harvey for his life-long encouragement and support, my younger brother and sister, Irwin and Barbara, and my wonderful wife Nancy for putting up with me and helping me for forty years. I am also very thankful to Vince Faye, Diane McGuire, and the other acrobats and performers I encountered many times through the years. I especially thank Ron Weichold who first showed me the basics of balancing and acrobatics in the early days at Mid-City Park and who supported me ever since.

CHAPTER 1

Albany – The Beginnings

I  GREW UP in Albany, New York, in the 1950s with my Dad, Mom, two brothers, and one sister. Dad was a barber and Mom was a housewife. They grew up during the Great Depression and didn’t have any money to speak of, but they did as well as they could to keep a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, and at least a little food in our stomachs. I quit high school early so I could make a little money and not be too dependent on Dad.

As a teenager I liked sports. All kinds of sports: baseball, football, track, swimming – you name it, I wanted to do it. I started going to the Mid-City Pool in Menands, New York, just outside Albany. It was a large swimming pool that also had a sandy beach-like area and a spring board. The beach and springboard were taken out in the 1960s (you can’t dive in city pools any more, and I guess people would leave broken glass and stuff in the sand), but when I was there in the 1950s it was great. It was always crowded during the summer, especially on weekends. People came from all over the area including Troy and Rensselaer, and as far away as Cohoes.

One day I was watching this guy doing some fancy diving off the springboard. Stuff like a double spin into a dive (called a 2 ½ gainer back then), and doing a handstand on the end of the board before turning a summersault into a dive. I was pretty impressed, so I went up and chatted with him and we became friends. His name was Ron Weichold. He was on the All-American Diving Team and the gymnastics team. We hung out together for a few years. I did some diving, but not nearly as well as Ron, so he helped me with my diving skills. He also showed me some gymnastics, like walking on his hands and pressing up into a handstand. I started practicing handstands, and I learned pretty fast, building my abilities and strength as an athlete.

I joined the Jewish Community Center because it had weight training and exercise equipment for all kinds of activities. This place was special for body builders and athletes to practice and compete with other gyms. They did all kinds of stuff, like weight lifting, physique (body building) contests, and boxing. That’s where I met Vince Fay. He was a great guy, a body builder, weight lifter, and training as a boxer with a coach. He was strong as hell. He could lift double his own weight and was built like a Mack truck. I did some weight training, but was more interested in balancing on my hands and stuff like using small T-Bars and pressing into a handstand. Vince thought that was interesting, so he started trying handstands, too. We taught ourselves how to do hand-to-hand balancing. We started from the low position, with him on his back, upper arms on the floor, and forearms vertical. I then pressed into a handstand on his hands. We worked up to him standing up, but we couldn’t do any high tricks at the Community Center because the ceiling was too low, only ten or twelve feet high. So, I told Vince about the Mid-City Pool where I had met Ron.

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Mid City Pool, 1950s

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Mid City Pool

The three of us started going to the Mid-City Pool together on weekends. Vince and I met Ron at the pool and we started doing hand balancing. Ron was a natural and picked it up really fast. As a threesome we put together some impressive tricks on the beach, and everyone at the pool was watching us work out. We were especially pleased by the young ladies watching. We got the balancing tricks from photos in bodybuilding magazines and of Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California. There were all kinds of one hand balancing and other tricks. We just looked at the photos and figured out how to do them. Getting from two or three guys just standing beside each other on the ground up to hand-to-hand handstands isn’t as easy as you might think. Often it was a lot harder getting up than it was to hold the final pose. Then we had to figure out how to get down without killing one of us.

One day the Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus came into town, The Greatest Show on Earth. They had posters up all over town. One of the acts was Ove Unus The Talk of the Universe. He did a one finger handstand in a tuxedo with top hat. The poster photo showed him balancing on a cane while spinning hoops on the other hand, both feet, and on a stick in his mouth. I was really impressed and really wanted to go see Unus. My dad made just enough to keep the family together, so I knew that I couldn’t ask him for the money, so I did a bunch of errands and cut lawns to get the money to go to the circus. Unus was the star of the show. He worked on a high stand, sort of like a lamp post with a globe on top, and a little platform on top just big enough to stand on. He did a bunch of amazing balancing tricks, like doing a one-hand stand on a cane on the little platform and holding a chair with the other hand. I was absolutely amazed, and knew at that moment that was what I wanted to be - a master performer just like Ove Unus.

Ove had also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on TV which ran from 1948 to 1971. Appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show could make your career. Besides the singers, like The Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, Roy Orbison, and others, the show highlighted acrobats, comedians, dancers, movie stars, and others. You name it, Ed Sullivan had it on his show.

At this time I was working on hand balancing with partners, which was a great workout. One day at the gym Vince and I were working out and noticed a young girl doing walkovers and handsprings. Zowie! We went over to meet her. Her name was Viola, and she was very attractive, too, with a great figure. We soon became friends and started working out together, the three of us, doing balancing tricks and worked up an act. We got some photographer to come by and take pictures of us working out. The photographer was from the Albany Knickerbocker News, and the exposure in the paper brought a lot of new members to the gym.

We started doing shows on holidays. There were weight lifters and a magic contest, which we followed as the feature act. We called ourselves The Acros.

At the gym there was a huge glass window that people used to watch us practice. There was