Melvin Burkhart, who died on November 8th aged 94, logged more than 900,000 miles in the US to entertain millions of people in more than 100,000 carnival sideshows over 60 years. His silver tongue and heart of gold made him the touter and protector of his carnival colleagues.
He was the human blockhead and proud of it. He was the anatomical wonder who could breathe with one lung at a time, the two-faced man who could frown with half his face and smile with the other, and the rubber-necked man. He swallowed swords, threw knives and gobbled fire.
He was the last of the legends living in the little town of Gibsonton or "Gibtown", which once harboured such human wonders as the legless half girl, the pincer-handed lobster boy, the scaly-skinned frog man and the bearded dog-faced lady.
To Melvin Burkhart, the word and concept of "freak" was never pejorative, but an enviable entree to the show business he loved.
He toured with Ringling Brothers, was in Ripley's Believe It Or Not and was featured in two documentaries, the Learning Channel's 1997 Sideshow and the independent feature-length Gibtown. He loved to introduce his anomalous cohorts on-stage, concocting clever introductions to make the audience enjoy what they were seeing.
"We would never get up there and just say, come in here and see a horrible person. You wouldn't say, 'You're going to see a girl with no arms . . . ' but 'you're going to see the armless wonder who does fantastic things right before your eyes using nothing but the tootsies on her feet,' " he once told a journalist.
And at home or in the little diners and motels on the road, Melvin Burkhart often spoke for them, too, unencumbered by the shyness or low self-esteem suffered by many sideshow performers.
"No freak was a freak to me," he said two years ago. "They were my friends and we were all freaks together. I tried to be their shield against the world."
Carnival sideshows or freak shows declined sharply in the 1960s as medical science learned how to eliminate or reduce genetically-caused deformities and as public attitudes changed, prompting state laws that banned exploiting the disabled.
Melvin Burkhart, who relished the limelight, simply reinvented himself as a magician and continued to find audiences at fairs and fund-raisers with his pocketful of trick dice, magic string, rigged cards and disappearing coins.
But he achieved his greatest fame as the human blockhead - so designated for his ability to drive a five-inch nail or ice pick into his face without flinching.
"If it ever hurt me, I wouldn't do it," he insisted while performing the trick for a doubting reporter when he was 86, then added his customary line: "This is how I get my iron."
He met his first wife during a circus tour to Havana and turned her into what he called "a damned good sword-swallower".
Melvin Burkhart managed a more normal life than many of his fellow freaks. He and his second wife, Joyce, were preparing to celebrate their 52nd wedding anniversary this month, and he remained close to their three children.
Melvin Burkhart; born 1907; died, November 2001