They make a pretty easy crowd, these 4- and 5-year-olds packed into a basement TV room. Hugs the Clown, bright as a rainbow in red-sequined tie and mismatched shoes, is playing them for all they're worth.
"Are you ready to have fun?" she asks. "Yeah!" they cry. And all 15 scream as the Anne Arundel County entertainer pulls a flag from a hat, waves a collapsing magic wand and shows them a bouquet of petunias that droop in her hand.
It's a private party to celebrate summer, one of about 5,000 similar gigs she has performed in her day. Now in her 25th year on the circuit, Hugs the Clown — also known as Judy Ewald, 68, a self-taught artist and entrepreneur who lives in Arnold — is one of the longest-tenured full-time clowns in the Baltimore area.
Even in the best of times, that's no small feat in a business that offers little pay and dicey job prospects. And these are far from the best of times.
"Oh, my, things have been terrible," she says, adding that her income — like that of many clowns in the area — has sunk by about 50 percent since last year, let alone from the boom time of a decade ago when "parents had a lot more money to spend."
But no clown makes it to her silver anniversary by staying down for long. After years of personal and professional turmoil, Ewald seems to give the lie to a stubborn stereotype — the happy-looking clown who's sad on the inside.
"I'm doing what I'm meant to do," Ewald says. "In this business, you have to have faith. I finally do."
The clown holds her fingers above the wilted flowers, sprinkling them with imaginary "happy water." Like magic, they spring back to life. The children squeal.
A couple of tricks
Unlike most working clowns, Hugs is a triple threat, offering a full-fledged magic show, arm and face painting (mostly cartoon characters you'd recognize) and a balloon animals menagerie about the size of the average zoo's.
She shifts from one mode to the next during her 90 minutes (fee: $250), stopping now and then to remind overeager kids to wait their turns.
"Please and thank you are the magic words!" she says.
"OK, Clown," a 5-year-old girl says. "Please!"
Things didn't always go this smoothly.
Judith Garrett was born in the Midwest, to a traveling salesman dad, who always seemed to be away from home, and a homemaker mom. They moved 18 times in 19 years. "Not exactly stable," she says.
Even when her father, John, was around, she rarely got the hugs a normal kid does. To make more time for his wife, he made Judith and her two siblings eat dinner in their rooms. He later told their mom, Shirley, he just didn't like them.
When Judith reached her early 20s, she married a soldier named Ewald who was bound for Vietnam. Twelve years, a war and two children later, they divorced. "There wasn't much intimacy," she says.
She needed some magic. She was 35, on her own, estranged from her kids and without marketable skills.
Learning over the next few years was like juggling 200 balls. She caught a few, but most bounced away. She drove a tour bus, sold Amway and Mary Kay, dabbled in low-income real estate, made picture frames, cut hair. Nothing lasted.
The New Age books she read gave no answers. Nor did the conventions she went to. "If I can do it, you can too!" the gurus shouted. The message never took.
One night in the early 1980s, Ewald decided to ditch the pressures. She and a friend bought tickets for an "insomniac tour" of her newly adopted hometown, Baltimore, and at about 2 a.m., the bus pulled up to a now-defunct landmark, the old Yogi Magic Mart. She found the magicians a strangely welcoming lot. They put on a show, even shared trade secrets.
Excited, Ewald bought the equipment for two simple tricks. She was then training salesmen for a living, and she decided to use one in her work. She'd take someone's business card, fold it behind her hand and turn it into a bouquet of dollar bills.
She's loath to explain how it worked, but the effect was … magic. "It went over big," Ewald says.
Embraced
One rarely becomes a good clown overnight. If it's going to happen, it happens in fits and starts over time, more or less the way a person gains confidence. That's how it was for Ewald.
First came the apprenticeship. She met a magician at the Yogi and was drawn to his charisma, a force that seemed to fill a room. She followed him from gig to gig, helping him paint sets and signs. They bought, built and sold magic supplies. She became his onstage helper.
The arrangement ended five years later, when Ewald says she felt overwhelmed by the troubles haunting her friend. She was a middle-age woman, she says, "but I was finally feeling I was entitled to my own life and feelings."
Having seen audiences respond to clowns, she felt the profession was a possible revenue stream. Ewald sought out those who could teach her the trade. She knew the people at the Funhouse Magic Shop on Eastern Avenue offered a course. The library had books on clowns. She tracked down two older women who had once taught a "clown college" at Anne Arundel Community College.
There was more to being a clown, it seemed, than met the eye. One had to consult clown history and choose what kind to be: Auguste (slapstick in style with a flesh-colored face), Hobo tramp's attire (a forlorn look) or Classic Whiteface (airily reserved). It took time and skill to apply the greasepaint, edge one's mouth and eyebrows with a pencil brush, seal the whole thing with powder.
