June 20 - Father Seamus

Every week was a new town: Backgate, Arkansas; Ridley, Iowa; Catonsville, Michigan; Shippensburg, Minnesota. As the only son of Catholic priest turned carnival sideshow wrestler Furious Father Seamus, Homer O'Shaughnessy's home was a series of cheap hotels, campgrounds, trailers, and flophouses. And his family was an extended cast of carnival workers, sideshow attractions, and wrestlers, who loved Homer like he was their own. There was Flambino, the fire-eating Mexican midget; The Human Hammer, whose shtick was driving nails into boards with his fists, his heels, and his forehead; Bonnie the Beanpole, the lithe contortionist who also baked a mean apple betty; and Mustapha the Mysterious, the mind reading swami from the Orient. They took care of Homer while his father was in the ring doling out punishment on a nightly basis to all takers as Furious Father Seamus, the Catholic Catastrophe.
It had been that way since Homer was a toddler. He didn't have any memory of any life that wasn't on the road, just as he didn't have any memory of his mother, magician's assistant Sexy Sadie, Father Seamus's wife whose talent was disappearing from a magic coffin. A week after Homer's second birthday, she disappeared for good with the magician and they hadn't heard from her since.
Seamus was grateful for the support he got from the other wrestlers and everyone else in the carnival community after she left. In fact, they had been incredibly gracious to him ever since he'd joined the carnival all those years ago when he left the church after falling head over heels in love with Sadie while he was visiting the carnival with his nephew. It had all happened so fast. One day he was beginning life as the new parish priest in Dubuque. The next, he was leaving the church and modifying the wrestling skills that had put him through college so that they could be put to use in the ring of a traveling carnival. All so he could be with a magician's assistant he barely knew. Life was funny that way.
Because of his athleticism and his collegiate wrestling experience, Seamus took to the ring quite well. But although all the matches were fixed, the pain was real. That's why Father Seamus didn't want Homer watching his matches. As much as possible, he wanted to protect his son from that part of his life. In fact, he tried to keep him off the road altogether.
Enlisting the help of cousins in Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota to watch over Homer and keep him enrolled in school while the carnival was on the road, Father Seamus did his best to give him what most would consider to be a normal life.
But it never took. Homer wasn't a bad kid, just restless. His dad was on the road, so that's where he wanted to be, and who could blame him? If you were on a first name basis with fire eating midgets, human hammers, and mind readers, would you be satisfied with a life of TV, curfews, and the same roof every night?
Homer wasn't, and eventually Father Seamus accepted that and took him on the road as well. During the day, Homer did school work (Father Seamus described the quasi-home schooling situation as "Homer schooling" or "away-from-home schooling"), and at night Homer worked in the carnival, manning games on the midway, selling cotton candy in the concession stands, and when he was old enough, being in charge of rides.
He also worked out, bulked up, and learned the wrestling trade on the sly. Father Seamus's opponents, Driscoll the Driller (his character was a mad dentist), The Human Tornado (inspired by the Rudy Ray Moore character, even though almost nobody got the reference), and Scarecrow tutored Homer on the fine arts of faking hits and kicks, taking falls, and absorbing pain.
Meanwhile, by the time he was 16, he'd accumulated enough credits to graduate from high school. With his grades it would have been easy for him to get scholarships from several schools, but he wasn't interested in that. He wanted to wrestle.
Father Seamus was opposed to it, but he could see that wrestling was what his son wanted. And so it was with reluctance that he gave Homer his blessing to step into the ring as The Son of a Preacher Man, a fiercely loyal Catholic firebrand whose finishing move was The Bible Thumper in which he annointed his opponent with punches, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" style, before sweeping his legs and pinning him.
In time, they joined forces as a tag team duo. For the next 10 years, Father Seamus and Homer, or "Father and Son and The Holy Ass-Whooping" as they were called, terrorized the carnival sideshow wrestling circuit, and eventually graduated to World Class Wrestling. The peak of their career came in June, 1987 at the Father's Day Massacre when they took down The Road Warriors to capture the WCW Tag Team Championship.
Father Seamus retired from pro wrestling the next year, with Homer following him two years later. Together they founded a pro wrestling school in Mason, Indiana and they still host exhibition matches every Father's Day. No charge if you bring your father.