JOURNEY TO AN 800 NUMBER

The loosening up of Maximillian Stubbs, who goes off to stay with his father Woody while his mother is off honeymooning with a rich man near retirement age. Draped in the blazer of the exclusive prep school he'll be entering in the fall, Max is not enamoured with his father's itinerant mobile home, or with the camel his father takes to fairs and conventions to sell rides. His father, in contrast, is a footloose, unambitious, earthy type, well liked by other carnival regulars such as Mama Rosita and her kids at the taco stand, and affably tolerant of his snobbish son. Max has occasion to regret his own icier stance toward the taco family; but it is later, sharing a luxury suite with singing star Trina Rose, that Max comes to appreciate Woody. For insight on his own airs, Max gets some help from lovely Sabrina, about eleven, who collects clippings on freaks and keeps popping up because she spends vacations crashing conventions with her mother Lilly, who spends the rest of the year answering an 800-number telephone service. Sabrina and Lilly's masquerade is an obvious device and an unlikely hobby, but diverting anyway; and if Woody and his friends are more predictably obvious, they are all nice people, well worth Max's attention.