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By Sam Hemingway
For four months this summer, Reuben Bowen of Lexington, Ky., worked for Reithoffer Shows Inc., setting up and taking down the traveling amusement firm's carnival rides and helping run its bumper-car attraction.
"It was really cool at first," Bowen, a self-described free spirit, said last week. "It was just a lot of fun, working, drinking, smoking, hanging out together."
Unfortunately for Bowen, the good times as a Reithoffer employee came to an abrupt end on the morning of Aug. 30 shortly after the gates had opened for the sixth day of the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction.
Bowen says -- and police reports support his story -- that his legs were run over by a golf cart driven by a manager and he was beaten up in plain view of witnesses, including several fellow workers.
Bowen ended up at Fletcher Allen Health Care with broken and dislocated toes, plus bruises to his head. Police questioned the manager, Torray Palmer of Oxon Hill, Md., and later charged him with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon -- the golf cart.
Four days later, Palmer and the rest of the Reithoffer's crew packed up and moved on to their next show in Connecticut. Bowen, out of money, on crutches and without a place to stay, was left behind.
The crutches are gone, but more than two months later, Bowen still walks with a slight limp. Today, he's homeless, sleeping in a Burlington cemetery by night and foraging for meals from kindly workers at city eateries and the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf by day.
The state's Workers' Compensation & Safety Division ordered Reithoffer's insurance carrier on Sept. 24 to pay Bowen's claim for lost wages since Aug. 30. That amounted to $5,500 plus interest. All he's received is $118.38, a portion of the pay he said was owed him before the Aug. 30 incident.
"If I cry about it, it's just going to bring me down and I can't let that happen," Bowen said of his predicament the other day, a smile and a soft southern drawl tingeing his words. "So I just go with the flow."
His lawyer, Tom Simon of Burlington, is less willing to take the case in stride. Simon said he took the case on a "cold call" from Bowen two months ago after listening to Bowen's tale of woe and then checking it out with Essex police.
"I keep expecting every day a check's going to come in for Reuben and this will be over," Simon said. "Reuben asks me every day what the worst scenario is and I tell him, 'This is the worst scenario.'"
Rough & Tumble Life
"My buddy knew I was broke. He told me I ought go work for the carnival. So I went out to the fair, met the guy who ran the bumper cars, got drunk with him that night and everything just took off from there."
Bowen, with a husky, 6-foot-4-inch build and an easy-going temperament, said he felt like he fit right in with the hard-working, hard-partying world that came with working for a traveling amusement ride company. He'd followed the Grateful Dead for two years and participated in several Rainbow hippie gatherings around the country.
He said working for Reithoffer's, which brands itself as "The Aristocrat of Show Business for Over 100 Years," involves 12-hour work days, seven days a week, 10 months a year.
Bowen said he was paid $250 a week at the start and was provided space in a bunkhouse, called a "condo," as his home away from home. He said his pay was increased to $350 a week when he became a driver for the company in August.
Living in close quarters with other crew members had its ups and downs, he said. Disputes between workers were sometimes settled with fights. "You don't get wrote up, you get beat up," Bowen said.
The Golf Cart Incident
"Reuben Bowen had been drinking all that night," Palmer wrote in an affidavit filed in the workers' compensation case. "I returned to the 'condos' to make sure that everyone was up, and Reuben came out shouting at me and waving a baseball bat. It appeared to me that Reuben was still drunk from the night before."
Moments later, Palmer struck Bowen with the golf cart.
"Palmer advised that Reuben attempted to kick him in the face," Essex Police Lt. George Murtie wrote in his affidavit account of the incident. "Palmer advised that he punched Reuben in the upper body approximately 10 times with closed fists."
Palmer did not respond to a telephone message last week requesting an interview.
Chittenden County State's Attorney Thomas J. Donovan said last week that Palmer's court-appointed lawyer and the state are discussing a plea agreement in the case, which is scheduled for a change-of-plea hearing Dec. 3. Aggravated assault carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail and $10,000 fine.
Pat Reithoffer, an owner/manager of the company, said Palmer remains employed by Reithoffer.
"He's been a very mild-mannered man all the years I've known him," Reithoffer said of Palmer. "I've never had an incident where he's behaved in a violent manner."
Steve Mease, a spokesman for the Champlain Valley Exposition, which hosted the fair, said fair officials were aware of the golf cart incident but aren't responsible for employees who work for Reithoffer.
He said Reithoffer is well regarded within the amusement ride industry and recently won an industry "circle of excellence" award based on a review of its performance during the Champlain Valley Fair.
Worker's Compensation Snafu
"The totality of the evidence indicated that the claimant had received injuries in an on-premises assault by a co-worker, which resulted in medical treatment and medical removal from work for more than three days," Rebecca Smith, an attorney for the Workers' Compensation division wrote in an Oct. 26 ruling affirming its earlier decision.
Pat Reithoffer said he pays his insurance premiums regularly and directed questions about what his insurance carrier was doing about claims to the insurer or its representatives.
Tom Higgins, an attorney representing Reithoffer's insurance carrier, declined comment on why no payment other than the $118.38 had been sent to Bowen.
Higgins referred questions to the Atlanta headquarters of Crawford & Co., the insurance adjuster in the case. A lawyer at the Atlanta firm said she could not comment on a case she did not know about.
Simon, who said he usually represents companies defending themselves in workers' compensation claims, said the failure to get a check to Bowen is inexcusable.
"I've been doing this kind of work for almost 15 years," Simon said. "I have not seen an employer's insurance company so badly mishandle a claim at such expense to another human being as this case."
Bowen, putting on a sweat shirt over several layers of T-shirts he was wearing to stay warm, said the colder it gets in Vermont, the more he wants to be back home in Kentucky.
"As soon as I get that check," he said, "I'm going to buy a plane ticket and fly to Lexington."
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