Sarah Blodgett Celebrates 20 Years Married to The Clown of Her Dreams

Twenty years ago this year, Sarah Blodgett, an alumna of Seymour Smith and Stissing Mountain High School and a nationally recognized nature photographer, married Hilby, the Skinny German Juggle Boy — the clown of her dreams. Life has been hilarious ever since.

“I had a long history of dating dark and brooding men,” Blodgett said, sitting in the “clown room” of her home, the walls covered in posters of famous clowns and memorabilia from her husband’s travels around the globe, entertaining people of all ages with his street comedy and juggling prowess. A pair of huge red clown shoes were hung from a hook near a bookcase full of books about making people laugh. “Then I met Hilby, and I said to myself, ‘Oh! He’s happy! There’s an alternative!’” He makes her laugh, Blodgett said. The Lederhosen help.

You might recognize her husband from the Dutchess County Fair, where every year for decades Hilby, the Skinny German Juggle Boy, has occupied the base of the hill in front of the food concessions — juggling knives and fire while riding a unicycle, and talking to his audience as if he’s known them all his life, and making even the most stressed-out parents laugh despite themselves.

Their courtship, Blodgett said, involved years of commuting between state and county fairs on an almost daily basis. “We met on a blind date…a friend sent me a picture of him, shirtless and blowing up a life-sized balloon.”

The couple had dinner and then climbed the water tower in West Cornwall, where they sat talking for hours. “He was on the road all the time, and all over the world. But he just kept coming back,” Blodgett said. “He was the most fascinating person I’d ever met.”

Both had previous marriages that they entered into at a young age — 23 — and both had children from those marriages who were the same ages. Blodgett still remembers what they both wore when they first met: he, a teal blue band T-shirt and jeans; she, a demure white blouse. “He was without pretense. The purest person,” Blodgett said. “I was the one putting on an act.”

His first gift to her was a pair of socks.

Now in their 20th year of marriage, Hilby still wakes up every morning and says something funny. (After a youth spent in Berlin, Germany, as dark and brooding a place as Sarah’s old dates, humor was the only antidote.) And their work inspires each other.

“In a pure practical sense,” said Hilby, “Sarah has been pushing me from the beginning to step it up in the costumes department and has herself contributed to my look by altering, creating and enhancing my Lederhosen. She is my red flag and checkered flag when it comes to new jokes and which ones might have to leave the building. Sarah reminds me through her own work to not always go for the obvious, that less is more and beauty and funny can spring from the smallest of cracks.”

“Hilby has taught me many things about working with other humans,” Blodgett said. “A photographer’s life can be fairly solitary and having a broader understanding of the many cultures and demographics Hilby has worked in has enriched my work relationships immensely. Most happily though, clown life frees me to travel to places I never would have thought to go. Location, location, location as they say! The amazing Salton Sea in California, deep into the Everglades of Florida, New Zealand, Istanbul, Turkey, the beautiful salt marshes of Virginia…”

What gets them through the hard times?

“Being that we are both sensitive romantics and artists, there have been those nights! Fights are always over some scrambled egg confusion of misunderstanding over what we meant when we said something or other,” Blodgett said. “We are usually able to talk it through the next day. We do have a rule that we will never say F you to each other as that allows too many walls to come down.”

But they do abide by a few simple rules: “Before speaking, let your words pass through 3 gates; Is it necessary, is it kind, and is it true.” Hilby likes to add “Is it funny?” — all gates are open, but as you can imagine, well… there’s always the Lederhosen.