Then there was picking a "character" and name. She decided to be herself in her act — approachable, rumpled, a little shy — and found herself not so much choosing a moniker as being embraced by one.
"When you give [a hug] away, you get one back," she says. "The name just fit."
At first, she saw clown work as a hobby, but word began to spread about the unassuming figure in the homemade patchwork suit who could make the dots on a domino disappear, tie a balloon moose or dash off a replica of Scooby-Doo, all in a few tidy seconds.
"The average person in this business just comes in [to a gig] and plays around," says Diana Fowlkes of Baltimore, who performs as Annie the Clown. "They figure, 'I've got this routine, and I'm taking it and running with it.' Hugs is one who invests in upgrading as an entertainer."
A few birthday parties, fundraisers, farmers' markets and corporate picnics later, she found herself in clownface more than any other work attire. She taught and studied at clown conventions. By the mid-1990s, it was clear, a career had thrown its arms around Hugs.
Projects and palaces
At the party, a gig in Elkridge, a few jokes fall flat — the kids don't get it when Hugs puts a moose on her head and puns about hair gel — but she soldiers on. She involves the host's daughter, Melania Outlaw, in a flag trick, and when she goes outside to create balloon art, the lines are instant and long.
Just as water wears down stone, years of experience have shaped her act. Where she used to wear a female clown's billowy skirt, she now dons more form-fitting jumpers ("too many parties in little rowhomes," she says). Oversize sneakers have given way to reinforced Crocs. Inside her vest, next to the pocket that holds her flowers, she has sewn another that contains business cards.
Her buttons are eye-grabbers. "I Dressed Myself Today," one says. (She does sew her own costumes, saving thousands of dollars.) "IITYYOMAH," says another, mysteriously. Two kids on a third are her grandchildren, a reassuring sight for clients.
Every venue is unique, she says, and every crowd has its own personality — which is not always a good thing. Once, five romping dogs nearly knocked her down. At another party, a child yanked off her rubber nose (she now uses red glitter). "I've learned to be bold and say what needs to be said," Ewald says.
She has performed in the streets and at the governor's house, in low-income housing complexes and at Eastern Shore mansions. She has played a number of prisons, places where she met inmates with whom she's still in touch.
Corporate gigs are significantly down, and restaurants such as Cheeburger-Cheeburger in Annapolis have axed clowns from their budget. A longtime friend and colleague, Mary Jane Dinnis (stage name: Bows the Clown) says her income, too, is down by about half from last year.
"This is entertainment, not something you have to have," she says. "If people are going to cut something, it's going to be that."
Parties, though, still make up a substantial portion of clowns' business.
At the Elkridge gig, Hugs' magic show ends, and Bridget Outlaw, Melania's mom, thinks the kids are too tired for arm painting. Politely, she sets up anyway.
Ten children line up, and she paints Batman, Ariel, three unicorns and the head of a Baltimore Raven in a span of 10 minutes.
Getting hugs
Just off Ritchie Highway in Arnold, a gravel road snakes up a hill behind a driving range. It's the mobile-home park where Ewald lives, as she has for the past five years.
The dented Honda with the big sign gives away her address: "I BRAKE 4 HUGS," it says.
"You like my golf-course community?" Ewald asks as she opens the front door.
She's only half-kidding. Being a clown has never made her rich, but hers is a spacious, orderly, light-filled home, one where her own paintings line the walls. She learned late in life that she has artistic talent and even sold a portrait for $500.
The place reflects a hard-won embrace of who and where Ewald is. "You're sitting in a $75 chair, and I covered this sofa that someone gave me. I've never been a 'things' person. Life's about so much more than that," she says.
It's about, for example, her relationships with her grown children, now vastly improved. Ewald has grown close to son Bryan, a guitarist who lives in Arnold, and daughter Jennifer, an oceanographer who lives in Virginia. "Very creative people, no thanks to Mom," she says.
She never remarried, but Ewald, now a professed Christian, finds something of a comfort even there.
"God knew I would spend a lot of years as a single person," she says. "I think he provided me with a wholesome way to get hugs."
In her best year, 1998, Ewald did more than 300 gigs, had clients booked months in advance and earned $60,000. This year, she has unbooked summer Saturdays —- and nothing at all slated for September.
Her earnings are projected to be about $35,000, one reason she's studying to get recertification as a notary public, a side business that has helped her financially in the past.
What the future holds, Ewald can't say. Clowns don't have crystal balls. But after a quarter-century, she does feel at home in a calling and plans to keep performing as long as possible, to market herself more aggressively online and hope for the best.
And that button she wears, the one with the weird acronym, IITYYOMAH? Is it some kind of secret clown password?
She's happy to explain that one. "If I tell you, you owe me a hug," she says.