1994: Teen instrumental in clown’s rebirth

Editor’s note: Article first published in The Eagle on March 26, 1994

Louie the Clown will be back at the Wurlitzer Military Band Organ this summer, cranking out waltzes and marches for a 53rd consecutive season at Joyland amusement park, and Damian Mayes is the first to admit that Louie is likely to give a few more kids the creeps.

''He'll be scaring the kids even more this summer because he's a lot more lifelike, " said Mayes, an East High student who has been meticulously maintaining and re-building the artificial clown and automatic organ for the past three years.

"He's got new hands, which can rest between the songs instead of keeping on playing, like he used to. They're made out of plastic, and they're so real it freaked me out. I think it's also the pointy style of makeup that he wears. It's scarier than the more rounded kind of makeup."

This was said with great affection, of course. Mayes concedes that several generations of cheap-thrill-seeking Wichitans have found Louie somewhat eerie, but he can clearly recall his first trip to Joyland as a mere lad and insists that Louie had a purely positive effect on him.

''I really liked Louie when I was little. Three years ago I applied for a job as a ride operator here, but I always liked organs anywhere you've got a giant Wurlitzer or something like that, I'm happy so I started to think about working on Louie, " Mayes said, explaining how he became an expert repairman of antique organs by age 18.

''At first I was kind of tentative about working on something so old, but it's come along pretty good. I'm going to be an organ major at college."

Mayes can recite Louie's life history with an almost fraternal familiarity. The Wurlitzer Military Band Organ Style No. 165 was built sometime between 1901 and 1905, Mayes said, and was extensively modified until 1946 with such additions as automatic castanets, bass drums, violin pipes, flutes and a robot musician to play them all.

Mayes noted with pride that at one point the contraption was worked on by R.H. Gibbs, a legend in organ-repair circles. The entire piece was brought to Joyland in 1951, two years after the park opened, and has since become a landmark to generations of Wichitans.

''Everybody knows the clown, " Mayes said. "I have to go everywhere to get parts, and any place I go they know all about Louie."

A Joyland legend has it that one of the organ's earliest and most dedicated listeners was a neighborhood boy named Louie, and the clown is said to be named in the young man's honor.

Louie had fallen into obvious disrepair before Mayes' arrival at Joyland. "Every time it rained, this would be the last thing they'd cover up, " Mayes said. Louie badly needed a complete overhaul.

''We had a lot of bugs to get out, and I mean that literally, " Mayes said. "The thing was full of bugs, and the cottonwood seeds were pretty bad, too."

The challenge of repairing Louie was "an adventure" to Mayes, however, who delights in fashioning an entirely new set of 66 pipes for the organ and doing such chores as "repairing the vacuum reservoir, which is hooked up to the roll frames and the primary chest and the secondary chest, and then the deflexers." Mayes concedes that the repairs are often "quite complicated, " particularly because the 90-year-old owner's manual was lost a long time ago. He has had to fashion several of the parts by himself or with the help of other local craftsmen. Although Louie's instrument is non-chromatic and relatively simple, Mayes thinks repairing it has improved his musical abilities.

''When you know what's happening inside an organ, it helps you to make it happen better, " Mayes said. "When you know how to work on an organ, you can also make exactly the kind of pipes you want and get just the right tone. On this job, though, I feel more like a handyman."

Although Mayes is proud of his handiwork, he hopes critics will judge Louie in his midsummer form. "An outdoor organ is never going to be perfectly in tune, " Mayes said, but Joyland's Wurlitzer is at its best in the dry heat of June or July.

Louie's longtime fans will definitely notice an improvement in his performance, however, when Joyland opens for business next month.

''I think he's gotten kind of spoiled since I've been here, " Mayes said.

This story was originally published February 19, 2015 at 4:10 PM with the headline "1994: Teen instrumental in clown’s rebirth."