Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla

It was the highlight of our visit to the fair, something we'd promised ourselves for a whole year. We gladly handed over $2.00 each to pass under the canvas flap and see Gabora change from a beautiful blonde maiden into a rampaging gorilla. Inside the tent, it was simultaneously hot and cool, away from the sun's glare, but with a heavy, hot canvas smell that seemed to connect us with a different time. A Caligari moment. A middle-aged man with aviator glasses, a ball cap and a grizzled, gray beard pulled the curtain to one side.

The spielman told how Gabora was captured in Africa, most likely the victim of a "cruel experiment" to demonstrate the truth of evolution. Straight from a Poverty Row script, a PRC production starring the decrepit Bela Lugosi, working for morphine money, and a man in an ape suit. Gabora was visible at the back of her cage, standing still as death, a somnambulist with fairy-tale golden tresses spilling down her shoulders. She seemed strangely distant. Our eyes couldn't quite focus on her. She was kept in a trance and tranquilized for our safety, he said.

Her trance was also necessary to effect the transformation. "Think gorilla, Gabora," the spielman said. "Think gorilla. Gorilla gorilla gorilla gorilla gorilla," he chanted. The image of the girl faded and was replaced by that of an angry gorilla. "Come to the bars and let the people see you, Gabora," the man said. The lights in the cage suddenly went down. Gutteral sounds, almost like speech, were heard. Hairy hands grasped the bars and shook them. Suddenly the cage front fell with a shattering clang, and the man with the microphone urged us to flee, flee for our lives -- ducking through the canvas flap and stepping out into the glaring sun of the midway.

Gabora seems to have become modest over time. In 2007, she was depicted as completely topless, though inexplicably without nipples. At her reappearance in 2008, she wore a demure fabric applique over her breasts.