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Human cannonball: a career choice that packs a wallop
Patrick Keller
Lakeside Leader
Lit by a single spotlight, Captain USA, dressed in black boots and a red jumpsuit, walks up the steep barrel of his cannon and surveys the crowd. The ringleader introduces the human cannonball as he lowers himself feet first into the business end of the giant gun, and he asks the crowd to countdown.
“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!” BOOM!
The human projectile is fired nearly 50 feet onto a flimsy, worn looking airbag.
It’s all over in about 10 seconds, but it’s all in a days work for human cannonball Luis Munoz. For Munoz, or Captain USA, going out with a bang is something you do every day.
Three or four times a day a day for the past twenty years, Munoz has stared up and out of the barrel of his 20 foot canon, and listened to a circus crowd count down his time to launch. That’s about 30,000 shots, by our estimation, and Munoz looks as though every one of them hurt, at least a little bit.
Cannonball Munoz, or Captain USA, was happy to talk with The Leader following his August 6 performance with Circus Vegas, at Slave Lake’s Arctic Ice Arena. He limped with us out to the rear of the arena, where we chatted amongst the elephants and miniature horses. Our first question, of course, was “How badly does it hurt to be fired from a giant gun?”
“Like you won’t believe it,” said Munoz, with a heavy Spanish accent. He’s in his mid-fifties; a big, heavy-set guy, probably around 250 lbs. In his red jumpsuit, he brings to mind a Latin Elvis Presley during the Vegas years.
For big guys especially, being shot from a gun at 100 feet per second eventually leaves its toll. It’s just going to wear a guy down.
“It’s my nerves,” says Munoz, drawing attention away from his ailing body. “You’ve got to be on it every day. Once you let your guard down, then it becomes dangerous.”
And Munoz should know. The term “school of hard knocks” may well have come from the sport of human cannonballing.
You won’t find courses listed at the local community college, and sadly it’s not a job that is in huge demand. Munoz learned his craft from his father who was also a human cannonball. Munoz Sr. has since blasted off this mortal coil, but not before passing on the knowledge to his son.
And now, Captain USA brings his son, Luis Jr., on tour with him. It’s a family affair.
Travelling with a circus might be a kid’s dream, but being shot from a cannon every day? The question of whether or not the young Munoz will carry on the family tradition is still, ahem, up in the air. Captain USA appears relieved that his son is not completely excited by the idea.
Just what kind of rocket fuel does it take to launch a man into near space? Conventional wisdom says they can’t possibly use real gun powder; it must be compressed air, or springs. But Munoz is adamant. It is indeed gun powder, he tells us, that propels him to such great heights. “What happens when you burn gun powder?” he quizzes us. “You need air. It’s the air being moved that pushes the shrapnel.” Like a good magician, Munoz has just steered our attention away from the trick and back to the magic.
Munoz is from the old school. He built his own cannon, which is painted to resemble a rocket ship, and he maintains it too. The gun portion is raised and lowered by a set of hydraulic pistons built onto the chassis of an ancient car. Scattered around the base are used oil bottles, funnels, pieces of hose, tools. The whole rusted contraption is then draped by sheets of metal and wood painted in flames, stars and stripes and pushed by hand around the arena floor. His is a utilitarian cannon, speckled with soot, dented up. It’s not polished and flashy, it’s a work horse. Aside from his young son, he has no crew. He’s just one man, with a very big gun.
Munoz is part of a great tradition of daredevils, people that put their lives at risk to thrill crowds. But his way of life, his art, is on the decline.
He tells us there are just three other human cannonballs working the continent. Of course, they are all friends; when your peer group numbers three persons, you make a point of keeping in touch. “Sometimes we see each other on the road,” he told us, and they exchange shop talk.
But, it’s not just the risk of bodily harm that is keeping a new generation of cannonballers from purchasing a jumpsuit and building a gun, though that is a consideration.
It turns out there isn’t much demand for human projectiles these days, and the pay isn’t what it should be. Still, Munoz almost sounds dutiful about his job. “I love it,” he told us wearily.
Luis Munoz has spent a lifetime and made a career of being human shrapnel. He lives in a permanent state of shell-shock, deafened by cannon fire daily. Standing by his rocket cannon, in his jumpsuit, he’s a larger-than-life persona, a super hero driven by a duty to society.
Captain USA is here to save us from the mundane.
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