On Oct. 4, 1979, Pope John Paul II visited Living History Farms, Des Moines, Iowa, and Chris Bigelow was there.
It was the largest crowd in Iowa history. It was a cold and rainy autumn day.
Bigelow, who now has his own consulting firm, The Bigelow Companies, tells it like it was:
In 1976, Bigelow was lured to work for William Zabel (Just Trust Me) Lemons, manager for Volume Services at Royals (now Kauffman) and Arrowhead Stadiums, Kansas City, Mo.
“Bill was a carnie at heart. He had more gimmicks and scams,” Bigelow said. So Lemons comes to Bigelow with Blake Coleman in tow and the two ask Bigelow to get all the good beer vendors together for a weekend trip to Des Moines to sell merchandise for the Pope. Many of you have possibly seen the Saturday Night Live TV skit, Pope on a Rope? It was a real thing. A carved block of soap featuring an image of the Pope….on a rope.
“Billy, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Bigelow responded. He put it under the “What-If Enterprises” category. What if we did this, what if we did that. “Bill, you’re nuts.”
“Just do it.”
“You pay me cash. I’m not getting a piece of the action. There’s never any profit at the end.”
“Okay, but you’ve got to control the vendors.”
Bigelow was not looking for work. The ballparks were plenty busy with Royals and Chiefs games and lots of stadium concerts. He’d have been happy to have a weekend off, but who can resist a Bill-and-Blake Adventure, always where history was being made?
The Catholic Church was trying to squelch vending. They had been in New York and L.A. and there was bootleg stuff all over. In Iowa, they said, “It’s not going to happen here.” Church and city security cordoned off the whole area around the Living History Farm. The Pope was flying in by helicopter.
But Coleman found a way. He reconnoitered and found a guy who owned a carpeting store inside the area that was to be restricted. Then Coleman rented a Winnebago and Bigelow and his vendors drove to Des Moines ahead of time, parking the Winnebago at the store and living there for two or three days, “so we’ll be inside when they cordon it off and we’ll be able to sell pennants and T-shirts.”
“I remember we go to this Sheraton Hotel the night before. It’s all Secret Service and nuns and me and 30 drunken beer vendors.”
“Who are you guys with?”
“We’re undercover, really can’t talk about it.”
He also remembers rehearsing the vendors, including Blake’s righthand man, Lefty Shapiro.
“Where does this money go?”
“It goes right to the church.”
Lefty keeps saying synagogue. No, the church.
“We do this thing; it’s 400 degrees below zero. T-shirts are not the biggest sellers. We sold some stuff, but we did not make money.”
What they had was an adventure. What they had was fun.
“Blake was all business. He knew how to make a buck,” Bigelow remembers. Just not every time. But the vendors made their money and Bigelow made his. “People that had to get paid got paid.”
Make no mistake, this was not Volume Services. It was Bill Lemons Ent., a weekend gig when nothing was happening at the stadiums.
LESSONS LEARNED:
• Have fun. “I wonder if the kids today have as much fun as we were having back then. This is not like a real business. You have to live this; you have to enjoy it. Back then, you weren’t making any money, you were doing this for fun,” Bigelow said.
• Avoid box lunches. This lesson was from Arrowhead Stadium and a charismatic convention for which Ken Young, then with Volume Services, decided they’d do box lunches. Then Young moved to Tampa. “We had to do box lunches for 40,000 people, two meals a day for like a week. Anything that says box lunch, I say you lose money. You make too many, they don’t get there. Kenny hired a guy at a truck stop to drive a semi full of box lunches to Arrowhead. The guy falls asleep at the side of the road. We’re sitting there, don’t even know his name, at 3 in the morning waiting for the box lunches to show up.”
• Believe in the Leiweke magic. Also while he was in Kansas City, the Leiweke family arrived to run the soccer team. Bigelow was the biggest skeptic of all. Nobody had heard of soccer in KC. Bigelow watched over and over again as oldest brother Tracey came up with an idea; then Timmy, next in line, would blow it up 50 times; and, finally, baby brother Tod would execute. “When Timmy said, ‘I’m going to sell this place out, people will line up for soccer,’ he did it. It was amazing what they did out of nothing. Those guys will figure it out.”
• Control the money. That’s the first thing.
• Take care of your people. “At 21, I’m a GM of an account. I wasn’t the greatest boss. Our hourly employees were working two jobs to make ends meet. Conditions in food and beverage are pretty tough. You forget that. Take care of those hourly employees. I wanted them to have fun, but I could have done more.” Which is back to his main mantra – HAVE FUN. — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
PHOTO: Bob Seefeld, Chris Bigelow and Jim Oshust having fun, as usual. (Courtesy of Amusement Business)
Love this. Chris exudes fun and enthusiasm and no one tells these stories quite as artfully as you. Lefty Shapiro saying synagogue is just too much.